The Moon Boggles

THE MOON BOGGLES

Vocies:
DAL McKENNON, ?


1967.

Music:
CONZELMMANN and HAENSCH, D.M.LACKEY/G.KAUER

PLOT:Gumby and P{okey are hired by the recurrant Zookeeper to catch the rare escapees, tyhe Moon Boggles.First in a brief story arc (see below.)

The more that a television frnachise gets more popular, the more a spinoff seems to be done or is done. Consider Pokey solo efforts, and this one, as the seal-like critters of the title did a few other episode,s and crossing over with a "Bela Lugosi" like diabolical scietnist, Dr.Zvegee [not seen in this episode], You might get the feeling that this one's done to promote hte "Boggles."[More recent: "Friends" into "Joey". That is so not happening.]

At the local Zoo, Gumby and Pokery are summoned by the recurring zookeeper seen in so many of these episodes, and have to catch the sea lion like Moon Boggles, who escaped form their zoo cage, with the freezing kind of Midas Touch--everything that they touch winds up in the deep freeze. Pokey's trying to catch time, but [to the tune of orchestrated chase cue with violins], with the net aorund a "Moon-Boggle", gets a free ride, a real drag. Gumby then hangs on, and BOTH get the freezing touch.

Seque to Gumby and Pokey at home, and the zookeeper pass to Gumby, to Pokey--"they were only catching some fresh air, that's why they got out". A real Boone Doggle I say. [You know one of the "Boggles" is a girl due to the ribbon.]

Excellent tinkling stock music used in some other later 1960s Gumbys ["Dragon Daffy","Taile Tale","Grab Grabber Gumby" aka "A Clockwork Gumby", similiar to Bill Loose's eerie Ghost cues ghostwritten by light orchestral music legend [and composer of the famed "Holiday for Strings"] David Rose (Yowp's Blog), with gossamer, tinkly stylistic instruments, but clearly froma different music service, and yet unpegged down, is used during the open scene of the Moon Boggles and followed y Pokey. The chase music is similiar to composer Jack Shaindlin'sa familiar Augie/Snooper and Blab/Quick Draw "Mad Rushes" but are different cues. They're also used in other late 60s "Gumby's" ["Goo for Pokey" and "The Golden Gosling"].

The Moon Boggles crossed over with "Dr.Zveege" in "Hot Ice" [with the made doctor debuting in "Prickle's Problem" and also appearing without the "'Boggles" in
"Piano Rolling Blues".]

The variaiton on the "King Midas" idea, reworked with the famous consequences for the mainly Prickle Dino centric "Mystic Magic", here as a helpful [and shall we say, chilling, magic power], actually serves these characters well [but do moon boggles share sodas with two drinks without the freezing doing "A KING MIDAS" and freezing them over..]

In future posts, I might examine how the strange crossover these two seals had with a "Doctor Zveegee" may have meant to be a seperate series with them...

Things that wrecked the 1988 revival

Back for one of the most neeeded posts to this or any other blog about 1950s-60s [or earlier] franchise...[not to mention to a much lesser extent, later, see fourth paragraph after this sentence.]

In the 1980s, when the Gumby series was revived, times and television had longed changed... background music type tastes, the situaitons for the characters,
etc. were examples of this.

But this served as an excuse to actually screw things up even more. In 1987, when the newly resusicated Clokey/Premavision [as
called by then] company had decided to renew the series, they made Gumby and firends into rock stars called The Gumby
's, completely changed parts of the designs of them [blue "fish" critter "Goo", especially, making herr vertical standing, instead of horizontal posing],
and even the underscore music, even for the newer episode,s due to the now familiar legal issues regarding the 1950s and 1960s-vintage music beds
already discussed here before, had all suffered as a result. [The music changing, for legal issues, also unfortunagtle yincluded sound effects and voices,
except for "Trapped on the Moon", as fellow fan Wiley207 has pointed on YouTube.]

In addition, this had also included longer episodes, adding unneccesary characters [a kid sister? a wolly mammoth?] and others.

Even crappy characters popular at the time like Strawberry Shortcake [as of June 2008] and others got a makeover, and I don't even
CARE for such stuff. John Kricfalusi's
excellent blog post heremade that clear ["The Science of not haivng his own ideas"].


The famed "Ren and Stimpy" mastermind also links to a news article, also from June 2008, that links to this issue of
"something with no integrity to being with", changed even more.(see link).

