Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Toon Rock: HB-TV (1985)

An important but forgotten component of The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera anthology block was the interstital feature known as HB-TV. What the producers did was mash together various clips and set them to a specific song.

For example, the following video features clips from Scooby-Doo and The Flintstones, among others, to the beat of "Somebody's Watching Me", by Rockwell & Michael Jackson, the actual video of which was posted over at The Land of Whatever recently. KanandaRhodes uploaded this video to YouTube:



In recent years, Cartoon Network has revived the concept, but instead of using established pop songs du jour, they've used original material or remixed archived music. However, they haven't tried anything like that in about 10 years, another example of the current regime having no clue.

Rating: A.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

I remember HB-TV (an obvious riff on MTV), but I never saw this video. The one that always seemed to turn up was the one using the song, "Rockin' Robin". It was cute to see the old shows set to music.

I loved the CN musical interstitials like the one from Josie & the Pussycats, and flights of fancy like the Jonny Quest Board Game. I'd love to see more like that. Imagine if they reworked interstials for toons like Space Ghost, Scooby Doo, and The Impossibles!!

hobbyfan said...

You ain't alone there. While I was down with the Jonny Quest board game and the sound bytes from the series that came with it, I wasn't so thrilled about Josie. My personal favorite would be the Super Friends remix (Duh!) by Michael Kohler, but I don't think Boomerang runs that anymore, either.