The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends

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(Redirected from
Rocky and Bullwinkle
)
This article is about the original television series. For other uses, see The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (disambiguation).
"Boris & Natasha" redirects here. For the movie by that name, see Boris and Natasha: The Movie. For Boris, see Boris Badenov. For Natasha, see Natasha Fatale.

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends
The show's modern title card, used on home video releases in the 21st century
Also known as
  • Rocky and His Friends (ABC)
  • The Bullwinkle Show (NBC)
  • The Rocky Show (Syndication)
  • The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (Syndication/Cartoon Network)
  • The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (Syndication)
  • The Adventures of Bullwinkle and Rocky (Syndication)
  • Bullwinkle's Moose-O-Rama (Nickelodeon)
Genre
Created by
Voices of
Narrated by
Theme music composer
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons5
No. of episodes163 (815 segments) (
O.B.E.
Producers
Running time23 minutes
Production companies
Original release
NetworkABC[5]
ReleaseNovember 19, 1959 (1959-11-19) –
July 10, 1961 (1961-07-10)
NetworkNBC[6]
ReleaseSeptember 24, 1961 (1961-09-24) –
June 27, 1964 (1964-06-27)

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (commonly referred to as simply Rocky and Bullwinkle) is an American animated television series that originally aired from November 19, 1959, to June 27, 1964, on the

Nazi-like dictator Fearless Leader. Supporting segments include "Dudley Do-Right" (a parody of old-time melodrama), "Peabody's Improbable History" (a dog named Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman traveling through time), and "Fractured Fairy Tales" (classic fairy tales retold in comic fashion), among others.[7] The current blanket title was imposed for home video releases more than 40 years after the series originally aired and was never used when the show was televised; television airings of the show were broadcast under the titles of Rocky and His Friends from 1959 to 1961 (and again in Canada in 1963), The Bullwinkle Show from 1961 to 1964, and The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (or The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle) in syndication.[8]

Rocky and Bullwinkle is known for quality writing and wry humor. Mixing puns, cultural and topical satire, and self-referential humor, it appealed to adults as well as children.[7][9] It was also one of the first cartoons whose animation was outsourced; storyboards were shipped to Gamma Productions, a Mexican studio also employed by Total Television. The art has a choppy, unpolished look and the animation is extremely limited even by television animation standards at the time, yet the series has long been held in high esteem by those who have seen it; some critics described the series as a well-written radio program with pictures.[10]

The show was shuffled around several times during its run, airing in afternoon, prime time, and Saturday-morning cartoon timeslots, and was influential to other animated series from The Simpsons to Rocko's Modern Life.[11] Segments from the series were later recycled in the Hoppity Hooper show. There have been numerous feature film adaptations of the series' various segments, such as the 2000 film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, which blended live-action and computer animation;[12] and the 1999 live-action film Dudley Do-Right.[13] Both films received poor reviews and were financially unsuccessful. By contrast, an animated feature film adaptation of the "Peabody's Improbable History" segment, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, was released to positive reviews in 2014. A rebooted animated series also based on "Peabody's Improbable History", The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show, debuted on Netflix in October 2015.[14][15]

Another reboot animated series based on the main and final segments, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle premiered on Amazon Prime Video on May 11, 2018. In 2013, Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show were ranked the sixth-greatest television cartoon of all time by TV Guide.[16]

Background

The idea for the series came from Jay Ward and Alex Anderson, who previously collaborated on Crusader Rabbit, based upon the original property The Frostbite Falls Revue.[17] This original show never got beyond the proposal stage. It featured a group of forest animals running a television station. The group included Rocket J. Squirrel (Rocky), Oski Bear, Canadian Moose (Bullwinkle), Sylvester Fox, Blackstone Crow, and Floral Fauna. The show in this form was created by Alex Anderson.[18] (The bear and fox characters would later be retooled for Ward's next series, Hoppity Hooper.) Bullwinkle's name came from the name of a car dealership in Berkeley, California, called Bullwinkel Motors. Anderson changed the order of the last two letters of the name and gave the name to his moose.[19]

