The Cartoon Network series creator riffs on the studio’s ‘green light’ to do most anything with its library, including bringing back classic HB characters, most likely no one wants to see, in the all-new third season, now airing.
Three-wheeled coupes, barbarian barbers and one of the weirdest – and greatest – Cartoon Network character reunions TV has ever seen; nothing was off the table for Season 3, now available on Max.
Created by C.H.
Greenblatt, known for his work on and , is a 2D-animated comedy series featuring modernized ensembles of Hanna-Barbera characters now living and working together in the same town: Jellystone.Huckleberry Hound is the town’s mayor, Cindy, Boo Boo and Yogi are the medical staff, and Jabberjaw – the daughter of the original drummer shark from 1976 – works at a clothing store.Then there’s Doggie Daddy, a lighthouse keeper who is overprotective of his daughter Augie Doggie, and the local criminal group, The Banana Splits.
We could go on.But as packed as Seasons 1 and 2 were with classic cartoon cameos, Greenblatt says he and the team went “whole hog” for Season 3, dragging once forgotten characters back into the spotlight, whether audiences wanted them or not. It was clearly a third fun season.Check out the trailer: AWN chatted with Greenblatt about some of his favorite characters, the hefty challenge of that final Cartoon Network crossover episode, and what could be in store if the show is renewed for Season 4. Victoria Davis: C.H.
Greenblatt: I definitely feel like I got to play with all the toys.We really went whole hog, especially this last season, with all the cameos we wanted to do.Beyond all the Cartoon Network characters, we got to use .
We got to use .We got to use again.We got to use , and, my favorite, from 1974, which nobody even knows or cares about. VD: CHG: He was basically a stunt guy inspired by the motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, who looked like he was in a circus.
The creators did the series with their own version of the stunt rider, and it was not good.But I was like, ‘Man, that'd be really fun to have him in the show,’ because everybody understands stunts, and putting Devlin in the YouTube era as a stunt guy with this sensibility was super fun. There are still more characters like that we would love to do.I don't know if it’ll ever happen but, if it does, great.
VD: CHG: Well,was already a really popular character.But our version made him into a James Bond movie star.But we also did an episode with Wheelie from , who was this anthropomorphic car and was kind of like , which was this old Disney live-action series.
Wheelie was basically a Herbie knockoff.He would make little sounds, there were these antagonistic motorbikes that would chase him around, and there was this girl he was in love with.The characters… well, they were what they were.
But, for we got the comedian Brian Posehn in to do a really funny voice for him in "Third Wheelie" and made Wheelie kind of this weird sad sack. VD: Jellystone! CHG: I think our deepest, weirdest cameo that no one will get was this incidental side character from cartoon.It started with one of our writers saying, “I want to make Yogi get into eating out of troughs instead of using silverware.” And I was like, “That sounds funny.Let's figure it out.” So, we have this strange story in “Turn Your Head and Trough” where Yogi started this thing called “troughing,” where he would eat out of a pig trough.
Then he gets in trouble with this secret Illuminati group that is all about manners.It’s weird, but is a weird show.We needed a fancy, uppity character for the episode and, as we scoured, found Lady Constance.
No one will recognize her.VD: CHG: I know a lot of people will recognize for sure. VD: CHG: We just had to get clearance to make sure Warner owned the characters.Typically, we gave them a big list of characters we wanted, and they would either say, “Yes, we own those” or “No, we don’t own them.” And that was really it.
The executives never pushed.They were always like, “You want to do that? That's funny.” There was a lot of trust established after Season 1 and by this season they understood what we were doing, even when we brought in , these knock-off characters, in “Frankenhooky.” We did a reverse where Yogi and Boo Boo are in monster masks because they want a day off from work and get chased by Goober and all of them.It was already really silly and then at one point I said to Warner, “We should have the real Scooby gang show up.” And they were like, “Do it.” They were always really open to us doing what we wanted. VD: CHG: Yes.
The most feedback we got was when we did the Cartoon Network crossover, “Crisis on Infinite Mirths,” and that was really just to make sure that we did the characters right.The hardest part was finding the right design models for dozens and dozens of characters.It's not like there's a library we could just go to and pull from.
We had to contact original artists and get people to send us stuff.And we had to look on the internet to make sure we were pulling from the correct era. In that episode, we weren’t doing our own version of these characters.We were bringing in the real deals.
They had to be the right styles from the right episodes.VD: CHG: We're lucky that Maxwell Atoms worked on our show.He's got all designs and he did all those segments.
I've got art sitting around and we’re friends with all the people who worked on and We got Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken to look at and give us feedback on the sequences and make sure it fit stylistically with what they did for the shows.We did a pretty good job at nailing that stuff down.But it was a lot. VD: CHG: That was a big challenge.
We had to match the character designs and the backgrounds, too.The music had to match, the colors had to match, and the effects had to match.Snipple’s animation team did a great job.
They nailed it.But there were a lot of logistics trying to get everything right.I mean, we saved that episode pretty much for last in production because we knew it was a big one. We also spent a long time working on the writing.
One of the big challenges for that was we only had 21 minutes to tell the story, and shoehorn as many characters in as we could.Honestly, in our original vision, we could have done a 40-minute story.We had enough material.
We had to cut out lots of fun cameos and things just to get the story to fit.VD: CHG: I do like “Snowdodio.” That was an idea we had way back when we first started the series.The episode talks about how these snowmen migrate through Jellystone every year like the swallows and Augie decides to keep one, which then freezes the town.
It was fun to finally get to do that one, especially with us including ’s special agent Race Bannon as this weird, old recluse.The “Thundarr the Barber-barian” episode is also so weird, and I love it.So, I loved Thundarr as a kid and I kept thinking, “This is the version of Thundarr nobody wants, and no one asked for it.” VD: CHG: We’re not in production for anything right now.
But we’re cautiously optimistic. VD: CHG: One thing we wanted to do was a dog show with all the Hanna-Barbera dogs.Almost like but with every Scooby cousin and knock-off and other dogs we can find. VD: CHG: If we get the opportunity to do more, we've got ideas ready to go. Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime.She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment.
Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
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