
What Ruined Hanna-Barbera? [video] - snake117
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWgcizAgxOs
======
egypturnash
tl;dw but I'm gonna guess it comes down to "they sure did shit out a lot of
cheap, terrible cartoons for a decade". I mean seriously Joe and Bill won an
Oscar or two for their lovingly-animated Tom & Jerry shorts at MGM but once
the theatrical shorts market dried up they started making stuff with the
fewest drawings humanly possible, that rested largely on voice work.
"Illustrated radio" is a term that animation nerds throw around for the vast
majority of their output.

Then Turner bought them I think, then WB bought Turner, and IIRC just kinda
merged them into Cartoon Network because having two studios in the same city
is kind of a waste or resources. Also the whole rise of sending work overseas
to Asia where your dollar buys an order of more magnitude more pencil mileage;
animation was at the forefront of hollowing out the American industry by
substituting cheaper labor across the globe.

Or at least that's what I recall from growing up in the seventies and being in
the animation industry in the nineties/00s.

People who were kids with no taste and a lot of time to fill during the time
they dominated Saturday Morning have fond memories of their characters but
that stuff really does not age well. It maybe ages slightly better than most
Filmation work. Slightly.

~~~
anyfoo
> People who were kids with no taste and a lot of time to fill

Very true. I grew up in Germany, but we got most of the cartoons that were
popular in the US (plus some Japanese stuff) as well, dubbed.

One particular situation from the late 80s or early 90s that I remember was
when the channel that showed the Smurfs, which I liked, was somehow repeating
the same episode over and over again. Maybe there was an error at the station
(I wouldn't be too surprised if nobody paid that close attention to the
children's programming), or maybe I just happened to catch all the reruns in
strange coincidence. It's hard to remember the specifics.

But what I do remember well is that I watched that episode, one that I
actually did not like to begin with, over and over again, disliking it more
and more each time. When the episode started playing and I realized that it
was _that_ episode _again_ within the first few seconds, I got so disheartened
and disappointed. And then I continued watching it.

Nowadays, that's a pretty funny, if not somewhat bizarre, memory. As an adult,
there is no way I would force myself through any show's episode that I don't
like anyway repeatedly, why did I "have to" as a child? Similarly, I remember
a few entire cartoons that I was not particularly fond off, or sometimes
actively disliked, and I still watched those, too, "because that's what was on
TV right now".

Apparently, realizing that I had agency over how I spend my own entertainment
time was something I had to learn better growing up.

~~~
komali2
For me I dunno if it's more agency or just more difficult to stay entertained.
I used to play world of Warcraft for ten hours marathons on summer break. Same
for counter strike, half life deathmatch... Hell even single player games like
ocarina of Time would take me months to get through because chopping down all
the signs in the beginner area, leaving, coming back, and doing it all over
again would be enough "game" for me.

Now I barely touch games... Can do about an hour and a half of tv or movie max
(barring good 2h+ films). Multiplayer games I can do maybe an hour or two a
couple days a week, more if we're in the same room.

I mean I watched Alladin every day for a good few months once. I'm typing this
out because I got distracted from Netflix just now. Something's different
about me, I wonder if it's true for others?

~~~
icebraining
Maybe you're just more demanding nowadays.

~~~
anyfoo
That's definitely the case for me. After a long break in playing games where I
thought games are just not for me anymore, I rediscovered that I actually
still like spending lots of time with them. It just has to be the right games,
and those differ from the games I enjoyed when I was young (the sets are
dissimilar, but not entirely disjunct).

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zapzupnz
Would anybody be able to provide a summary? I find the narrator's intonation
unbearably forced and unnatural, such that I don't feel like listening to it
non-stop for 21 minutes. Scorn me, berate me, and downvote me if you will; but
to my mind, poor narration in long-form video essays is no different to
printing academic journals entirely in Zapfino.

~~~
probably_wrong
The video doesn't actually live to its title, as there's an important link
missing, but here's what I got:

They did very well for a long time, but then the 80s arrived. Suddenly there
were better shows (Transformers, GI Joe) during the entire week rather than
just weekends, and they lost a lot of market. They later went to Cartoon
Network and created some new classics (Powerpuff Girls and co), but for some
reason (not explained) that wasn't enough.

~~~
AstralStorm
Mostly they no longer were the near monopoly and CN was not aired as widely.
It is harder to sell a whole station then a few shows. WB tended to sell
separately their own only. (E.g. Bugs, Daffy, Looney Tunes)

HB ones were exclusives.

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pfdietz
When the coffin containing the remains of the studio was being taken to its
grave, it was carried by the same rocks and trees, over and over and over.

~~~
tclancy
You could tell which grave they were planning to use because it was the one
that was drawn, not part of the painted background.

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wodenokoto
The what, as far as I understand the video was 80s toy tie-in cartoons such as
Heman, GI Joe and transformers that ushered in a new style of animation and a
new way of financing them, ultimately leading to HB dropping in value and
getting purchased.

What the video doesn’t touch on is:

Who are these studios animating them? According to the video, the entire tv
animation market was more or less HB. How could these studio rise out of
seemingly nowhere and produce high(er) quality animation?

Why wasn’t HB part of these tie-ins? According to the video, they owned the
market. Aren’t they the obvious choice to ask to produce, when you want a
cartoon about your new toy?

Why didn’t HB pivot towards more action animation in the 80s, when going up
against TMNT and Dino riders?