Ward wanted to produce the show in Los Angeles; however, Anderson lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and did not want to relocate. As a result, Ward hired Bill Scott as head writer and co-producer at Jay Ward Productions, and he wrote the Rocky and Bullwinkle features. Ward was joined by writers Chris Hayward[20] and Allan Burns; they eventually became known for creating The Munsters with Allan going to co-create The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In a 1982 interview, Scott said, "I got a call from Jay asking if I'd be interested in writing another series, an adventure script with a moose and a squirrel. I said, 'Sure.' I didn't know if I could write an adventure with a moose and a squirrel, but I never turned down a job."[21]

Production

The series began with the pilot Rocky the Flying Squirrel. Production began in February 1958 with the hiring of

voice actors June Foray, Paul Frees, Bill Scott, and William Conrad. Eight months later, General Mills signed a deal to sponsor the cartoon program, under the condition that the show be run in a late-afternoon time slot, when it could be targeted toward children. Subsequently, Ward hired the rest of the production staff, including writers and designers. However, no animators were hired. Ad executives at Dancer, Fitzgerald and Sample, the advertising agency for General Mills, set up an animation studio in Mexico called Gamma Productions S.A. de C.V., originally known as Val-Mar Animation. This outsourcing
of the animation for the series was considered financially attractive by primary sponsor General Mills, but caused endless production problems. In a 1982 interview by animation historian Jim Korkis, Bill Scott described some of the problems that arose during production of the series:

We found out very quickly that we could not depend on Mexican studios to produce anything of quality. They were turning out the work very quickly and there were all kinds of mistakes and flaws and boo-boos...They would never check...Mustaches popped on and off Boris, Bullwinkle's antlers would change, colors would change, costumes would disappear...By the time we finally saw it, it was on the air.[22]

Network television: 1959–1973

See also: List of Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes
The show was titled Rocky and His Friends while airing on ABC...
...and was later re-titled The Bullwinkle Show after its move to NBC

The show was broadcast for the first time on November 19, 1959, on the

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. Bullwinkle's ratings suffered as a result of airing opposite perennial favorite Lassie. A potential move to CBS[22] caused NBC to reschedule the show to late Sunday afternoons (5:30 p.m.)[22]
and early Saturday afternoons in its final season. NBC canceled the show in the summer of 1964. It was shopped to ABC, but they were not interested. However, reruns of episodes were aired on ABC's Sunday morning schedule at 11:00 a.m. until 1973, at which time the series went into syndication.

An abbreviated 15-minute version of the series ran in syndication in the 1960s under the title The Rocky Show. This version was sometimes shown in conjunction with The King and Odie, a 15-minute version of Total Television's King Leonardo and His Short Subjects. The King and Odie was similar to Rocky and Bullwinkle in that it was sponsored by General Mills and animated by Gamma Productions.

The Bullwinkle Show returned to network television during the 1981-1982 season, when NBC aired it at 12:30 p.m. ET Saturday afternoons. These were rebroadcasts of the original 35mm network prints as Jay Ward produced them, without the Total Television fillers added to the 16mm syndication prints.

Syndication

Title card from the syndicated run under the title The Adventures of Bullwinkle and Rocky

Reruns of the show aired on ABC from 1964-1973 and 1981-1982.

VH1 Classic
(2012), and Boomerang (2013).

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show remained in

10 PM newscasts in the Buffalo, New York, market during the summer 2013 season.[25] The underlying rights are now owned by WildBrain, who acquired the licensing, production, and distribution rights to Ward's library in 2022.[26] These rights were previously held by Universal Pictures, which acquired the library of predecessor companies DreamWorks Animation and Classic Media
in 2016 (coinciding with The Program Exchange's shutdown), and who in turn with copyright holder Ward Productions formed the joint venture Bullwinkle Studios, which managed the Rocky and Bullwinkle properties. Despite the move, Universal still owns the rights to the co-productions Ward produced with DreamWorks.

