Toon Town

Hey, hey, hey! Yogi Bear and many of his pals from the Golden Age of Hanna-Barbera cartoons are back to charm a new generation.

In Jellystone!, a Warner Bros. Animation series now streaming on HBO Max, Yogi has left the forest (and its many "pic-a-nic" baskets) for the city, where he's joined by Boo Boo, Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, Jabberjaw, Magilla Gorilla and other colorful characters that roamed the Saturday morning TV landscape of the 1960s and 1970s.

"These characters are animation royalty — you can't really find anyone who doesn't have some love for at least one of them," says executive producer and showrunner C.H. Greenblatt; a three-time Emmy nominee, he also created Chowder and Harvey Beaks and has worked on hits such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Fish Hooks and The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.

"There's something universal and endearing about them. I'm a huge fan, so getting to play with them has been a dream job."

And his Jellystone! job also included directing a few episodes, plus voicing Doggie Daddy, Grape Ape, Boo Boo, Peter Potamus and five others. To prepare, Greenblatt rewatched many of the classic shows.

"It was important for us to know what worked and was worth keeping," he explains. "We also needed to add more personality and depth to some of the lesser-known characters. Our modern sensibilities require a more thoughtful approach. So, we needed to flesh out how they interacted with each other to go beyond one-note jokes.

"Of course, when you have strong main characters like Yogi or Top Cat, we just have to reimagine them in this new setting." Another big change: gender balance. "One of the things the original shows were missing was a lot of main female characters," he says. "Even as side characters, they didn't get to be funny or much fun. We had to fix that.

"So we changed some of the characters in cases that made sense — for example, Doggie Daddy is now a helicopter dad who loves his daughter [instead of son] very much. Jabberjaw and SquiddlyDiddly are girls, and Baba Looey is now Bobbie Louie. We feel like our world is more balanced now."

As a kid, Greenblatt was a big fan of The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, and he hopes to bring more classic Hanna-Barbera characters to Jellystone! in upcoming seasons. For now, he's proud of what he and his team have achieved.

"It's kind of nerve-wracking to take on characters that are so important to many people," he admits. "But it's wonderful to feel that you've done right by them. The best feeling in the world is to see and enjoy the DNA of all the artists who collaborated on the series in the final work."

This article orignally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 8, 2021