Hanna-Barbera Productions was an animation studio that impacted and dominated television since it was founded in 1957 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and George Sidney. It was a good animation studio in 1957-1969, 1981-2001, 2021-present. However, it wasn’t always good, as, from 1970-1980, the studio went downhill.
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 Behold. The dark age of Hanna-Barbera.
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Bad Qualities
- The studio suffered a downfall in quality as they were infamous for doing some bad spin-offs during this era (a.k.a. the Dark Age of American Animation).
- During those years, the studio, much like every other television animation studio in the United States, was severely hampered by heaps of restrictions and regulations from parent groups such as the ban on violence in children's television in the 1970s, which consequently causes the studio to severely struggle in coming up with fresh and new ideas that are good and entertaining to audiences in most of their cartoon shows. In short, interference from parent groups of the 1970s was the reason that made Hanna-Barbera and television animation, in general, go downhill in the 1970s. Even Hanna-Barbera themselves were not satisfied with many of the bad cartoons they churned out during this era.
- They had some bad cartoons during these years such as
- Josie and The Pussycats in Outer Space
- Goober and the Ghost Chasers
- The Partridge Family 2200 A.D.
- The Tom & Jerry Show (1975)
- Fred and Barney Meet The Thing
- The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang
- The animation in their shows (except the good ones during this era) was very limited, cheap, and produced on a very low budget.
- Most of their shows during this era were made just to cash in on the success of another show. While nobody asked for these shows, they were just made no matter what.
- They recycle most of their shows with space and other junk, which has little to nothing to do with the original show of these spin-offs to the point of being the poster children for Recycled In Space. The Partridge Family 2200 A.D., and The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang are prime examples.
- There are also useless characters, the main example being the sons of the main characters.
- The bad shows have a poor grasp on the source material, with The Tom and Jerry Show (1975) being the worst offender as it is practically nothing like the original Tom and Jerry cartoons they were based on.
- The bad cartoons are heavily outdated nowadays.
- They have created some shows (good or bad) that were cloned from Scooby-Doo during this era, such as Goober and the Ghost Chasers, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels (despite being good), Jabberjaw, Josie and the Pussycats, Speed Buggy, and many others.
- They were still notorious for constantly recycling elements from their previous works for other works such as plots, character designs, names, and especially animation and music scores.
- Not to mention that they flanderized some characters
Good Qualities
- They still had plenty of good/decent shows during this era, such as:
- The Banana Splits Adventure Hour
- The Perils of Penelope Pitstop
- Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines
- Cattanooga Cats
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
- Harlem Globetrotters
- Josie and the Pussycats
- Where’s Huddles?
- The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show
- Help!... It’s the Hair Bear Bunch!
- The Funky Phantom
- The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan
- Jeannie
- The Addams Family
- Wait Till Your Father Gets Home
- The Flintstone Comedy Hour
- The Roman Holidays
- Sealab 2020
- The New Scooby-Doo Movies
- Speed Buggy
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids
- Yogi’s Gang
- Super Friends
- Inch High, Private Eye
- Hong Kong Phooey
- Devlin
- These Are the Days
- Valley of the Dinosaurs
- Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch
- Korg: 70,000 B.C.
- The Great Grape Ape Show
- The Mumbly Cartoon Show
- The Scooby-Doo Show
- Dynomutt, Dog Wonder
- Clue Club
- Jabberjaw
- Fred Flintstone and Friends
- Laff-A-Lympics
- CB Bears
- Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels
- Yogi's Space Race
- Wonder Wheels
- Mystery Island
- The All-New Super Friends Hour
- The Hanna-Barbera Happy Hour
- The All-New Popeye Hour
- Casper and the Angels
- The Robotic Stooges
- Godzilla (1978)
- Challenge of the Superfriends
- Jana of the Jungle
- The New Fred and Barney Show
- The New Semoo
- The Super Globetrotters
- Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo (1979)
- The World’s Greatest SuperFriends
- Amigo and Friends (English dub of Televisa’s Cantinflas y Sus Amigos);
- Super Friends
- Drak Pack
- Hanna-Barbera’s World of Super Adventure
- The Flintstone Comedy Show
- Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo (1980)
- Richie Rich
- Some of their bad shows are "so bad, they're good", such as The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang and Fred And Barney Meet The Thing.
- The animation is still good at times, mainly in the good shows of this era.
- Some of the shows use the Laugh Track for every episode, which is entertaining.
- Many of their good series have a strong sense of humor.
- There are still memorable characters in their good shows, like Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, Pebbles Flintstone, Bamm-Bamm Rubble, Yogi Bear (despite being flanderized in Space Race and Galaxy Goof-Ups), Boo-Boo Bear, Ranger Smith, Dick Dastardly, Muttley, Zilly, Klunk, Penelope Pitstop, The Ant Hill Mob, Sylvester Sneekly/The Hooded Claw, Scooby-Doo, Shaggy Rogers, Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, and Velma Dinkley.
- There are also memorable new characters that were created in these years like Scrappy-Doo, Jana, Dr. Ben Cooper, and Montaro.
- The studio redeemed itself in 1981 and managed to become good again for the rest of its lifetime.
- Speaking of which, by that time the studio would later create an animated reboot/revival of The Addams Family in 1992, which is far superior to the previous The Addams Family cartoon series the studio previously did in 1973.
- To be fair, none of this was the fault of the studio. It wouldn't have suffered almost all these problems as mentioned in "Bad Qualities" above if it weren't for the interference of parent groups in the 1970s.
- The Italian dub of their shows is positive and underrated.
- Charlotte's Web was an amazing film to come out of this era of Hanna-Barbera.
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