Sponsor

Mr. Know-It-All) sometimes appear out of the original broadcast sequence. The final 20 syndicated Bullwinkle Show episodes feature later Rocky and Bullwinkle story lines (from "Bumbling Bros. Circus" through the end of the series, minus "Moosylvania") along with Fractured Fairy Tales, Bullwinkle's Corner, and Mr. Know-It-All segments repeated from earlier in the syndicated episode cycle. Originally, many syndicated shows included segments of Total Television's The World of Commander McBragg, but these cartoons were replaced with other segments when the shows were remastered in the early 1990s. A package, promoted under the Rocky and His Friends name but utilizing The Rocky Show titles, features story lines not included in the syndicated Bullwinkle Show series.[28]

The most recently syndicated Rocky and His Friends package retains the 15-minute format, consisting of 156 individual episodes, but like The Bullwinkle Show, the content differs from the versions syndicated in the 1960s.

Amazon Video
.

Characters

From left to right: Rocky, Bullwinkle, and Captain Peter "Wrongway" Peachfuzz

The lead characters and heroes of the series were Rocket "Rocky" J. Squirrel, a flying squirrel (who anchored the perspective of the show's younger audience), and his best friend Bullwinkle J. Moose, a dimwitted but good-natured moose (who carried a bulk of the adult humor with his spontaneous puns). Both characters lived in the fictional town of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, which was purportedly based on the real city of International Falls, Minnesota.[29] The scheming villains in most episodes were the fiendish spies Boris Badenov (a pun on Boris Godunov) and Natasha Fatale (a pun on femme fatale), forever attempting to "catch Moose and Squirrel". Other characters included Fearless Leader, the dictator of the fictitious nation of Pottsylvania and Boris and Natasha's superior; Gidney & Cloyd, little green men from the Moon who were armed with scrooch guns; Captain Peter "Wrongway" Peachfuzz, the captain of the S.S. Andalusia; various U.S. government bureaucrats and politicians (such as Senator Fussmussen, a recurring character who opposed admitting Alaska and Hawaii to the Union on the grounds of his own xenophobia); and the inevitable onlookers, Edgar and Chauncy.

Structure

When first shown on NBC, the cartoons were introduced by a Bullwinkle puppet, voiced by Bill Scott, who would often lampoon celebrities, current events, and especially

Wonderful World of Color was next on the schedule. Compared with the dim-witted and lovable moose that most fans of the series would grow up with, in this short-lived version Bullwinkle was portrayed as a sarcastic smart-aleck. On one occasion, "Bullwinkle" encouraged children to pull the tuning knobs off their television sets. ("It's loads of fun, and that way, you'll be sure to be with us next week!") The network received complaints from parents of an estimated 20,000 child viewers who actually did so. Bullwinkle told the children the following week to put the knobs back on with glue "and make it stick!" The puppet sequence was dropped altogether.[30] Scott later re-used the puppet for a segment called "Dear Bullwinkle," where letters written for the show were read and answered humorously.[31]
Four episodes of "Dear Bullwinkle" are on the Season 1 DVD.

Each episode is composed of two Rocky and Bullwinkle cliffhanger shorts that stylistically emulated early radio and film serials. The plots of these shorts would combine into story arcs spanning numerous episodes. The first and longest story arc was Jet Fuel Formula consisting of 40 shorts (20 episodes). Stories ranged from seeking the missing ingredient for a rocket fuel formula, to tracking the monstrous whale Maybe Dick, to an attempt to prevent mechanical metal-munching moon mice from devouring the nation's television antennas. Rocky and Bullwinkle frequently encounter the two Pottsylvanian nogoodniks, Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale.

At the end of most episodes, the narrator, William Conrad, would announce two humorous titles for the next episode that typically were puns of each other (and usually related more to the current predicament than to the plot of the next episode). For example, during an adventure taking place in a mountain range, the narrator would state, "Be with us next time for 'Avalanche Is Better Than None,' or 'Snow's Your Old Man.'" Such a 'This' or 'That' title announcement was borrowed from The Adventures of Sam Spade radio shows produced in 1946–1950. The narrator frequently spoke with the characters, thus breaking the fourth wall.