Unfortuntately, a movie was amde that gave Gumby a girlfriend Tara [who what's Goo? Chopped liver? Only I love that stuff]
-in "Gumby 1" [1995].

So now instead of significant adventures of Gumby going through books and stuff with well acted, and sounding soundtracks, were redone, and augmented
with longer, and generally, more "updated" adventures, that continued the 14-15 year old persona started in the 1960s but without the imagination..invention...
or ingenuity [all of this is just in my own humble opinion, of course] of the originals.

This is also, needless to point out now, by 2002 extended to the Rhino DVD releases titled "Gumby: 7 Disc set",
though Classic Media has restored these and released at least one ["The Gumby Essentials", the sole volume so far as of 2011[
with restored episodes 50s-60s, "Tree
Trouble","Too Loo","Rain Spirits","Robot Rumpus", and others, plus some 80s ones.

So now, we have gone to having the original soundtracks, but only for a handful so far [the DVD was released around 2006].


All of the above, of course, just my humble opinion [but the Jack C.Cookerly/Emil Cakdin/Bill Loose cues that APM used to have through CARLIN have been for a while removed...

Hope for another DVD set (with MORE restored shorts)

A few years ago-----as many may recall-----Classic media put out "Gumby Essentails".
'It had 1980s shorts, but also restored (long unseen) versions with authenic soundtracks, and most importantly oriiginal lengths, of origiinal shorts. They were
1950s
Too Loo
Robot Rumpus
Rain Spirits
Gumby Racer
Gumby Crosses the Delaware
Ricochet Pete
Moon Trip and a few others. Hopefully the soundtrack rights CAM
get cleared up (I hope..I hope) so more can be released.

I'm hoping for
Haunted Hotdsog
Northland Follies
Foxy Box
Eggs and Trixie
Of Clay and Critters,espeically.

How Not to Trap Lions/The Mocking Monkey

"HOW NOT TO TRAP LIONS/THE MOCKING MONKEY"
1956-1957
Produced, written, co-voiced, and directed by
ART CLOKEY

CAST
Gumby/NANCY WIBLE[?]
Pokey/[possibly] Other Lion/ART CLOKEY
Monkey/GINNY TYLER


MUSIC
[Syndicated series only]
Original Open title [title card]/BILL LOOSE & JOHN SEELY
Unknown flute music [heard in open scenes of WB's "A Bird in a Bonnett"][episode title]/PHILIP GREEN[?]
LAFMU-72-3 Unknown campy sad trombone/JACK SHAINDLIN
Comedy Movemement L-85/SPENCER MOORE [thanks to Yowp]
"Burlesque"[NOT The Christina Aguilera-Cher film, which is an excellent film btw][The scene of Gumby and Pokey ambushed]/JACK SHAINDLINB
[From the Langlois-FilmMusic(tm) library music production disks]
[Seperate 1962 "The Mokcing Monkey" open title] Unknown
"Jaunty Neutral Walker" aka [THANK you, Carlin Prod.Music] "On a Caresel" [Pokey and Gumby completing lion trap]/BILL LOOSE, EMIL CADKIN and JACK C.COOKERLY
"The Deserted Ruins" [Gumby and Pokey hear a rustling, busling sound in the nearby treetops, the monkey
[who made the sounds introduces herself, does animal imitations, lion roars]/PHILIP GREEN
"Eccentric Comedy Suite 300" [new lion appears,, Gumby makes his, uh, spiel](David Rose)/BILL LOOSE AND JOHN SEELY
"Burlesque" [everyone falls into the lion pit, lion asks who made the pit]/JACK SHAINDLIN [From the Langlois-FilmMusic discs.]
"Pleasant Neutral Foxtrot Alternate Version" also known as "Out for a Promenade"),here with alternate ending)(Jack Cookerly[Gumby and Pokey, blushing with awkwardness, rat each other out, monkey and Gumby swing on ropes and morph into the "The End" graphic)/BILL LOOSE, EMIL CADKIN and JACK C.COOKERLY
Standard Gumby closing (title)/JOHN SEELY and BILL LOOSE