~~~
benj111
"high(er) quality animation"

Are you talking about the merchandise tie ins? They weren't higher quality,
certainly not on the 80s. Most of them seem to be Japanese and have that Anime
thing of getting away with animating as little as humanly possible.

~~~
wodenokoto
Yes, I am talking about the merchandise tie-ins and I am claiming they are of
higher animation quality than yogi bear, judging mostly from the clips used in
the documentary, as I try not to use my warped childhood memory as a
reference.

~~~
benj111
Thundercats or He Man made extensive use of slow pans, and still inner
monologues and still face offs etc. And transformers was even worse.

The only thing that sticks out in HB cartoons is every character does the
moonwalk everywhere. But they actually added to detail so you had a frame of
reference to tell they were doing that.

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JackFr
A someone who was heavily consuming cartoons over the relevant period, I find
it remarkable that there was no mention of either WB/Looney Toons or the
growth of Japanese animation. Makes me suspicious of his conclusions.

~~~
zapzupnz
I'm generally suspicious of anybody making long-form video essays on YouTube
about such subjects. Unless they were in the industry, I tend to believe I'm
merely having a Wikipedia article and perhaps a few interviews, taken from
blogs or perhaps online magazines, regurgitated to me.

That's what Did You Know Gaming seems to be, for instance.

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ccnafr
tl;dw: they got lazy at the end of the 70s and started copying their own hits
over and over, putting out the same type of shows. Toy companies got involved
and created their own toons, with a superior quality, and they were done after
that. Cable also hit, and they couldn't keep up with the demand, so also lost
additional market share.

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vkaku
Also to see: plenty of reasons why 'Saturday Morning Cartoons' was killed.

Hanna-Barbera were my favorite animators, hands down. I could watch their
toons any day and I would not get bored.

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ourmandave
Wasn't Hanna-Barbera the guys who made the _Brady Bunch Kids_ and other sit-
com spin-offs? =[

As a kid I never noticed how commercial it all really was.

After reading some of the history you can see they've all been doing the exact
same tried and true things since forever.

Merchandising, spin-offs, episodes written around new album releases, copy-
cats of successful shows (e.g. _Bewitched_ and _I Dream of Jeannie_ ), etc.

So you end up with minimal janky animation, Disney child actors, and 1/2 hour
toy commercials.

~~~
jerf
Sturgeon's Law isn't a new thing. The key has always been to find the best
stuff. I think that's easier than ever.

I have to agree that virtually nothing Hanna Barbara has done has stood the
test of time. Despite being so politically incorrect a lot of it has been
buried, I can think of a few Looney Tunes that are still pretty good (Bugs
Bunny conducting the orchestra is quite popular, I'm also a fan of a
particular Bugs Bunny cartoon in which he stays overnight in Dracula's
castle), and Disney's stuff is still generally watchable and enjoyable, but
I'm sitting here racking my brains and despite having seen some of those shows
as a kid, I literally can not relate to you a single episode of any of them.

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ListeningPie
I watched this video yesterday evening and this morning this post is at the
top of my feed. It is not the first time a specific topic ends up on both
pages.

Is YouTube information being sent to Hackernews or is it just coincidence that
my YouTube suggestions are in sync with Hackernews posts?

~~~
majewsky
When something interesting is trending on [insert popular platform] that this
audience finds interesting, of course people are going to submit it here. This
site is 100% submissions based.

~~~
ListeningPie
I did not realize or expect a Hanna Barbera video to be tending globally, I
had assumed it was a algorithm driven recommendation That lead me to watching
it.

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rawmodz
Their first mistake was making a live-action remake of the Flinstones

~~~
gonzus
100% agreed.

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aaron695
> What RUINED Hanna-Barbera?

Not really answered.

They mention other cartoons came in based on merchandise, but don't say why
Hanna-Barbera couldn't/didn't compete.

~~~
sirmarksalot
It's really just a clickbait title. If you look at his channel, he has an
entire series called "What's RUINING/RUINED," all of which is basically him
reading Wikipedia while playing cartoon footage.

~~~
fenwick67
This is a very popular YouTube format and I hate it

~~~
WorldMaker
I finally noticed that "Not Interested" is an option in the YouTube
recommendations' qebab menus (vertical ellipsis ⋮) to immediately hide the
suggestion, and since discovering that have been very happy to use that on all
clickbait titles, including just about every usage of the word RUINED. It
might mean that I'm slowly getting better recommendations, but it mostly means
that at least for the periods of time that the recommendations are on screen
I'm not staring at a bunch of dumb negative words and things that don't
interest me.

I'm still close to using a browser extension to disable the recommendations
system entirely as useless garbage to me, but at least this one tool helps
some.

