Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/12/watch-bullwinkle-the-television-puppet-tell-kids-to-pull-the-knobs-off-their-tv-sets-1961.html
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Those who forget* history are doomed to repeat it**.
*Weird Al Yankovic
**use the same suggestion in the opening credits song of “UHF”.
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Reminds me of the Soupy Sales incident (in which he told kids to get a dollar from mom’s purse and mail it him),
not to mention the Winky Dink problem. Kids were supposed to buy a plastic screen to cover the tv, then draw on it with a marker to help Winky Dink escape situations, like by drawing a bridge over a river.
Guess how many kids skipped the step of getting the plastic screen?
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Here is Soupy explaining what transpired…
He’d be hard to beat…
'Cept maybe televangilists
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Sort of the kiddo version of Alfred Hitchcock’s irreverent thumb-in-the-eye intro/outros.
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I was watching Pee Wee Herman - on one of his episodes, dunno which - he had set up the Word Of The Day: “What?” - and, of course, when anybody said the word everyone had to scream real loud. THEN - he segues to the commercial break by telling kids to go into the kitchen, grab pots and pans and make a real loud marching band.
When I saw that I fell apart. All across the nation there were kids marching through their house, clanging pots and pans, early on a Saturday morning - and the parents would storm out and ask: “What are you doing?!” — but they’d only get as far as “What”.
brilliant
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I’m 45 and believe me, I’ve watched more than my fair share of Rocky and Bullwinkle reruns, but I’ve never even heard of a puppet until now.
can someone older than me explain this?
edit: replied to DS by mistake. sorry!
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i’m old - and i don’t remember a Bullwinkle puppet either - but then again, i’m old
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Yeah, I’d never heard of a Bullwinkle puppet myself, but a quick google reveals that in 1961 the cartoon was moved to NBC and renamed The Bullwinkle Show and the puppet shorts were a brief addition.
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Honestly, I was more shocked to hear him describe a segment entitled “The worst of anime 1” 
.
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There are earworms… and there are EARWORMS.
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Today’s equivalent is “Alexa, Buy Me A Dollhouse” etc.
I’m related by marriage to Bullwinkle. I didn’t know him well, but the late great Bill Scott did a number of voices and wrote much of the material. His normal voice was like that of a professional orator and he looked good in a suit. But, the stuff was rebellious.
They were once cautioned by a censor that to have Rocky & Bullwinkle tied up with a fire lit underneath them by a “native” was not allowed because you can’t be showing cannibalism during the children’s TV hours. Jay Ward appealed: since when is it cannibalism to eat a moose and a squirrel?
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That’s “Anna May Wong,” but it took me moment.
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I think if you had a color tv set, you got three dimensional Bullwinkle.
Actually, at first glance I assumed they’d made a puppet to do a public service ad. Maybe connected to Newton Minnow’s calling commercial tv a vast wasteland, in May 1961.
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Ruben Bolling (who draws the Super Fun-Pak Comics parody of newspaper comics pages that gets posted occasionally to BoingBoing) has used that “send your parents’ money to me” bit in his “Uncle Art’s Funland”
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I do not remember Bullwinkle as anything but a cartoon, with Rocket J. Squirrel. Does anyone know what college Bullwinkle graduated from> WhatsamattaU.
Now Kukla, Fran and Ollie were puppets, as was Lambchop.
Fractured Fairy Tales. Boris and Natasha. Back in the days when Captain Crunch tasted good.
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My favorite from that era was when George of the Jungle mis-called the hippos, and it brought out the hippies.
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Which is why I can remember it 55 years later.
PS: This is the 50s version. I saw the 60s version. Shorter and no orchestra.
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Speaking of Jay Ward, I had not heard of Hoppity Hooper until my son got a multi-DVD pack of public domain cartoons as a gift. This particular segment will be of interest to this website and its readers/viewers:
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