Later, I would eventually morph into a full-blown cartoon fanatic, delving deep into cartoon collectibles and various other pieces of production ephemera, like animation cels, style sheets and background art.
With that in mind, this book, The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, was practically made for cartoon-loving geeks like me.
This is basically one of those usual treasury-style books, which are often light on the text, big on the pictures and come with lots of little inserts of reproduction pieces.
Now, I'm not going to go into a long-winded history of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, because if you're the type of person to read this blog, you already know who these guys are, but on the off chance that you don't know about these legendary animators, I can pretty much guarantee that you've seen their work; Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, the list goes on and on.
Like I mentioned before, this is one of those big coffee-table books that's simply jam-packed with massive, colorful pictures, which is my favorite thing to plunk down on the couch with on a lazy weekend afternoon, poring through the history of a game-changing animation studio.
One of my favorite things to geek out on is old-school storyboards, like this one seen below from Frankenstein Jr....
A couple of pages were dedicated to the voice talents of days gone by, such as voice-acting legends Daws Butler (Scooby Doo, among countless others) and Mel Blanc (who made a name for himself by performing just about every single Warner Bros. voice, like Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, before moving on to the Hanna-Barbera studios)...
Now for some of the goodies! The reproduction inserts in these types of books get my collector mojo buzzing. Even though the pieces included in these books are not originals, they're very often reproduced with enough care to detail that I can at least pretend for a moment that I'm holding a piece of animation history.
Each flat reproduction comes sealed inside these little translucent envelopes...
And this book has everything! From the Huckleberry Hound collector's cards above, to the reproduction animation cels like this Ruff 'n Reddy one seen below...
Other gems found within (especially from a one-time aspiring cartoonist's point of view) are these shots of original development sketches showing what Yogi bear could have looked like...
Vintage activity book repro pages...
Australian "gum cards"...
Promo animation cels...
Some shots of a vintage line of collectible Flintstone figurines (note the blurb: Painted by Hand by Artists)...
Flintstones card game...
Jetsons storyboards and background sketches...
Masks...
But the book isn't all silly animals wearing bow ties. The latter part of the book is devoted to some of HB's "adventure" cartoons, including good ol' Johnny Quest...
And a personal favorite of mine, Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace Ghooooooooooooooooost!
Birdman gets some love, but it's hard to see this character without thinking of the bastardization of the character from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim cartoon.
I'm seriously considering framing these Space Ghost cards...
And of course, no Hanna-Barbera book would be complete without a good long look at that cowardly Great Dane and his gang of mystery solving teens from one of my all-time favorite cartoons, Scooby Doo, Where Are You?...
I have always loved this cartoon, and remember running home from the bus stops in the afternoon to make sure I never missed a second of this classic. I even loved the later Scooby Doo Movies cartoon, where the Mystery Inc. gang were teamed up with such shining stars of Hollywood like Sonny & Cher and the Harlem Globetrotters. But by the time the '80s kicked in, Scooby's cartoons just got too corny for my taste, especially with the addition of that insipid Scrappy Doo. But the original cartoon will always have a place in my heart.
The only downside to this book is that it only covers the animation studio's efforts through the 1970s, and even then, just the major stars, which left out so many of my favorite cartoons from Hanna-Barbera such as The Smurfs (yes, I admit it), Pac Man (don't knock it, it was an awesome cartoon), Jabber Jaw, Superfriends, Speed Buggy, Hong Kong Phooey, Blue Falcon & Dynomutt, Captain Caveman and many more.
Oh well, maybe I can hope for a second Hanna-Barbera Treasury where some of the above mentioned classics could get a little love and where I could get my hands on some reproduction Pac Man cels or Superfriends style sheets.
Anyway, I highly recommend this book to any animation nerd, especially if you can find it cheap, like I did in a bargain book store for $15. At that price, it was a steal.
Anyway, I guess I've rambled on enough about this heavy tome filled with classic cartoon goodies. I'm going to go bust out some of my old Scooby Doo and Smurfs DVDs. Yabba dabba doo, everybody.
