Let's Watch This: An Episode of "The Smokey Bear Show"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this show, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

Do I really need to tell you who Smokey Bear is?

This bear is one of the most iconic bears in the history of advertising mascots, right up there with the Charmin bears and the Coca-Cola polar bears. And the Icee polar bear. And the Snuggle bear. And Sugar Bear. And the A&W bear... wow, there's a LOT of bear advertising mascots. First created in August 1944, Smokey's mission has always been to remind us that only we can prevent forest fires. Have YOU prevented a forest fire recently? Or ever? I know I haven't. In my defense, I don't spend a lot of time in forests in general...

Smokey is still around (he's got a pretty active Instagram account for one thing), but you don't see much of him on TV nowadays. Apparently, it's far more important to have ten ads for medicine with a thousand side effects than to remind people about doing our part to prevent forests from going up in flames. But during the 1960s, Smokey was so popular that the good folks at Rankin-Bass did a TV special about him. That special, The Ballad of Smokey the Bear, aired on NBC in 1966. Apparently it did well enough in ratings that Rankin-Bass got the go ahead to make an entire cartoon show about Smokey.

While The Ballad of Smokey the Bear was animated in Rankin-Bass' iconic "Animagic" stop-motion, the show was done in traditional cel animation outsourced to Toei Animation. It premiered on ABC on September 6th, 1969. Seventeen episodes, each one consisting of three segments, were produced - the show's not getting very high ratings put the brakes on more episodes being produced, so for the 1970-1971 season it went into reruns.

The show's theme song gives us a look at Smokey's backstory. He was saved from a forest fire in New Mexico by a forest ranger (this part was based on an actual bear cub also saved from a forest fire in New Mexico, who was named "Smokey" after the character). Then he went to Washington D.C. and became a ranger (the aforementioned actual bear cub also went to Washington D.C., but he wound up in the National Zoo, not as a forest ranger). Smokey (voiced by Jackson Weaver) was joined in his cartoon adventures by a bunch of new characters, such as his deputies Benny the rabbit (voiced by Paul Soles) and Gabby the mountain lion (voiced by Carl "WHY WEREN'T YOOOOOOOOOOOOOU AT ELF PRACTICE?!" Banas). Only four episodes of the show have been made publicly avaliable - you'll have to go to YouTube or the Internet Archive to find them.

Is The Smokey Bear Show any good? We're going to watch the second episode of the show today and find out. Our first segment is called "The Silliest Show on Earth"...

This segment takes place back in the days when Smokey was just a cub. He had a baseball cap instead of his usual ranger's cap, the voice of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Billie Mae Richards), and still couldn't be bothered to put on a shirt. He's hanging out in the forest with Benny and another friend of theirs, a skunk named Freddy Fume (also Carl Banas). Smokey suggests that they help out the charity drive for the orphanage, but Freddy reminds him that they don't have much money. They ARE animals, after all.

"Be honest, do you guys think I use too much eyeliner?"

To make some money, Smokey suggests that they put on a circus. They enlist the help of all their other anthropomorphic animal friends. Benny's gonna do a trapeze act, Bessie Boar (also Billie Mae Richards) is gonna be the world's most graceful ballerina (almost), I assume they're not gonna have a lion tamer because that'd be pretty awkward in a world where all the animals talk and wear clothes. But as they're setting up, they have no idea that they're being spied on.

These two buzzards (I actually wasn't sure what kind of bird they were at first, but Wikipedia calls them buzzards so that's what I'm gonna say they are), if I had to guess, are the show's recurring bad guys. I appreciate that, for once, we have a pair of cartoon buzzards that look like actual buzzards as opposed to vultures. One of them suggests that they start a fire, because apparently that's what they consider fun, but the other one has a better idea: they'll sabotage the circus! Why do they want to prevent Smokey from contributing to the charity drive? I don't know. Maybe he said they looked like dorks or something. Or maybe they're just generic two-dimensional cartoon villains. I'm guessing the latter.

Also, one of the buzzards is named Beaky. Why they weren't sued by Warner Bros. over it, I don't know.