Episodes were introduced with one of four opening sequences:

  • Rocky flies about snow-covered mountains. Below him, hiking on a snowy trail, Bullwinkle is distracted by a billboard featuring his name, and walks off a ledge. He becomes a large snowball as he rolls downhill. Rocky flies to him and pushes against the snowball, slowing it to a halt at the edge of another cliff. Bullwinkle pops out of the snowball to catch the teetering squirrel at the cliff edge.
  • In a circus, Rocky is preparing to jump from a high diving board into a tub of water tended by Bullwinkle. However, when Rocky jumps, he ends up flying around the circus tent, while Bullwinkle chases after him carrying the tub. As Rocky lands safely, Bullwinkle tumbles into the tub. This was the same intro used for the Buena Vista VHS series in the early 1990s.[32]
  • Rocky is flying acrobatically about a city landscape. Bullwinkle is high atop a flagpole painting, and is knocked from his perch as the squirrel flies by. Rocky attempts to catch the plummeting moose with a butterfly net, but the moose falls through. Rocky then flies lower to find his friend suspended from a clothesline, having fallen into a pair of long johns.
  • Similar to the previous opening, Rocky is again flying about the city. Bullwinkle is suspended from a safety harness posting a sign on a large billboard. He loses his balance as the squirrel zooms past him and tumbles off the platform. The moose lands on a banner pole mounted on the side of a building, and the recoil springs him back into the air. He lands on a store awning, slides down, and drops a few feet to a bench on which Rocky is seated. The impact launches the squirrel off the bench, and Bullwinkle nonchalantly catches him in his left hand to end the sequence.

Episodes ended with a

sunflowers until Rocky and Bullwinkle finally sprout from the ground.[33]

Supporting features

The Rocky and Bullwinkle shorts serve as "bookends" for popular supporting features, including:

Some later syndication prints of The Bullwinkle Show include short segments of The World of Commander McBragg: a tale-spinning windbag regaling a skeptical friend with exaggerated feats of heroism. These short features were never part of the Bullwinkle canon. They were actually prepared for Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (and later shown on The Underdog Show). Although the shorts were animated by the same company, Gamma Productions of Mexico, they were produced for Total Television, rather than Ward Productions. These segments were packaged with pre-1990 syndicated versions of The Bullwinkle Show and appear in syndicated episodes of The Underdog Show, Dudley Do-Right and Friends, and Uncle Waldo's Cartoon Show. Since 1990, this feature has been deleted from the Bullwinkle library and has never been included in Bullwinkle home videos.

Voice cast

Actor Character(s) voiced
Bill Scott Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Fearless Leader, Mr. Peabody, Gidney, Mr. Big, various others
June Foray Rocky, Natasha Fatale, Nell Fenwick, various witches and princesses in Fractured Fairy Tales, and every other female character in the show
Paul Frees Boris Badenov, Captain Peter "Wrongway" Peachfuzz, Cloyd, Inspector Fenwick, narrator for Dudley Do-Right (shared), various historical figures in Peabody's Improbable History
Walter Tetley Sherman
Daws Butler Aesop Junior, various characters in Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop and Son
Charlie Ruggles Aesop
Hans Conried Snidely Whiplash
William Conrad narrator for Rocky and Bullwinkle, narrator for Dudley Do-Right (shared)
Edward Everett Horton narrator for Fractured Fairy Tales
Hal Smith various other characters

