Yogi's First Christmas

And yet, as rotten as Snively (great name by the way) and Herman the Hermit are, Yogi STILL gets them Christmas presents and they repent at the end. It's sort of like no matter how miserable your kid is, a parent's unconditional love can make them forgive anything, even stuff they clearly shouldn't. Snively doesn't deserve to be forgiven. But that's why it means so much that he is.

Best descriptor of Snively goes to Yogi: "Why that poor, sweet, helpless, pesky, little brat." When Yogi claims that he isn't a squealer, I was like "Yogi, embrace the squeal." As Homer Simpson advised Bart, it's the only thing punks like that understand.

Speaking of The Simpsons, there were several times when Yogi probably should have mauled Ranger Smith but didn't. Even though I think Dave Seville treats Alvin horribly, Alvin is a three foot tall chipmunk. Yogi is a full-sized bear. If I were Ranger Smith, I'd pick my battles.

"Gee, Homie, it's not nice to maul Ranger Ned."

"YOU WANT SOME OF THIS?!"

But as I said, as great as the morality fable aimed at six year olds is, that is one LOW quality special. When Aunt Sophie claims she's selling the lodge for "business reasons" I was like, "Boy, professional writers didn't even have to TRY in 1980." That is a simply unacceptable explanation. When I was 12 and writing my comic books I would have been able to think up something better without even trying. Maybe the land is worth more as a potential condo development or something? But "business reasons" is just something that I cannot get over that a professional writer not only used, but the people who okayed the special didn't have a problem with it. I mean, REALLY, they had zero standards whatsoever for cartoons in the 70's and 80's. There is just no situation that should be acceptable.

I'm thinking possibly Snively is so angry and spiteful because his parents named him that. What a terrible name to saddle a child with. Only DuckTales' Doofus had crueler parents in that regard. I hate Snively. But the name makes his prepubescent rage credible. I'd be mad at the world too if my parents hated my birth enough to name me THAT. It must of been their way to eternally mark their dislike of their son for not only the rest of their lives, but the rest of his too. Truly, the bad guys of the special might actually be Snively's unseen cruel parents. And I'm sure if you called them on it, they'll say they named him that for "business reasons". Basically the catch-all way for an adult to end a potentially tough conversation in the Hanna-Barberaverse.

Also, I WILL admit that John Kricfalusi is a homophobic scumbag, who confuses horrendously insulting gay people for being edgy... but honestly? "Boo Boo Runs Wild" is NOT an invalid interpretation of Yogi Bear. While there seems to be very little homoerotic subtext between Yogi and Boo-Boo themselves, the fact that Yogi keeps trying to avoid being kissed by Cindy Bear, and only does so upon enormous prodding, leads me to think that when he "caught" Cindy and Boo Boo together in "Boo Boo Runs Wild", and screamed at her, he called the right person a homewrecker. Yogi Bear is the Renly Barantheon of the Hanna-Barberaverse. He'll kiss Cindy. But maybe have Boo Boo in the room to get him started.

Speaking of Cindy that was one weirdly sexualized song and dance number about the mistletoe. I imagine there were plenty of wanking furries watching, wearing out the AB repeat button on their DVD players. Not that I would know of such distasteful things. When she talks about "getting action" I was like, whoever wrote this did NOT really know what that phrase meant, and I'm guessing the censors didn't either. Syndicated cartoons used to get away with murder because they flew so far underneath the radar, and I'm thinking that joke got away from everybody a little.

For the record, we all bemoan the Toon Disney edits on their syndicated cartoons, but in reality, Gargoyles excepted, the stuff they ban and cut is usually stuff that SHOULD be banned and cut. There is no reasonable scenario in which TaleSpin's "War Of The Weirds" should get a TV-Y7 rating, and I think the producers of that show were insane to put a guy crazily firing a machine gun into the air into a kids cartoon in the first place. I imagine if Disney XD got hold of this special both Cindy numbers would have been edited out. And I would see their point. They are way too inappropriate for the target demographic.

This reminded me a bit of UHF. It is terrible, the bad guys were punished severely, I had a great time watching it, and I felt disgusted with myself for enjoying it afterwards. Out of all of the bad cartoons in the 80's this was one of the few GOOD bad cartoons. 3 stars.