---------------------
A Happy New year from this blog..Going into a another year, another post:
Shows always are trying try out characters, then write them off.. Richard, the lion who was intnded as a third buddy in the Gumby series [see "Lion Around/Lion Drive"], is seen all blue in the cage, as Dr.Gumby diagnoses loneliness for a playmate, maybe say, as Pokey assumes, another lion, so, though with misgivings at first, due to his and Pokey's lack of experience, Gumby agrees to the idea, and soon after going through the dark, darker, and darkest yet reaches of the jungle, Gumby and Pokey build a lion trap that they fall into. Soon, hearing a sound in the tree, the two friends see a monkey, who can copy differet animals [a la Marlon The Tacky Brady Kids Larry Storch Magic Bird in that darn Filmation Series] vocally, thus attracting a lion. When the lion comes, Gumby and Pokey hide, with the monkey accidentlaly self-exposed. But Gumby and Pokey get the lion to go back to the city zoo to "play with another lion:" [good old Richard-remember him?] but forget about the pit, that they fall into. Rachael Ray like cooking show music ("Out for a Promenade", as it's retititled by Carlin but with different coda), plays as the lion tries to flush out that wag who "dug this lion pit!" Why are, since Gumby knows why "Richard's so blue" [thanks to me for the cogent question to Gumby], Gumby and me turned red--as if I myself aren't..hmmmm..couldn't be EMBARRASMENT... Gumby and Monkey [voiced by Clokey and Disney regular Ginny Tyler, a native of Seattle, Washington, and host of the sixties syndicated version of the classic fifites "The Mickey Mouse Club", a.k.a. "The Annette Funicello Show"] both turn into the END graphic. Richard no longer appears but is referred to in "The Groobee", without name.The new lion looks very suitably ugly, with a voice [assumed Clokey's] wanting to know about what happened, why he's just falled into a pit. We don't even see much of Richard [again, remember? he'd be gone the earliest part of this..].
A familiar melodramtic trombone cue used by H-B, that is a guilty pleasure of mine, used in Augie Doggie shorts but which you may remember fondly from Jay Ward's "Fractured Fairy Tale" "The Ugly Duckling", the one that crosses the fairy tale with "A Star is Born", and a few Cookerly-Cadkin-Loose cues, by Jack Shaindlin, LAFM-72-3*.. and in second half a host of familiar cues are used, but the first half is largely "Dramatic" B-Advneture cue,s apparently, I can hardly identifiy them..the open under the titles I've only heard ealsewhere in the Warner Bros. Tweet, Granny, and Sylvester short "A Bird in a Bonnett". I can't indentify its composer either.

*Merci beaucopu to Yowp and the great researcher Danny Goldmark.

Pokey's Price

"Pokey's Price"
1966

Writer/Director-ART CLOKEY


Voices:
DAL McKENNON

Not sure of Music cues, but they're the newly intro'd now familiarly used later sixties episodes ones, originally used on Sam Singer shorts.

PLOT: In 1621, some pilgrims try to reaosn with Indians-I mean, NATIVE AMERICANS-ahem. These Pilfgrims: A father, his son, - oh yeah---and Gumby and Pokey,too.

Another episode another Thanksgiving story. Here, our heroes eat in the store, now chase after a "thief" who turns out to be (again) a Pilgrim - a young boy, who's now in an appropriately themed history book explaining his Thanksgiving-to-be-tale of woe, with Pokey supposedly in quick sand which iks actually sand over treasure--of Corn, with Pokey drinking some water only to run afoul of big heap Indians.."somehow I feel were are surround: olbserves."Indians NO take our food


Gumby agrees to trade to the Indians, who've stolen their corn, for the corn, at least for a while..with the Indians feeding Pokey some corn.

POKEY!!! Wait!!! Gumby agrees on our sentiments. and PAY for it? The obvious tlak with the Pilgrims begins.

Pokey, after being giving corn by the Indians, makes like in the series earlier Gopher Trouble,1956" and Prehistoric Elmer Fudd in "Prehysterical Hare", 1958, turning trippy colors, with a Rube Goldberg melange of Clokey and Hanna-Barbera sound effects.making the laugh out loud politically incorrect joke of the episode..."UGH! Now I now why the Indians SAY that"[already becoming un-PC pretty soon].then after Pokey's replaced in trade by knives & beads the Paleface and Indians feast begins, with Gumby and Pokey sharing in. Another zinger from Pokey: poor Indians could have had more from having Pokey. But despite their longtime friendship,after Gumby laughs at Pokey joking about the Indians cheated out of their equine prize that way, Pokey hates being called "cheap".

The cue used when Pokey's turned into different colors by bad tasting corn, is used in countless later shorts and in at least one Sam Singer "Sinbad","Wind Genii", from 1964, on Hi-Tops..