Cultural impact

  • In 1962, as a publicity stunt, Ward leased a small island on a lake between Minnesota and Canada, which he named after "Moosylvania",
    President Kennedy, and were brusquely turned away. They had arrived during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.[39][40]
  • Also in 1962, British Invasion band Herman's Hermits got its name because bandmates thought lead singer Peter Noone looked like Sherman of "Mr. Peabody" fame, and the name "Herman" was close enough to "Sherman" for them.[41]
  • In the sci-fi movie Back to the Future, Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time to November 5, 1955, ending up on the Twin Pines Ranch, owned by "Old Man Peabody," who angrily shoots at the DeLorean, mistaking it as a spaceship, taken from his son Sherman, when Marty, who was also mistaken as an alien, accidentally killed a pine sapling. Director Robert Zemeckis named the landowner after Mr. Peabody, the time-traveling dog: the subtle joke being that Mr. Peabody apparently did not take kindly to competing time-travelers.
  • TSR, Inc. released Bullwinkle and Rocky Role-Playing Party Game in 1988, a roleplaying game based on the world of Rocky and Bullwinkle. The game consisted of rules, mylar hand puppets, cards, and spinners.[42]
  • Data East produced a pinball machine titled Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (1993).
  • In 1999, Mattel made Rocky and Bullwinkle-themed cars under its Hot Wheels line.[43]
  • In 2002, Rocky and His Friends ranked #47 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.[44]
  • In January 2009, IGN named Rocky and Bullwinkle as the 11th-best animated television series.[45]
  • In 2012, Mr. Peabody and Sherman from the "Peabody's Improbable History" segment appeared in MetLife's "Everyone" commercial during the 2012 Superbowl.[46]
  • To date, Rocky and Friends has aired in 100 countries.[citation needed]

Revival attempts

There were a few attempts to revive Rocky & Bullwinkle throughout the 1970s. A revival in 1981 parodied the Super Bowl. A script was written, storyboards were produced, the NBC network gave it a green light, but the project was canceled because of objections from the NFL (actual team owners were parodied, the Super Bowl championship was lampooned as the "Stupor Bowl", and Boris was fixing the game).[22]

Another revival attempt took place at Disney in the mid-1980s, back when the company was distributing the show on VHS. Developed by Tad Stone and Michael Peraza Jr., the revival was named The Secret Adventures of Bullwinkle and would have been a modern take on the old Bullwinkle show, with the return of characters like Mr. Peabody and Sherman and Dudley Do-Right and would have featured new segments like "Fractured Scary Tales", a parody of horror films, and a new "Mr. Know It All" skit that, among other things, had Bullwinkle programming a VCR. Before the two presented their pitch, they discovered Disney did not have the rights to the series or characters, only to the home video distribution of the old Bullwinkle show, and the concept was abandoned.[47]

Home media

The program debuted on home video with two compilation CED Videodiscs released by RCA during the format's rise in the early 1980s, featuring complete, uncut story arcs and accompanying alternating segments and bumpers. Volume 1 contained the complete story for Wossamotta U, while volume 2 contained Goof Gas Attack and The Three Mooseketeers.

Buena Vista Home Video released the show on VHS, Betamax and LaserDisc in the early 1990s, under the title The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. These are presented differently from when broadcast. Two "Rocky and Bullwinkle" chapters were sometimes edited together into one (removing the "titles" for the next chapters as well as part of the recap at the beginning of the next), usually showing the storyline in four or five chapters per video. For example, the 12-episode Wossamotta U adventure is reduced to five episodes, and runs about seven minutes shorter. The "Bullwinkle Show" closing was used on these.

The first eight videos were released under the "Classic Stuff" banner, with covers and titles being parodies of famous paintings or painters. Four more videos were released under the "Funny Stuff" banner but, unlike the first eight, these were not numbered, the video titles matched the title of the featured "Rocky and Bullwinkle" storyline, and the covers represented scenes from shows (such as Bullwinkle pulling a rhino out of a hat as the cover for "Painting Theft" (the change in the banner might have been due to a video magazine publishing a letter criticizing the editing).

