Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Personal Favorites: Go Go Gophers (1966)

Originally introduced as a backup feature on The Underdog Show, the Go Go Gophers proved popular enough to warrant being spun off into their own series in 1968, albeit on CBS.

Running Board (voiced by George S. Irving, the narrator of Underdog) and Ruffled Feather (Sandy Becker) were the last survivors of a Gopher Indian tribe in the late 19th century. Colonel Kit Coyote (Kenny Delmar) and Sgt. Okey Homa (Becker) were assigned the task of removing Running Board & Ruffled Feather from Gopher Gulch, but would never succeed. Being part-Native American myself, I could appreciate the humor in seeing two funny animal "Indians" getting the better of the "soldiers", in sharp contrast to the live-action sitcom, F-Troop, which depicted a Native American tribe as being presented as buffoons.

Unlike the average cartoon short, each Go Go Gophers episode averaged about 4 1/2 minutes, such as this sample, "Cuckoo Combat", uploaded by TheVermontFox to YouTube:



I regret that the theme song is unavailable at this time.

Rating: A.

No comments: