The fourth and final first-run season of The Huckleberry Hound Show is dominated by the newest of the half-hour animated series' three weekly cartoon components, "Hokey Wolf", which had been introduced the previous season when former "costar" Yogi Bear defected to his own starring series. 16 new "Hokey Wolf" installments, featuring a crafty wolf who sounds like Phil Silvers' Sgt. Bilko, debuted this season, among them the best of the batch, "Movies are Bitter Than Ever". As for series headliner Huckleberry Hound, enough of his short cartoons had been stockpiled from previous seasons to allow him to take it easy this season, showing up in a scant nine new adventures, including the above-average "Ben Huck" and "Scrubby Brush Man". Likewise, the series' third component "Pixie and Dixie", featuring the titular mice versus their eternal antagonist Mr. Jinks the cat, yielded only nine new episodes. Of these, the standout is "Fresh Heir", if for no other reason than its superb dialogue: Upon learning that a famous cat-lover has just passed away, a tearful Jinks looks upward and sighs "We always lose the good ones!" Although no new Huckleberry Hound episodes were filmed after its fourth season, the series enjoyed a spinoff of sorts in the fall of 1962 with The Best of Huck and Yogi, a thirteen-week rerun package which sponsor Kellogg's Cereals targettted for late-night Prime Time play. And of course, Huck himself would remain a Hanna-Barbera stalwart in dozens of future "ensemble" shows like Yogi's Space Race and Laff-a-Lympics.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