So they do such diabolical deeds as spreading butter on the stage to make it slippery, cut the strings holding up the trapeze, and glue the dumbbell that Smokey's cousin Grizzly (Paul Soles) is going to lift to the top of a tree stump. The fiends!

And now it's time for a rousing game of "What Kind of Animal Are Some of These
Characters Supposed to Be". Obviously there's a horse, a pig, a mountain lion, a dog, and
I think a turtle, but what, for example, is that greyish animal with the blue shorts
and balck shoes? Some type of bird?

Because of the glue, Grizzly isn't able to lift the dumbbell - that is, without uprooting the entire tree stump. Well, looks like the buzzards' plan backfired. Grizzly still managed to prove that he is incredibly strong... in fact, this worked out a lot better than him just lifting a dumbbell. Then Bessie does her ballerina act, but slips on the butter before she can do any impressive pirouettes or whatever. Benny's trapeze act winds up being a failure too. At least he lands in the net... y'know, instead of going KER-SPLAT on the ground below like a cotton-tailed pancake.

After that, Freddy spins some plates on sticks... is that a circus act? Seems like more of a street magician's thing. Well, anyway, the buzzards sabotage THAT too. The audience laughs, and then Smokey sees the buzzards holding large saws. They are punished for their diabolical actions by being forced to clean up the circus tent and stuff. The end.

Okay, next segment...

Now, I know what you're thinking: "how can this show make a reference to Mission: Impossible if the first movie came out long after the show aired?". Good question. In actuality, the Mission: Impossible movies are based on a TV show of the same name that first aired in 1966. Of course, there's a fifty percent chance you already knew that. But I didn't until I looked it up while writing this review, so...

The segment starts off with Benny and Grizzly helping Gabby practice for the Wacky Races.

Hey, Gabby, Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear called. They want the Arkansas Chuggabug back.

Smokey shows up after the car is totalled, and Grizzly explains that they were test-driving their new fire engine... yeah, that vehicle was supposed to be a fire engine. I suppose the red paint job on the bottom half should've clued me in. Smokey tells them that he's got a job for them - the forest is in a dry spell, and now the whole forest is basically kindling. One campfire not put out and it could go up in flames. So while Smokey is going on an inspection tour, he wants Benny, Gabby, and Grizzly to keep an eye on their neck of the woods and stay alert. Even though Benny, Gabby, and Grizzly are clearly a few sodas short of a six-pack, I have faith in them not screwing this up.

Of course, if they DIDN'T screw this up, the episode would likely be pretty boring. After Smokey leaves, Benny gets an idea: the nearby swamp is full of water, so what if they got Mike Mole and his kin to dig a tunnel from the swamp to the forest? If a fire starts, they'll simply drain the water from the swamp, and presto: one underground sprinkler system!

"Kiss me, you fool!"

"But we haven't been properly introduced!"

So they enlist the help of the moles, who start digging the tunnels... now that I think of it, why doesn't Benny just dig the tunnels himself? Rabbits are burrowing creatures, after all. Problem is, instead of some sort of underground sprinkler system that they can turn on and off, they wind up creating a GEYSER. Not just that, but water is spouting out of every nook and cranny in town, flooding it.

I gotta ask: how have Benny and Gabby survived as Smokey's deputies for so long if they're this incompetent?

On the bright side, one member of town DID benefit from this: the guy that runs the
boat rental place. Until today, NOBOY bought a boat from his shop.

And on top of THAT, there's a trail of dark smoke emerging from the swamp. Dang it, boys, you had ONE JOB! Fortunately, Smokey shows up in a canoe. "Hop aboard, fellas! We've got work to do over in the swamp!" he tells Benny and Gabby. They put out the fire, but how are they going to get the water out of town and back in the swamp? The answer: by taking it back one bucketful at a time. Why isn't Grizzly helping them? Heck, where IS Grizzly? He just vanished from the episode after the town got flooded.

Our third segment is...

Freddy is woken up one morning by the town mayor, an owl (Carl Banas), as well as Bessie and a fox named Floyd (Carl Banas). The town council has decided that Freddy is a "shiftless lout". So Floyd says that he'll have to get a job. "Floyd, you've got no business to talk dirty, what with Bessie being a lady and all!" Freddy declares.

I know this show predates it, but Sitting Ducks did this joke a lot better:

After they explain it a bit more, Freddy agrees to get a job - but he's not very good at job-hunting, so they'll have to find one for him. After some discussion, they name him "Commissioner of Public Works". Smokey isn't so sure that's such a good idea, and neither am I considering that Freddy doesn't seem super-bright and we learned in the previous segment that leaving idiots in charge of important things is a bad idea (see also Donald Trump being president).

Hey, look, they literally put lipstick on a pig.

The first thing Freddy does is have a bridge built. Half of it falls apart almost immediately after it's completed, which makes the mayor, Bessie, and Floyd realize that maybe this isn't working out. So they make him the WATER Commissioner instead. His first act of business in THAT department is making the beavers build some kind of irrigation system. So how long until the town is flooded again?

A-yup. The irrigation system falls apart and that's exactly what happens. I'm honestly starting to wonder if this is because of Freddy's incompetince or if the beavers just aren't very good at building things that aren't dams.

Once again, sales at the boat rental place skyrocket.

Next the mayor, Bessie, and Floyd make him superintendent of the school - because clearly an animal who has about as much I.Q. as a rock is the one qualified to be in charge of a place where kids go to learn, right? He announces that he's got a plan to fix the problem they're having with crowded classrooms: 365 school holidays a year!

Sounds like a good idea to ME, though personally I've always loathed school. Well, preschool wasn't so bad, but after that? No thank you. Smokey, the mayor, Bessie, and Floyd don't agree with me, though, and Smokey suggests that they give Freddy the job of Official Custodian of the town's cannon. In other words, he's getting paid to sleep in front of the cannon, which is what he was doing at the beginning of the episode. Are you sure leaving this guy in charge of a cannon - y'know, a WEAPON - is a smart move? I sure hope there isn't any ammo in it...

What's this? We're getting FOUR segments in this episode?

This segment is another look at Smokey's youth. He and his pals are playing a game of football. Their opponents? The buzzards from the first segment, now joined by at least five more. Between Benny's incompetence (he scores a touchdown at his own goalpost), the buzzards' playing rough, and the absense of the team's best player Grizzly, the good guys are getting clobbered. Coach Gabby and Bessie go to Grizzly's cave and find him asleep.

I don't think necks are supposed to bend that way, Gabby.

Gabby decides what Grizzly needs is a quick burst of energy, so he tricks him into getting stung in the behind by bees. Gabby's a sadist, it would seem. But it does the trick - Grizzly runs onto the field, grabs the ball, and makes a touchdown. Two of 'em, in fact!

The show wraps up with Smokey telling the audience to give whatever matches they find to their mom or dad. Playing with matches is dangerous. It's not even that much fun. But you know what IS fun? Playing with pool noodles. Especially when you're actually IN a pool. Playing with modeling clay is fun, too. You can build all sorts of neat things with it. But don't play with matches, okay?

What's the Verdict?

I think I've said this before, but the hardest cartoons to review are the ones that aren't really good or really bad. It's really hard to make funny jokes about something that isn't giving you enough to work with. Case in point, The Smokey Bear Show is another cartoon that I'm going to have to put in the "mediocre" category, and that, it seems, made for a mediocre review. Then again, aren't ALL of my reviews mediocre?

The characters created for the show are very dull and uninteresting. The animation is mediocre - about on par with Rankin-Bass' usual 2D output, particularly when the characters move. The jokes aren't funny, and the plotlines are generic. There wasn't even much of a reason for the show to star Smokey at all, he basically feels like an afterthought in each segment (as does the subject of fire safety, which only appears in the second segment and that's about it). All this really has going for it is the voice acting, everyone's doing their best but it doesn't save the show from being very blah. There are far better cartoons worth your time.

Rating: Two and a half lazy skunks out of five. Not much of substance.

Perhaps the moral of today's story is that characters who star in advertisements and PSAs just can't carry their own show. Remember when they tried to make a show about the GEICO cavemen? It got even less episodes than THIS SHOW did! Honestly, maybe it's a good thing that Chester Cheetah show they wanted to make in the 1990s didn't get off the ground...