Saturday Morning cartoon time again, kids!
The last official "star" character (one who had his mug on the screen before the opening titles) during the golden age of cinema cartoon shorts was Humphrey Bear. He'd started out as a supporting character for Goofy and Donald Duck before being promoted. But Disney got out of cartoon shorts soon thereafter.
Humphrey was a forest park bear who didn't much care for rough living, and was always trying to find ways to enjoy human (or anthropomorphic duck) amenities, much to the consternation of the authority figure park ranger.
Hanna-Barbera studio's bread and butter was mass-producing TV cartoons which managed to have sufficient charm to be popular, but almost aggressively avoided originality. Almost everything they did was a knock-off of something that came before.
The first series they produced in its entirety starred Huckleberry Hound, essentially a re-skinned version of Southern Wolf, a character created by Tex Avery, their old colleague from MGM theatrical shorts. The show's back-up segments included Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, who were reincarnations of Tom, Jerry, and Nibbles from Hanna and Barbera's own MGM theatrical work. Then there was Yogi Bear... A thinly veiled Humphrey rehash. Pretty ballsy to steal from Disney. But they probably figured it was just a back-up segment on a lowly TV show, and Humphrey wasn't exactly Disney's brightest property. Even when Yogi was such a breakout character that he got to move headline his own show in a couple years, and many more in years to follow.
Yogi is a study on the classic Hanna-Barbera approach to adapting a character to TV animation. Obviously the character design was simplified and stylized. Humphrey didn't really speak, but it's faster and cheaper to have characters SAY funny things than to animate them DOING funny things, so Yogi was made verbose, with an imitation of Art Carney's Ed Norton voice. Humphrey was usually solo, but Yogi needed someone talk to, and was given a little buddy for the purpose.
Not only would Yogi himself go on to be featured in a long list of HB projects, he also served as the template for several likable animal vs authority figure cartoons produced by by the studio. Such as Squiddly Diddly, Magilla Gorilla, Wally Gator, and the Hair Bear Bunch.
Here is Yogi's first cartoon from September 1958...
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