Wake up, Useless!

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It's time for another cartoon!



In which we discover the secret of Ring-A-Ding Spring. Sorry about the "spoiler" in the YouTube preview thumbnail above.

Hoppity's hometown, Foggy Bogg, Wisconsin, shares a bucolic Great Lakes vibe with Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, but sounds much more inviting to me (preferring temperate swamps to gangrenous toes). Waldo and Fillmore are itinerant swindlers, but adopt the town as their hideout/headquarters.

From what I read, this set of episodes was the Ward/Scott pilot for the series. The fist two episodes were produced in 1960, with Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed voicing Fillmore before being contracted to portray the Kramdenesque caveman for ABC. Bill "Bullwinkle" Scott took over Fillmore duties in parts 3 and 4, but I don't detect any jarring change in the bear's tone or manner with that change.

Surprisingly to me, Hoppity is not voiced by June "Rocky" Foray, but by a woman named Chris Allen. I can find little about her with my limited search engine skills (partially due to her very common name), but most of her credits seem to be with the Hanna-Barbera studio. I think she's pretty good.

Hans Conreid, a Hollywood character actor whose career was extended by Ward for the benefit of all of us, creates a perfect maniac in Professor Wigglesworth. Another thing I like about the character is the percussion accompaniment to his brainstorms, starting in this episode at about 1:20 in the background and rising to a crescendo (with reprise!) over the next 25 seconds or so. This sound effect appears in most Ward/Scott creations, but only very briefly. I wonder if it was created by Spike Jones or an associate. It really should be a standard ringtone for the iPhone. (And I'm gonna make it one or my name isn't Lattimore!)

This episode is music-heavy, which I've noticed in a handful of shorts from this era of the studio's output. It may have been experimentation; to my ears it sounds somewhat awkward. I assume they went sparser in the sound bed for economic reasons, though, as opposed to purely aesthetic ones. Also take note of the general style of art, especially the backgrounds, which is very similar to the landscapes featured in the Metal Munching Moon Mice story on Rocky and His Friends around that time.

"Ring-A-Ding Spring, Part 2," Hoppity Hooper (1962, Jay Ward Productions), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.