Volume # (LD #) VHS/Betamax name Episodes Additional segments
1. (1) "Mona Moose" "The Treasure of Monte Zoom" Fractured Fairy Tales: Riding Hoods Anonymous, Bullwinkle's Corner: How to Be Happy (Though Miserable), Peabody's Improbable History: Robinson Crusoe, Mr. Know-it-All: How to Get into the Movies Without Buying a Ticket, Dudley Do-Right: The Disloyal Canadians
2. (1) "Birth of Bullwinkle" "The Ruby Yacht" Bullwinkle's Corner: Little Miss Muffet, Fractured Fairy Tales: Sleeping Beauty, Mr. Know-it-All: How to Catch a Bee and Make Your Honey Happy, Peabody's Improbable History: Robin Hood, Dudley Do-Right: Flicker Rock
3. (2) "Vincent van Moose" "Goof Gas Attack" Mr. Know-it-All: How to Be an Archaeologist and Dig Ancient History, Fractured Fairy Tales: Rapunzel, Dudley Do-Right: Finding Gold, Aesop and Son: The Dog and His Shadow
4. (2) "Blue Moose" "
Rue Britannia
" 		Peabody's Improbable History: Cleopatra, Bullwinkle's Corner: The Queen of Hearts, Dudley Do-Right: Mountie Without a Horse, Fractured Fairy Tales: The Ugly Almond Duckling
5. (3) "La Grande Moose" "
Box Top Robbery
" 		Dudley Do-Right: Saw Mill, Fractured Fairy Tales: The Frog Prince, Aesop and Son: The Jackrabbits and the Mule
6. (3) "Canadian Gothic" Four "Dudley Do-Right" segments, instead of a "Rocky and Bullwinkle" storyline ("Marigolds", "Lure of the Footlights", "Trading Places", and "Snidely Arrested") Aesop and Son: The Hound and the Wolf, Bullwinkle's Corner: Simple Simon, Fractured Fairy Tales: The Frog Prince, Peabody's Improbable History: The Royal Mounted Police, Mr. Know-it-All: How to Do Stunts in the Movies Without Having the Usher Throw You Out
7. (4) "Whistler's Moose" "Moosylvania" and "Moosylvania Saved" Aesop and Son: The Mice in Council, Mr. Know-it-All: How to Direct Temperamental Movie Stars, Bullwinkle's Corner: Tom Tom the Piper's Son, Peabody's Improbable History: Whistler's Mother, Dudley Do-Right: Railroad Tracks, Fractured Fairy Tales: Little Red Riding Hood
8. (4) "Norman Moosewell" "Wossamotta U" Bullwinkle's Fan Club: Enlarging the Membership, Peabody's Improbable History: William Shakespeare, Fractured Fairy Tales: Son of Rumpelstiltskin, Dudley Do-Right: Mother Love
9. (5) "Pottsylvania Creeper" "Pottsylvania Creeper" Dudley Do-Right: Recruiting Campaign, Bullwinkle's Corner: Mary Had a Little Lamb, Peabody's Improbable History: Lawrence of Arabia, Fractured Fairy Tales: Red White, Mr. Know-It-All: How to Sell Vacuum Cleaners and Clean Up, Aesop and Son: The Centipede and the Snail
10. (5) "Painting Theft" "Painting Theft" Fractured Fairy Tales: Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess, Mr. Know-it-All: How to Be a Cowpuncher Without Getting Hit Back, Peabody's Improbable History: Mata Hari, Bullwinkle's Corner: Hickory Dickory Dock, Dudley Do-Right: Coming-Out Party
11. (6) "The Weather Lady" "
The Weather Lady
" 		Peabody's Improbable History: William Tell, Bullwinkle's Corner: Wee Willie Winkie, Dudley Do-Right: Mortgagin' the Mountie Post, Mr. Know-it-All: How to Escape from Devil's Island and Get Away From it All, Fractured Fairy Tales: Hansel and Gretel
12. (6) "Banana Formula" "Banana Formula" Peabody's Improbable History: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Mr. Know-It-All: How to Win Friends and Be Influential with People, Aesop and Son: The King of the Jungle, Bullwinkle's Corner: The Daffodils, Dudley Do-Right: Trap Bait, Fractured Fairy Tales: The Golden Goose

