Precious Pupp - Updated

It's fair to say that, round about the mid 1960's, the Hanna-Barbera shows were, to some, hit and miss in terms of characters and/or writing - by the latter, everything was pretty much illustrated radio where the characters would fill as much dialogue as possible to fill the time slot or explain the heck out of everything that's going on on-screen for anyone who's out of the room and misses the action....maybe.

One of the worst offenders I've seen has been from the Precious Pupp series (the character was originally part of "the Atom Ant / Secret Squirrel Show" and, by Don Messick's wheezy laughter, naturally a predecessor for Muttely of "Dastardly and Muttley" some years later). The basic outline of the episode "Bones and Groans" is a follows:


Bruiser the dog next-door tries various schemes to nab Precious's large soup bone, which totally backfire on him - and the reason being is Bruiser telling us (the viewers) exactly what he's going to do and while he's doing it, clear in ear-shot where Precious himself can overhear and thwart him each time.
If that isn't poor planning, I don't know what is :P


First time I watched this, I felt rather ticked at the quality HB appeared to be slowly sinking into, constantly muttering: "if I had been in charge of that episode, it would have been much different". Then I got thinking...

...on the one hand I could have produced a similar storyline of my own without relying so much on "narration"...

....but on the other hand I decided:

"Why try and better a weak episode when I can improve on the original?"


So after some weeks of planning, editing and scrounging for all available files, this is the final result. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find all the necessary sound effects or music scores which were used at the time, but halfway through editing I just gave up and went with whatever sounded good - hence how we have a mixture of Hoyt Curtain's scores from the Yogi Bear/Loopy De Loop period as well as numerous Warner Bros. SFX to boot.

In short, the final result isn't entirely perfect but is, I hope, a much better cartoon in terms of improved dialogue (or lack of it), sharper timing and....well....trying to be as resourceful with what I've got, basically.

Top props, as well, for fellow artist and decent chap Andrew Morrice for offering to play the role of Bruiser, with myself substituting for Don Messick in brief scenes here and there. And don't worry, a lot of Messick's trademark "Muttley laughs" have been left as intact as possible. He is as brilliant if not equal as Daws Butler in terms of voice acting at this time =)

So enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of my labour, with links to the original episode and my "revised" version below for you to compare on.

Oh, and carefully note for my video how the TV Logo never leaves the corner of the screen... ;)

Bones and Groans - Original