First telecast in the fall of 1958, the first season of Hanna-Barbera's
The Huckleberry Hound Show offers 22 half-hour episodes, each comprised of three short cartoons respectively starring Huck Hound, Yogi Bear, and the mouse-and-cat combo of Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks. Unlike later seasons, these aforementioned characters did not appear in the closing-credit sequence: Instead, the credits were played over images of several corporate icons from the Kellogg's Cereal firm, including Cornelius the Rooster (representing Kellogg's Corn Flakes), Tony the Tiger (Frosted Flakes) and Sugar Pops Pete (Sugar Pops). It is easy to identify the earliest cartoons in the Huckleberry Hound canon. The characters move more slowly, speak less frequently, and are more inclined towards sight gags rather than verbal jokes; also, the background music is almost exclusively culled from stock themes, instead of the original compositions by Hanna-Barbera stalwart
Hoyt Curtin. Also, whereas the formula of the "Huckleberry Hound" cartoons is pretty well set from the beginning (Huck appears in a different job or personality each week), the producers were still tinkering with the format of the "Yogi Bear" cartoons (Yogi is a con artist in some, a victim of circumstance in others, and a good Samaritan in still others) and the "Pixie and Dixie" entries (the personalities of two mice are already established, but Mr. Jinks is generally a straight villain or fall guy, with none of the heart and three-dimensionality he'd later display). Finally, the character design tends to be inconsitent, as witness the many shapes and sizes of Yogi Bear's traditional enemy Ranger Smith. Of the 66 cartoons shown during Season One, several are standouts, including "Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie", in which our highway patrolman hero tries to talk a runaway gorilla off a high girder; "Skeeter Trouble", highlighted by the "Fred Allen" voice adopted by narrator
Daws Butler; "Sheep Shape Sheepherders", a delightful throwback to
Tex Avery's classic "Droopy" cartoons; "Show Biz Bear", wherein Yogi Bear is hired to star in a horror flick "The Bear From Outer Space" (the director hands him a script and murmurs "Look over the bear's part"); "Duck in Luck", in which Yogi comes to the rescue of a baby duck who sounds very much like future Hanna-Barbera headliner Yakky Doodle; and "Little Bird Mouse", a charming "Pixie and Dixie" offering in which Dixie discovers that he can fly whenever he revs up his ears helicopter-style. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide