As you know, Oll has been working on the archiving project since early February 2009, and he is now working on the BHM section. This 23rd trench is a real mixed bag with bigfoot, yowie and yeti cuttings from 1954 to 2009. Good stuff.
HERE
Thursday, February 04, 2010
CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: BHM Part Twenty three
THE NEW POSTER GIRL FOR A&M
RICHARD FREEMAN: Hanna Barbera’s teens and monsters
Josie and the Pussycats had an all-girl band, their manager and a black and white cat called Sebastian getting involved in Scooby-esque capers. Antagonists tended to be spies or mad scientists rather than monsters per se, though one episode was based on The Island of Dr Moreau. The episode 'A Greenthumb is Not A Goldfinger' features giant man-eating plants created by an insane botanist. In 'Plateau of the Apes Plot' the group meet ape men and dinosaurs in a lost valley.
The series was reinvented after its initial run of 16 episodes (1971-1972) as Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. It crawled on for another 16 episodes before vanishing. In 2001 a live action film of the series was made (why? It was never even a popular or successful cartoon).
The Funky Phantom revolved around a revolutionary-era ghost called Jonathan Wellington 'Mudsy' Muddlemore and his ghost cat, Boo. After hiding from the British inside a clock Mudsy and Boo die and remain their until freed by a gang of teenagers and their bulldog Elmo. 17 episodes were made between 1971 and 1972. Only one had a truly cryptzoological theme: ‘ We Saw a Sea Serpent.’ Oddly, Mudsey himself was scared of ghosts despite being one. His voice was identical to the Hanna Barbera character Snagglepuss (who himself looked like an overweight Pink Panther).
From 1973 to 1975 Hanna-Barbera gave us 16 episodes of Goober and the Ghost Chasers. Once more a group of teenagers and their dog solve crimes. The titular Goober was a weird blue hound with a tapir-like nose, long legs and a woolly hat. He could become invisible at will. Unlike Scooby-Doo most of the ghosts they chase turn out to be real! Oddly, the gang included animated versions of the kids from the sitcom The Partridge Family! Just what the writers were drinking or smoking is debatable but in one episode, 'Assignment: The Ahab Apparition', they meet the ghost of Moby Dick (shades of the Bake-kujira, the zombie whale from Japanese folklore).
If you think that was odd, how about Hanna-Barbera’s Speed Buggy in which the dog or cat sidekick of the teenagers was replaced with a panting, talking car! Think Scooby-Doo meets The Love Bug. 16 episodes were made in 1973. Episodes included ‘Kingzilla’, which featured giant apes; ‘Island of the Giant Plants’, about monster man-eating plants; and ‘Captain Schemo and the Underwater City’, which featured a giant shark that turns out to be a submarine.
1978 saw Dymomutt, a sort of bionic super hero dog who fought crime with a Batman-style hero called the Blue Falcon, but as there were no teenagers involved, it falls a little outside our remit.
Things were about to get even more surreal. In 1979 The New Shmoo arrived. This teamed up teenaged reporters from Mighty Mysteries Comics with a shape-shifting creature called the Shmoo. This weird-looking beast had its debut in All Cap’s 1940s hillbilly newspaper strip Li'l Abner wherein it produced everything humans could want but for free and hence led to economic crisis. As in Scooby-Doo the characters frequently face faux monsters. In ‘The Valley Where Time Stood Still’ it is surviving dinosaurs, in ‘The Beast of Black Lake’ it’s a lake monster (though a real one turns up at the end) and in ‘The Terror of the Trolls’ its trained chimpanzees masquerading as trolls!
1980 saw the last of these kind of cartoons with the 40-episode Captain Caveman. Defrosted by three teenaged girls (sounds good!) Captain Caveman, or ‘Cavey’ to his friends, is the world’s first superhero. He looks somewhat like a hairy marrow with arms and legs and keeps pet dinosaurs and Stone Age crime fighting devices in his furs. During his stint Captain Caveman met dragons, werewolves and Bigfoot to name but a few.
These teen / sidekick/ monster cartoons seem to have died out after the 1970s with the notable exception of Scooby-Doo, the first and best. But with the current fad of remaking long forgotten cartoons as live action films how much longer can it be before we see Speed Buggy the movie?
CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY NEWSLETTER
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LONDON CRYPTO EVENT
I wonder if your members would be interested in this event in London on March 4:
http://www.cfilondon.org/2009/12/04/monster-vs-aliens-day-ufos-the-loch-ness-monster-and-big-foot/
Regards,
David McKeegan
LINDSAY SELBY: Bigfoot in Guatemala?
The creature is often said to be 6 feet (2 metres) to 8 feet( 2. 6 metres) tall, ape-like and walks with a bipedal gait of long strides. Its fur/hair is described as shaggy and long and that it sweeps the ground as the creature walks. The Sisemite’s vocalisation is reported to be very loud and piercing, and to be heard for miles around the mountains.
In Chorti folklore the sisemite is a rapist who abducts human women. (Similarities here with Bigfoot, said to abduct humans)
In Guatemala the Sisemite is described as an ape with human-like face, but so big that he could "cross the Motagua river just walking." It is also said to have glowing eyes and big backwards feet. (Some monkeys can rotate their feet so not quite as far-fetched as it sounds).
The similarities between stories of bigfoot, yeti and the Sisemite could mean a genus of large ape or a possible human /ape hybrid either still lives or once lived in remote places. Nearly all the places where these creatures are reported are wilderness or mountains and not very accessible nor habitable for humans. Maybe they retreated up there after the ice age or maybe folklore is just similar all over the world and it is just a story. But stories have to start somewhere and even if they don’t exist now, they may have done in the past and the stories of encounters have been passed on through oral history. There is often some truth in old stories I have found and if these creatures are no longer with us, someone may find a fossil or remains to verify they existed.
Story of encounter from Panama
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/creatures/darien.htm
See also the book Abominable Snowmen, by Ivan T. Sanderson,1961 chapter 8
See also this site http://kengerhard.com/
By a CFZ cryptozoologist who went to hunt for the creatures in Belize in 2004 and 2006
OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today
On this day in 1951 famous astrologer Russell Grant was born. Personally, I think astrology is bunkum but it is popular with a lot of people for some reason and can certainly be classed as ‘Fortean’.
And now, the news:
Lesbian albatrosses to raise chick
Climate change causes wolverine decline across Canada
Close encounters with Japan's 'living fossil'
New book commemorates talented rabbit
Owner killed by dogs he saved
Eat 'Sexy' Swine, Says Argentina's President
Language teacher wanted for Panda
That’s just panda-ing to the animal….
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PERSON CALLING THEMSELVES `HIGHLAND TIGER`
'Jon, I hope you will allow this post to be put through because I feel that I have a valid point to make.'
Is this your way of acknowledging that all your other posts have been malicious and hurtful, and without a `valid point to make`?
No Matter.
For months you have been intermittently orchestrating a smear campaign against us on various forums purely because you believe that the CFZ is a threat to your own pathetic little organisation. I don't care what point you are trying to make. I don't even care if you are writing positive reviews of all my books and sending Richard a little present. You are banned, permanently, both under the name `Highland Tiger` and the other pseudonyms behind which you hide. This ban will never be lifted. And I shall do my best to have you banned from any other forum in which you spout your vile drivel. If cryptozoology and allied disciplines are to progress then there is no place in it for vicious schoolyard bullying of the type in which you deal.