1960\'s HUCKLEBERRY HOUND FOR PRESIDENT Cartoon Vintage Pinback Button Pin Badge
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1960\'s HUCKLEBERRY HOUND FOR PRESIDENT Cartoon Vintage Pinback Button Pin Badge:
$11.99
GENUINE ANTIQUE AMERICANA
VINTAGE AMERICAN CARTOON CHARACTER BUTTON
AUTHENTIC HANNA-BARBERA ITEM
sale.
sale ITEM
Title:\"HUCLEBERRY HOUND FOR PRESIDENT\"
Original Vintage 1960\'s
Description: GOOD CONDITION
Size: 7/8\"
Type: LITHOGRAPH.
Condition: All items are usedand will have imperfections. All imperfections may not be described. Pleaseexamine the photos for the best information on the condition of any item.
Additional: Manufacturer\'s ID on curl for: HANNA-BARBERA. GREENDUCK CO.
SEE SCAN. . This isgenuine- not a reproduction.
Huckleberry \"Huck\" Hound
Huckleberry \"Huck\" Hound is afictional cartoon character, a blue dog that speaks with a Southern drawl andhas a relaxed, sweet, and well-intentioned personality. He first appeared inthe series The Huckleberry Hound Show. He bears a resemblance to Droopy. Theterm \"huckleberry\" can be a slang expression for a rube or anamateur, or a mild expression of disapproval[citation needed]. Most of hisshort films consisted of Huck trying to perform jobs in different fields,ranging from policeman to dogcatcher, with results that backfired, yet usuallycoming out on top, either through slow persistence or sheer luck. Huck did not seemto exist in a specific time period as he has also been a Roman gladiator, aMedieval knight, and a rocket scientist. He never appeared in futuristiccartoons, only those set in the present or the past. One regular antagonist inthe series was \"Powerful Pierre\", a tall and muscular unshavencharacter with a French accent. Another regular villain was \"DinkyDalton\", a rough and tough western outlaw that Huck usually has tocapture, and Crazy Coyote, an Indian who Huck often had to defeat who was hismatch. There were also two crows with Mafia accents who often annoyed FarmerHuck. Another trademark of Huck was his tone deaf and inaccurate rendition of\"Oh My Darling, Clementine\", often used as a running gag. He alsocommonly used the phrase \"and stuff like that there\" in place of\"and so on\". This phrase showed up quite often in many Hanna-Barberaproductions of this time, but Huckleberry said it more often than anyone else.One of his careers had his job position on the door listed as \"TS &SLTT\". When asked what it stood for, Huck said \"Top secrets and stufflike that there.\" Various Hanna-Barbera characters were known for breakingthe fourth wall, frequently turning to the viewing audience to make commentsand asides. Huck took this to somewhat of an extreme, and a significant part ofa typical cartoon was his running narrative to the audience about whatever hewas trying to accomplish.
Pat Paulsen ran a campaign for the presidencyof the United States in 1968, an American comedian and satirist notable for hisroles on several of the Smothers Brothers TV shows.
Gracie Allen did it on radio, running on the“Surprise Party” ticket in 1940, even stumping across the country, charging$2.50 for people to attend her “rallies.” Eddie Cantor did it eight yearsearlier. And cartoon characters did it, too. Pogo first trod the campaign trailin 1952. Popeye and Bluto battled it out for the White House in a theatricalshort in 1956. While Gracie did it for publicity, Pogo did it for Walt Kelly tocomment on the sleaze of politics and Popeye did it for entertainment.Huckleberry Hound did it for another reason—there was a buck in it. Huck’scampaign was in the election year 1960 (he didn’t win). And, to quote a formerpresident, “make no mistake,” it was a huge campaign. Gracie Allen had oneradio writer, John P. Medbury, coming up with material for her. The blue houndhad whole phalanxes of people, carefully orchestrated by the two real moneypeople behind Hanna-Barbera—Screen Gems, Columbia Pictures’ television arm, andLeo Burnett, the ad agency that represented Huck’s exclusive sponsor,Kellogg’s. Ironically, about the only place Huck didn’t stump for votes was onthe very TV cartoons that brought him fame. Remember, this was back in the daywhen anything that smacked of being dated, like Christmas shows, never aired insyndication lest they be broadcast at the “wrong” time of year. And, I suspect,the idea behind the campaign was to get people to watch the show. Themulti-media effort began almost accidentally. An article in an early Augustedition of Broadcasting magazine has the story:
When a Screen Gems colleague asked Ed Justinlast month what was in store for Huckleberry Hound, the merchandising chiefad-libbed, “I think we’ll run him for president.” Two weeks later the star ofthe weekly cartoon half-hour on 180 stations had his hat in the ring. By now hestands in a fair way to turn the White House into a dog house on a write-invote. Stations rallied enthusiastically to the idea and had campaignpromotional material in time for station breaks during Republican conventiontelecasts. Orders for buttons, picket signs and balloons are still rolling in.Dell Publications this Thursday (Aug. 11) will release a comic book,Huckleberry Hound for President, and Golden Records is distributing a long-playrecord under the same name and subtitled, “The Making of a Candidate,” or “TrueDemocracy in Action.” It includes campaign songs dating back to 1826 and up to“I Like Ike” and the hound’s own song. These are interwoven with the story ofthe dog’s candidacy, promoted by the Madison Avenue agency of Wheel, Deal,Spiel & Billings, the nation’s greediest. One of the early rallies wasorganized by KHVH-TV Honolulu and the GEM department store there. The crowd outto greet Huckleberry with campaign manager Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw (whois slated for a high State Department post if Huckleberry Hound wins) exceededthat drawn earlier by President Eisenhower and visiting royalty from Japan andlran. Traffic was tied up in the air and on the ground, and the store had tolock its doors when 25,000 had thronged in, according to Ed Justin, assistantcampaign manager, when he got back to New York headquarters from thebarnstorming. In Roanoke, Va., WSLS-TV staged a rally at a baseball game.WCCO-TV Minneapolis got out the child vote 10,000 strong when the candidate andhis party showed up for the station’s “Aquatennial” water show. Politicians arebusy organizing rallies and local conventions in other jurisidictions, withKDKA-TV Pittsburgh, WTOL-TV Toledo, WTVN (TV) Evansville, Ind., and KJEO (TV)Fresno, Calif., announced as early dates on the candidate’s whistle-stop tours.The campaign is also picking up steam in professional Huckleberrry Hound actsthat have been making the amusement-park circuit for some months. These arehandled by paid performers, packaged on a regular entertainment fee basis. Ifthe country goes to the dogs, breakfast food may become the national dish. Thecanine candidate is sponsored on television by Kellogg through Leo Burnett. TheToledo affair was quite something, appropriate considering that was the hometownof Huck’s voice, Daws Butler. Sponsor magazine of August 15 gushes how a record45,000 showed up to nominate Huck, Yogi as vice-president and Quick Draw asSecretary of Defence, though one wonders how many actually came solely for the“political rally.” The WSLS tie-in at the local ballpark on July 26 featuredgiveaways of presidential buttons and balloons to over 3,000 people. Sponsoralso revealed Ed Justin was on his way to London to push Huck. And a costumedHuck and Yogi adorned the Wisconsin State Fair, along with the Three Stoogesand Myron Floren. The print media wasn’t spared. The Chicago Tribune’s ClarencePetersen revealed August 23 in a column entitled ‘Critic Bares Soul, Tells Listof Payola Gifts’ that one of his story-inducing freebies was “one HuckleberryHound for President kit.” One newspaperman that took a fancy to the campaignwas Art Ryon, who seems to have fuelled his light-hearted ‘Ham on Ryon’ columnsin the Los Angeles Times with regular trips across the street to his personalbooth at the Redwood Room. Interestingly, the Times had been a staunch ally ofRichard Nixon until Otis Chander took over as publisher in 1960. Now, Nixon wasrunning for president and a Times columnist was, albeit jokingly, backingsomeone else.
Celluloid pinbacks, a type of button,were popular from the 1890s to the 1940s as a cheap way of conveying apolitical message or advertising anything from food and clothing to movies andTobacco. In 1896 the first patent was granted to Whitehead and Hoag for abutton with a textile surface covered with a thin layer of transparentcelluloid. Later on the textile was replaced with lithographed paper (cheaper),and ultimately metal without the celluloid. Advertising pinbacks, sometimesfeaturing cartoon characters, were often given away as premiums with cigarettesor newspaper subscriptions, or handed out at stores. They were also given asfan club premiums, as part of the membership package. On the political side,pinbacks were given away at campaign rallies. Some pinbacks are hard to findtoday because so many were simply worn and thrown away. Collectors also seek toassemble entire pinback series (for example comic character pinbacks) andfinding every pinback in a large series can be quite difficult.
1960\'s HUCKLEBERRY HOUND FOR PRESIDENT Cartoon Vintage Pinback Button Pin Badge:
$11.99