Pilgrims on the Rocks

"Pilgrims on the Rocks"
A CLOKEY PRODUCTION in association with LAKESIDE TOYS
November, 1966
[Credits actaully still exist here, as many veteran fans will recall]
Written & Directed by
ART CLOKEY

Editor
DON McKINNIS

Sound [Effects]
AUDIO EFFECTS CORP.

Voices:
DAL McKENNON [misspelled as McKINNON] and some actress doing a Pilgrim girl

Music
Gumby theme/BILL LOOSE, JOHN SEELY
MUSIC:.
Throughout most scenes with G&P slide-whistle sub theme by J.HOLLIDAY and some unidentifal regular go-to cues.

PLOT:Gumby and Pokey help Pilgrims about to be shiwrecked in 1621 A.D.[This is one of the first of the third Gumby series with the bubble-gum-syunshine pop "Gumby's a part" that influenced the blog title.:) One of few with surviving credits. "Pokey's Price" is one of a few others.]


Happy Thanksgiving 2010 here, so here's a celebration---the early of the later 60s Gumby shorts, both celebrating Pilgrims.

Thanksgiving with Gumby and Pokey, finding Pilgrims, almost doesn't happen \due to a Mayflower's showers.


Happy Thanksgiving 2010 here, so here's a celebration---the early of the later 60s Gumby shorts, both celebrating Pilgrims.

With Thanksgiving here, here are two shorts shown back to back with G&P. For the first time, the remaining defining canned music, most apparently by Guenther E.Kauer and Doug Lackey [their cues from this time appear on Sinbad cartoons and ASCAP has these for here--these names certainly are not to be found on other shows using the more common Capitol/Hi-Q stock cues from the 1950s..], which would set the stage for the sound of the later more "pubescent" like Gumbys of the 60s, sometimes mentioned as the "Scrappy"/"Cousin Oliver" of the "Brady Bunch" shark jumping stage of Gumby [along with indivdual new regular charcters], luming these later 60s vintage titles, in with the truly dreadful 80s ones [which is unfair to these 60s ones.]. Hans COnzellman and Delle Haensch credited on ASCAP for doing some of these, and as I have noted before, a big handful of these turn up in Selected Sound Library, sold by APM like so many of the others these days, and on APM.COM or PLAY PRODUCTION MUSIC's audition site--see MORE than [number] FANFARES and SlAPSTICK SALAD, and sure enough severeal "Savriete" cues by CONZELMANN & HAENSCH turn up on Gumby, also Ren and Stimpy [the unofficial Production msuci files offered online have those but credited to Phil Green!]

Credits DO exist for these two early episodes in this latest revival of the clay-franchise, which, with their Thanksgiving themes, for that reason alone are posted here, and for two "patriotic" ones, for another times ["Gumby Crosses the Delaware" and "Son of Liberty"]. This is the only one with the credits on a set, where the others have them on a black background [I THINK all used to, but only those four and the ridiculous 1980s-90s revivals keep their end credits].

We start on a Pilgrim ship in a book in the toyshop. It's 1621 and in the toystore, while the ship in the book rocks and rolls, our friends are in the Gumby jeep preparing for the holidays, when they wind up chasing after groceries and, you guessed it---land in the book right nin the pilgrims. Now the dice, uh, tumbled in and of course, Gumby and Pokey's stuck in a ship that shakes, rattles, and rolls, as Gumby and Pokey get on a roll themselves, to try to help during the storm, with Pokey fussing as usual..

They use a ship rope, Gumby, and hammer and nails to repair a couple of ship girders. Finally, the storm passes. We now are in 1966 again, in the toystore. GUESS what Pokey learned. GUESS what the lesson learns. Ahhhhh... He's thankful on Thanksgiving NEVER to be a PILGRIM. AHHHHH..

The credits follow, masterfully and beautifully photographed [Ace codirector Ray Peck is the credited co-director and photography person.]

Dal Mc Kennon tries to do Gumby as a more normal teenage boy, whcih makes him sound like Fugmation's version of Archie. And why no? Same voice. But it's the same Gumby...this and the next three shorts in this early batch of later episodes with credits, and the "Missilebird", thus making it clearly the earliest and again with a 196c (c), a clear cut example of the first Gumby episode, and I'm referring to the later "Missiblebird", to have the famous theme that originated the blog title here. But that's a bit later. The highpitched fluty theme, borrowed from some library that Sam Singer had used staff sound and music editor Johnny Holiday score his shorts like Sinbad with, the eventual instrumental sub-theme that would burn itself in minds of veiwers itself, is perhaps first used in Gumby episodes here. Thankls to both Clokey and Peck for the unqiue photography on end credits.

