The three main characters were Hoppity Hooper, a plucky frog, voiced by Chris Allen; Waldo P. Wigglesworth, a patent medicine-hawking fox, voiced by Hans Conried, who posed as Hoppity's long-lost uncle in the pilot episode; and Fillmore, a bear wearing Civil War clothes and playing his bugle, voiced by Bill Scott. The stories revolved around the three main characters, who lived in Foggy Bog, Wisconsin, seeking their fortune together through different jobs or schemes, usually ending in misadventure. Each story consisted of four short cartoons, one aired at the beginning and end of each episode, with the four-part story shown over two consecutive episodes. Much like Jay Ward's previous series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Hoppity Hooper used pun-based titles to identify each upcoming segment and a narrator, who often interacted with the characters and broke the fourth wall. Interspersed were recycled second features from the earlier series Peabody's Improbable History, Fractured Fairy Tales, Aesop and Son and Commander McBragg. In later syndicated runs, each four-part story was assembled into a single half-hour episode. One of the best-remembered stories is "The Traffic Zone," a parody of The Twilight Zone in which the characters stumble upon a portal into another dimension that transforms them into vegetables.
Background
The first two episodes were produced in 1960 and featured Alan Reed as Fillmore. The series was not picked up for broadcast until September 1964, and by that time Reed was unavailable, because of his commitment with another ABC animatedTV series, The Flintstones, as the voice of Fred Flintstone. Therefore, Bill Scott was named to do the voice of Fillmore. The series was broadcast first-run by ABC, and NBC on their Saturday Morning schedule. The series was later syndicated to local television stations under the title Uncle Waldo's Cartoon Show, beginning in 1965.
Episodes
Over the course of three seasons, 52 episodes were broadcast with two segments of Hoppity Hooper each. With two exceptions, each story line consisted of four episodes.
Hoppity Hooper was released in three separate volumes on VHS in the early 1990s. Volume One was released on DVD in the 2000s. In 2008, Mill Creek Entertainment released episodes 1–6 and episodes 8–11 as part of their "Giant 600 Cartoon Collection". They also re-released these episodes as part of the "Super 300 Cartoon Collection" in 2009. Also in 2008, Mill Creek released the first 6 episodes under their 200 Classic Cartoons: Collectors Edition label.
