Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Galaxy Goof-Ups (1978)

 Galaxy Goof-Ups began as a component of Yogi's Space Race, and was a spoof of the sci-fi genre that was getting hot again, thanks to "Star Wars" becoming a global phenomenon a year earlier.

Yogi Bear (Daws Butler) commands a new field team, including Huckleberry Hound (Butler), and newcomers Quack-Up (Mel Blanc, of course), and Scare Bear (Joe Besser, also heard on Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics), who, because he's afraid of everything, might've been the forerunner to John Dilworth's Courage The Cowardly Dog more than 20 years later.

Captain Snerdley (John Stephenson, impersonating Joe Flynn) is the team's commanding officer, often exasperated by their bumbling. Stephenson doing his Flynn mimic, recycled from Inch High, Private Eye and Help! It's The Hair Bear Bunch!, was an inspired idea, considering that the Goof-Ups, or Galaxy Guardians, to use their official name, somehow managed to overcome their own bungling, just as much as McHale's Navy perpetually frustrated their boss, Captain Binghamton (Flynn), who wanted them court-martialed.

Unfortunately, no episodes are presently available, so here's the intro:


Mel Blanc had returned to the H-B fold a year earlier (Captain Caveman), and you'd be forgiven if you thought Quack-Up was a distant relative of a certain duck at WB. The various Flintstones series kept Blanc busy, along with the occasional Looney Tunes project at WB, until his passing in 1989.

Rating: B--.

2 comments:

Silverstar said...

The Galaxy Goof-Ups was the first segment of Yogi's Space Race to get spun off into its' own shoe, thus shortening Yogi's Space Race down a half-hour. Not long afterward, the other 2 added attractions, The Buford Files and The Galloping Ghost, likewise split off to become it's own series, titled appropriately enough, Buford and the Galloping Ghost.

Indeed, Yogi's Space Race was one of several attempts by the Big Three broadcast networks to bring Star Wars to the Saturday Morning scene (see also Space Stars, Space Academy and Jason of Star Command). Each episode of Galaxy Goof-Ups would feature a scene in which the Goof-Ups would boogie down in an intergalactic disco, no doubt inspired by Star Wars' iconic cantina scene.

hobbyfan said...

Indeed. Unfortunately, it didn't work.