I'm not sure if The Beary Family appeared on TV, but for 10 years (1962-72), Universal commissioned a series of animated shorts. I seem to recall them appearing in Gold Key comic books, in support, of course, of Woody Woodpecker, so maybe they did hit the small screen after all.
Grace Stafford (Mrs. Walter Lantz) and Paul Frees are the principal voices for much of the run, although there was a stretch where Daws Butler filled in for Frees, who was working for just about everyone in the 60's, he was in such demand.
From 1969, here's "Cool It, Charlie", in which Charlie and his son (both voiced by Frees) have issues just getting an air conditioner home.
Nothing special, really. You can picture other cartoon families having similar issues.
Rating: B.
4 comments:
"The Beary Family" shorts did indeed air on TV for a time; they were packaged with other Lantz shorts during the 70's-80's when Woody Woodpecker went into weekday syndication. I remember seeing some of the shorts on a couple of my local stations after school.
Thanks. I wasn't entirely sure, because my memory is hazy from those days, and I usually watched in syndication reruns of Looney Tunes, Popeye, Flintstones, Tom & Jerry, but rarely Woody and pals.
In the earlier shorts, the Beary family had a prepubescent daughter Susie Beary in addition to Junior. Unlike Junior, however, Susie only showed up a couple of times. Eventually, the producers got rid of the character altogether and never even referred to her again.
Also, in the first few shorts, the Bearys lived in a society full of anthropomorphic bears, but later it was changed so that the Bearys were the only anthro animals in a world of humans.
Hmmm, sounds to me like there was some meddling going on.......
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