Gray market releases

Years after the Buena Vista releases ended, another series of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" VHS tapes were released, both separately and as a boxed set. These videos included

Rue Britannia. However, these were released through GoodTimes Home Video
and were not authorized by Ward Productions. The copies used were from 16 mm Bullwinkle Show prints. Some other companies also released unauthorized editions of Rocky and Bullwinkle, including Nostalgia Family Video, which also released all 98 of The Bullwinkle Show package shows via 16 mm Bullwinkle Show prints, and Bridgestone Multimedia, which released eight episodes as Rocky and his Friends using an old broadcast 16 mm print.

The copyright status of these 98 episodes (along with some episodes of

DMCA take down notices
.

In 2002, Jay Ward Productions established a partnership with

Vivendi Entertainment. The complete series was re-released on DVD again on March 12, 2019, by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, to celebrate the show's 60th anniversary.[52]

The DVD releases differ somewhat from the originals. The original opening bumpers as seen on the network run were restored, but the title of the show was replaced with the name "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends" (never used during the show's television run) and a modern logo with styling inconsistent with the rest of the animation (pictured) somewhat clumsily inserted into the original bumpers.[53] A William Conrad sound-alike was used to announce the new title, which some viewers found jarring.[53] In addition, a semi-transparent "R&B" logo appears for five seconds at the beginning of each segment in the lower right-hand corner. Some segments were moved from their position in the original episodes. Also, the season 5 shows on DVD recycle supporting features found on the DVDs for the first four seasons. Mathematically, this makes sense, since the total number of supporting features (assuming two used per show) exactly equals the number of shows created during the first four seasons. The first set, most of the second set, and the fifth season set use the second opening and closing used for the Rocky and His Friends broadcast, while the last two story arcs in the second set, as well as the third- and fourth-season sets, use the original opening and closing from the Rocky and His Friends broadcast. Frank Comstock's musical themes are replaced on the sets with Fred Steiner's music produced for The Bullwinkle Show. In addition, the first four season sets include optional Spanish-language audio tracks.

In 2005, Classic Media released a series of "best of" DVD compilations of popular segments of the series: two volumes of The Best of Rocky and Bullwinkle, plus the single-volume The Best of Boris and Natasha, The Best of Mr. Peabody and Sherman, The Best of Fractured Fairy Tales, and The Best of Dudley Do-Right. These compilations contain episodes from the entire run of the show.

On October 30, 2012, Classic Media released a DVD called The Complete Fractured Fairy Tales, which includes all 91 Fractured Fairy Tales segments.

On May 14, 2019, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released a 2-disc DVD called Mr. Peabody & Sherman: The Complete Collection, which includes all 91 Peabody's Improbable History segments.

During the time the show was available on Hulu (it was offered as a free series before it went to a subscription-only model), the DVD versions of the episodes were used instead of the syndication prints.

DVD name Ep # Release date (Region 1) Discs Extras
Complete First Season[54] 26 August 12, 2003 4 Network promos; "Savings Stamp Club" episode; "Dear Bullwinkle" bumpers; "The Many Faces of Boris Badenov" (a montage of Boris scenes); two segments from Season Two's "Metal Munching Mice"
Complete Second Season[55] 52 August 31, 2004 4 (double sided) Interview with June Foray; Three Cheerios commercials (storyboard and final versions); "Moosecalls: The Best of Bullwinkle Sings" (a parody of television ads for compilation records); a segment from Season Three's "Missouri Mish Mash"
Complete Third Season[56] 33 September 6, 2005 4 Bullwinkle puppet openings; "The Best of Bullwinkle Follies" (a vaudeville-themed montage of clips); the first segment of Season Four's "Painting Theft"
Complete Fourth Season[57] 19 August 17, 2010 2 None
Complete Fifth Season[51] 33 March 29, 2011 4 Audio outtake from "Goof Gas Attack"
Complete Series 163 January 4, 2011[58]
March 12, 2019 (re-release)[52] 		18 In addition to previous extras, a 70-page "Frostbite Falls Field Guide" detailing the history of the show; "Exceptional Adequacy" award ribbon

