A Public Service Announcement from Yogi Bear

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(Thanks Matthew Gaastra)

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  • The Animator

    Nice find.

  • http://gagaman.blogspot.com The Gagaman

    “Why do people smoke Yogi?”
    “Because the Flintstones told them to as kids, Booboo, that’s why!”

    What a difference a decade or two makes.

  • http://www.rocarts.com Meredith

    Very enlightened for the time it was made. I liked it until the end when the guy’s head fell off.

  • Marc Baker

    “Why do people smoke Yogi?”
    “Because the Flintstones told them to as kids, Booboo, that’s why!”

    Indeed. Though, i gotta say, the animation actually looks good all things considered. Though the guy’s head popping off seemed kinda weird. Otherwise, great find.

  • William Massie

    I like educating kids, but parents, schools and PBS should do that not saturday morning cartoons.

    Also yes the animation is quite nice.

  • http://jmac.org Jason McIntosh

    The loud breathing was kind of weird though.

  • Michael E

    Yogi hates drugs:

    http://www.ep.tc/problems/eight/02.html

    There was some animation done for Dare Bear Yogi but I can’t find it anywhere. I saw it once. It is kind of weird but funny at the same time.

  • http://www.heal-emru.com Tamu

    @William: Why should Saturday morning not seek to educate kids if they want to? Everything people watch teaches them something. It doesn’t stop parents, and other people from doing their job and imparting important information to kids as well.

  • William Ferry

    Yes, you want to take anti-smoking advice from a kleptomaniac petty thief! :)

  • http://doubleben.blogspot.com Emmett Goodman

    This isn’t such a bad spot. There’s nothing forced in the way the characters are explaining things. Yogi and Boo-Boo are in character and there’s even some humor to the situation as well. And having a man’s head roll off his body is pretty daring too for a spot to educate children. Works great, and the animation is pretty nice too.

  • http://www.nranimation.com James Nethery

    The animation is really nicely done… especially for 1968 Hannah-Barbara! Wish the other Yogi Bears were this fluidly animated. I like the designs of the human characters also.

    They must’ve had a bigger budget on this and actually spent some good time on it.

    It’s kinda ironic that HB did this PSA though… as they were the ones advertising cigarettes via The Flintstones just a few years earlier.

  • http://www.nranimation.com James Nethery

    “Yogi hates drugs:

    http://www.ep.tc/problems/eight/02.html

    There was some animation done for Dare Bear Yogi but I can’t find it anywhere. I saw it once. It is kind of weird but funny at the same time”

    HA HA wow. I was looking through some of the other ones and the Archie one reminded me of this:

    http://www.homestarrunner.com/cheatcommandos4.html

    hehe.

  • Fred Sparrman

    “And besides, Boo Boo…these cels we’re painted on are highly flammable!”

  • Marc Baker

    Honestly, i’m the kind of guy who’s just looking for fun in the cartoons i watch, and when it comes to teaching morals to kids, it can be a very mixed bag. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. it pretty much depends on how well it’s executed, or if the moral has some truth to it. It’s easy to not care to much about them without some disagreement, and from the last few posts i’ve seen, it’s understandable.

    Anyways, that D.A.R.E. comic with Yogi, and The Flintstone Kids was a unique find to say the least. never thought i’d see that pair-up, then again, one episode of ‘The Flintstone Kids’ had Michael Jackson singing about the dangers of drugs. (Good thing he didn’t get too chummy with them. Yikes!)

  • EHH

    This is pretty good. I like how honest it is about smoking. When was this made?

  • http://checkeredgeekcartoons.blogspot.com Zach

    Yeah, I really don’t see anything wrong with Yogi Bear telling me not to smoke. If I were a little kid, I’d probably take his advice over Arthur’s or one of my teachers.

  • Keith Bryant

    I was born in 1962 and I remember seeing this on TV all the time when I was a kid. This commercial, along with not being able to stand the stench of my parents cigarettes, convinced me to never start smoking. Luckily, both of my parents quit smoking in the mid-late 60′s.

  • http://www.itsthecat.com Mark Kausler

    The animation in this spot is entirely by Irv Spence, Bill and Joe usually let Irv animate more fully than their other guys. Irv also worked on “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear”. I don’t know if it’s Jerry Eisenberg, Iwao or Willie Ito on layout here, does anyone else know?

  • purin

    Interesting. It starts out with a good context: a cigarette butt in a forest, which can cause a fire, a real menace to forest dwellers, and then goes into a study of the humans who smoke them. In effect, it’s killing two birds with one PSA.

  • Norton

    It’s a good example of how a skilled animator could remain true to H-B’s rather flat house style and still impart plenty of good posing, given enough time and a decent budget. Spence also obviously listened to the track, which wasn’t always done in H-B’s Saturday morning output, particularly once it got shipped largely overseas.

  • Chris L

    Re: cartoons teaching kids – they do it anyway (though admittedly in a less didactic way). The most common lesson they teach is “buy our toys.”

  • Jason

    Why wouldn’t Saturday morning cartoons want to emulate PBS? PBS makes millions off Elmo AND gets a nice fat government handout (even though it runs commercials now). Sounds like a sweet deal. All you have to do is preach and make the Peggy Charrens of the world happy. So you also have to sell your soul, your integrity, your credibility. The Muppet people did that long ago, and thanks to Elmo THEY’RE ROLLING IN IT.

  • zavkram

    I was surprised when I looked at the copyright notice and saw that this was made back in 1968. At first glance the animation and layouts look so superior to what H-B was regularly cranking out during the 1960′s, that they suggest a later period; maybe around the time “Yogi’s Gang” or “Yogi’s Space Race” aired on Saturday mornings on ABC.

    The print of this PSA looks great considering its age, BTW…

  • http://kitschensyngk.deviantart.com/ Kitschensyngk

    And to think this predates Yogi’s Gang by a good five years.

  • http://animateriales.blogspot.com/ mig
  • Marc Baker

    I think Joe Barbera once said that ‘education should be handled by the parents, and teachers, while the entertainment should be handled by us.’

  • http://www.blackdotstudios.com Ian Jones-Quartey

    This is actually pretty damn nice looking! I especially like Yogi slapping the cigarette out of Boo-Boo’s hand.

  • http://dailygrail.com/blog/8389 red pill junkie

    The question is, after 40 years, why haven’t we seen more shorts like this?

    And which animated character would be best suited to give the non-smoking message to this generation, Sponge Bob perhaps?

  • P.C. Unfunny

    I liked when Yogi smacked the cigarette out of Boo Boo’s hand.

    Gagaman: LOL !

  • http://nick-whatamithinking.blogspot.com Nick

    Wasn’t Daws Butler himself a heavy smoker?

  • Joe Heffernan

    Hey…was that a little snub with those two teenages smoking by the tree…I’d swear they were take-offs of Archie and Reggie!!