BTW Have you heard the Doors big 1970 hit-Riders on the Storm, Pilgrims on the Storm? ...

The Witty Witch

A CLOKEY STUDIOS PRESENTATION.
Originall Broadcast 1962? Sponsored by LAKESIDE TOYS.
Producer/Writer/Creator/Director:
ART CLOKEY

CAST
Gumby/Pokey/"Frank Fontaine" Spider Monster/DAL McKENNON
Witty Witch/GINNY TYLER

Music
Opening "Gumby theme"/BILL LOOSE, JOHN SEELY

Title [no music, just sound FX of Witch's Cauldron bubbling]

[witch, helicopter, Gumby and Pokey suspended]/probaly JB or E, one fo the "Night of the Dead" tracks.
Witch Carrying Gumby & Pokey in helicopter/BILL LOOSE or JACK MEAKIN?
"Fontaine/Crazy Guggenheim" monster appearing as Pokey, stills suspended from Witch's chopper, looks" "Comedy Mysterioso" ZR-53/GEORGE HORMEL [used a lot on "Ruff and Reddy"]

Gumby and Pokey imprisoned "Comedy Time-Pass 5-JB-214"/BILL LOOSE [and Emil Cadkin?]
Gumby and Pokey now in theatre [see below]:"JB-216 Comedy Mechanical", also titled "Comedy Military"]/BILL LOOSE, EMIL CADKIN [and NELSON RIDDLE?]

No music for reat of this scene

Finale, Gumby & Pokey emerge from book:"The Jerk aka PG-285"/PHILLIP GREEN

Closing Music and title/SEELY-LOOSE

PLOT:It's Haloween and our friend the witch has a suprise for our friends.

Catching up in between Halloween and Thanksgiving, here are posts for Halloween and Thankgiving, so a Halloween treat tobe thankful for are these four entries in one night. Witches tend to be very surprsing, especially in this show, and this one's no exception: Playing in the standard-issue toy-store setting, Gumby and Pokey spy a Witch's chopper [ran by one with voiced by Disneyland Records narrator GINNY TYLER, also heard elsewhere, and in early Yogi Bear cartoons, supposedly, on Don M.Yowp's site as linked, and profiled in GREG EHRBARH and TIM HOLLIS"S excellent 2005 "Mouse Tracks: The Story of Disneyland Records", which I have, and seen on the [ONLY for me] "Mickey Mouse Club" [1955-1959/ABC-TV], hosting the 1960s reruns.] and carries G&P to a castle. There..they are met by a monster with a [then on Jackie Gleason's American Scene Magazine show.]], radio comic Frank "I'm in other actors's bodies Pete Puma and that giddy yukking lion in Huckleberry Hound shorts" Fontaine [1920=1978] type voice [by McKennon, though, who'd done this then for Walt Lantz's bulldog Champ in Doc Cat shorts to Paul Frees's Doc], who jails with the witch's help our heroes in Witch's Prison-well, what else to call it. A curtain event is to be called, as the "Crazy Guggenheim" type spider says, and our friends debate briefly and after the delightful surprise, they are free. [HUGE spoiler alert..] At the show, like any theatre!! the witch plays a piano and gets a "Victor Borge" bit--one thrown in her face. After this, Gumby asks a convulsively yukking Pokey why he's laughing.
Most music cues aren't entirely possible for me to trace, but it seems the one used before the Hormnel one is one that cult filmmaker George Romero used in "Night of the Living Dead". If so, that's a clue as to a cue from the Hi-Q D series [by that time, the entire librayr when the Dead movie came out was controlled, as it today without practically any of that earlier music for years, by Ole Georg].
This witch reppears in the next short nad in a Christmas short, and surprsingly Gumby never even catches on to her funniness..nor is in the Pokey one that will be touched on, perhaps, this Christmas, and the next one is first dealt with here, but not the FIRST made, of the Henry bear and Rodfy Bird shorts.UPDATE [5/13/11]:Incidentally, thanks to a couple of files from a totally confidential source, I found out what the prison cue, used in the open and later in "Magic Wand" is. Loose's "Comedy Timepass" JB-214, though the JB suggests Emil Cadkin input as well. On L-73/L-74, "Light Neutrals".