Tag Archives: cartoons

W. Watts Biggers, co-creator of Underdog


[embedded video: Underdog theme]

I loved Underdog. The cartoon, not whatever this was. It was shown in syndication in the afternoon and I used to watch it at my grandparent’s house when the weather was too crappy for my grandfather to take dad and I out for boating adventures in the Port Charlotte canals.

The New York Times is reporting that Underdog co-creator W. Watts Biggers died.

I looked in my archives to see how much I’ve posted about Underdog. I found this in a link round-up post from 2002. (Un)fortunately, the links were dead:

It was back to sad, however, when I saw the ain’t it cool news headline announcing the death of Rocky and Bullwinkle animation supervisor William “Tex” Henson. Henson also oversaw Underdog, which was one of my favorite cartoons. There’s not a lot of Underdog information on the web. ToonTracker has some and I found a rather disturbing quantity of Underdog fan fiction that someone wrote while, they claim, heavily medicated.

I also found this, which was disturbing in a different way, in that it was about a dream I had last year: I doubt a completed Underdog coloring book actually counts as a PhD comprehensive exam.

In retrospect, Underdog was a pretty annoying show. Still, I loved the Underdog coloring books. A lot.

Scooby Doo: The Mystery Mask Mix-Up

There’s no end to the horrifying ethnic stereotypes in some of the early episodes of Scooby-Doo. And by “early” I mean, “the first 60 or 70 or 80 episodes.”

The combination of cringe-worthy Chinese waiter impersonations and the insane music make season 2’s “The Mystery Mask Mix-Up” a real standout. As you may recall, there was a brief period at the end of the 2nd season where every chase scene was accompanied by a nonsensical pop song. See also: I’m in Love with an Ostrich.

Since I found the chase scene musical interlude for this episode on youtube, I thought I’d share it with you:

I was hunting around for commentary on this episode when I came across a funny website about the first few seasons of the show. This note about “The Mystery Mask Mix-Up” sums up my feelings about this episode perfectly: “The smugglers have to use golden masks and carrier pigeons to communicate with each other?! How expensive is the telephone?”

Happy holidays, everyone. Now quit trying to make polite conversation with your crazy relatives and go watch some TV instead!

Dogtoberfest

Sometimes I lose my mind while watching Scooby Doo and yell things at Husband like, “That’s why you don’t put a dog in charge of operating the outboard motor!” in a way that implies Husband was considering a such an action.

Sometimes Husband has to restrict my television time. Tonight’s one of those nights.