Yogi Bear and Jellystone Park
Yogi Bear came to life under the auspices of Hanna-Barbera as a supporting character in their 1958 cartoon The Huckleberry Hound Show. Soon, however, he was more popular than Huckleberry Hound. Yogi then got his own show, The Yogi Bear Show, in January 1961 and never looked back.
Even though the original Yogi Bear Show only ran for two seasons and 35 half-hour episodes (January-December 1961), Yogi was so popular that he continued to star in various other animated television shows, movies including a musical, and commercials. The most recent movie was Yogi Bear, a December 2010 live-action animated 3-D film with Dan Aykroyd as the voice of Yogi.
Yogi was voiced by four men through the 1990’s: Daws Butler (1961-1988), Greg Burson (1988-2003), and Jeff Bergman and Billy West (mainly commercials in the 1990’s). Various others, including Dan Aykroyd, have voiced Yogi since 2003.
Yogi was a large brown bear with a white collar and lime green hat and tie. The collar was Hanna-Barbera’s way of reducing the number of drawings required for a segment—the body stayed static while the mouth and head moved. It was clever, and it worked.
Yogi lived in Jellystone Park, a take-off of Yellowstone National Park with his friend Boo-Boo Bear. Yogi tended to get in trouble when interacting with the tourists and campers who came to the park, and so had to be closely watched. This thankless task fell to Ranger Smith who, it seemed, was always after Yogi for something.
Boo-Boo Bear was a small bear cub with a purple bow tie. He was Yogi’s closest friend and confidante. He spent a lot of his time trying to keep Yogi out of trouble, and acting as a peace-maker between Yogi and Ranger Smith.
Ranger Smith was a former Army soldier. He is serious and stern, the rules enforcer in the park. He doesn’t appreciate the extra work Yogi causes him. His demeanor towards Yogi depends in large part upon Yogi’s behavior—sometimes he’s friendly with Yogi and at other times he wants to send the bear to the zoo. But although the two of them sometimes have an antagonistic relationship, if trouble comes to either of them, the other rushes to help out. Ranger Smith likes Boo-Boo, however, because Boo-Boo tries to stay out of trouble even though Yogi keeps drawing him into trouble with his antics.
Perhaps one of the reasons Yogi was so popular is that he was so mischievous. He loved the humans who came to Jellystone Park; he especially liked their picnic (which he called pic-a-nic) baskets which he was always stealing in order to eat the contents. The humans’ reactions ranged from scared to amused to delighted based on the circumstances of the story. But then Ranger Smith would get involved, and it fell on him to discipline Yogi. This never worked, however, because before you knew it Yogi was back stealing pic-a-nic baskets from unsuspecting humans.
There were DO NOT FEED THE BEARS signs all over the park, but they didn’t seem to do any good, and Yogi was the first suspect when one of the signs disappeared.
Yogi tended to speak in rhyme and often used puns; he pronounced large words with great flourishes. He had a deep yet silly voice. And he was by no means shy, promoting himself shamelessly with “I’m smarter than the av-er-age bear!” He was always cordial to Ranger Smith, even when they were having disagreements, and he greeted Boo-Boo with “Hey there, Boo Boo!” He also had a girlfriend who appeared from time to time, and who disapproved of Yogi’s behavior.
But there were problems with Yogi Bear’s name. For at the same time Yogi Bear was being born, baseball star Yogi Berra was hitting home runs out of the park for the New York Yankees along with Mickey Mantle. The Yankees also won their World Series in 1961, the year Yogi Bear got his own show. Berra didn’t like the similarities between his name and the name of a cartoon bear. So he sued Hanna-Barbera for defamation, although he later withdrew the suit.
The Yogi Bear franchise didn’t stop with cartoons or animated films. Another outgrowth the cartoons was the establishment of Jellystone Park Camp Resorts which cater to family vacations. A franchise, Jellystone Parks are found across the United States. The parks offer RV spots and camping sites as well as cabins. This means that today’s kids can continue to enjoy Yogi and his friends as their parents did.