Reboots

Main article: The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (TV series)

On April 12, 2018, it was announced that a reboot of the series from

Ben Diskin as Boris, Rachel Butera as Natasha, Piotr Michael as Fearless Leader, and Daran Norris as the Narrator.[59]
On February 3, 2022, it was announced by
Variety that WildBrain signed a deal with Jay Ward Productions to do another reboot of the franchise. WildBrain CEO Eric Ellenbogen and Jay Ward's daughter Tiffany Ward are teaming up.[60]

In other media

Advertising

Children's opera

  • In 1997, The Los Angeles Opera toured a children's production, named Les Moose: The Operatic Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, around various L.A. County Elementary Schools. The story followed Boris and Natasha as they tried to steal the formula for Mooseberry Rocket Fuel from Bullwinkle J. Moose.[66][67][68]

Comics

  • A syndicated daily newspaper comic strip titled Bullwinkle began on July 23, 1962, with original stories drawn by Al Kilgore. It was syndicated by the Bell Syndicate and ended in 1965.[69]
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle stories were published in Four Color.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle comic books were published by
    Fort Knox, Kentucky, in an attempt to steal its gold by carving all the bars into gold medals, as well as furnishing false information to every country so Pottsylvania would win all the gold medals (and thus take all true gold) by virtue of default. After Boris is foiled, the narrator comments that the games will go on as planned in real time in Seoul, South Korea
    .
  • From 2013 to 2014, IDW Publishing with DreamWorks Classics and Bullwinkle Studios released comics of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right and Peabody and Sherman.[70]
  • From 2017 to 2020, American Mythology Productions released comics of Rocky and Bullwinkle and it was written by Todd Livingston.[71]

Films

Music recordings

  • Golden Records released a phonograph album of songs, Rocky the Flying Squirrel & His Friends (1961), using
    voice actors
    from the series. Boris and Natasha, for example, sing: "We will double, single and triple cross our very closest friends!"
  • A 78 rpm single (Golden 659) was released on yellow vinyl. This had Rocky singing "I Was Born To Be Airborne" on one side, backed with Bullwinkle singing "I'm Rocky's Pal". The single sold in grocery stores. Paul Parnes (who later wrote songs for Sesame Street) is credited as composer. "Some nutty characters get together here for the benefit of the very young. Lots of laughs for the juvenile sense of humor."[76]
  • The pseudonymously named Boris Badenough released a record called "Hey Rocky!" on Trax Records in 1986. The record featured a house-music beat underneath clips from the series.[77]
  • In 2007, Blackstone Audio released the audio tracks of 15 of the Fractured Fairy Tales on CD.[78]

Toys

  • In 1999, Mattel released a numbered collector series under its Hot Wheels toy line, the "Car-Toon Friends" series.[43] It contained four cars; the now-retired model "XT-3" for Rocky, "Double Vision" for Bullwinkle, "Saltflat Racer" for Natasha and "Lakestar" for Boris.[79] They are no longer produced with these paint jobs and, as of December 2012, are hard to find.[citation needed]

Video games

Parodies, cameos and references

See also

Notes

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  2. ^ Folkart, Burt (October 13, 1989). "Artist created TV's Rocky and Bullwinkle". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved July 27, 2021.
  3. ^ McLellan, Dennis (October 26, 2010). "Artist created TV's Rocky and Bullwinkle". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 8, 2016. Retrieved July 27, 2021.
  4. ^ "Unsung Creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle Dies". Time. Archived from the original on October 24, 2010. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
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  6. ^ "TV writer C. Hayward, of cartoon Bullwinkle". Sun Sentinel. Archived from the original on May 24, 2012. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
  7. ^ a b "Jay Ward: Masterful Humorist". Los Angeles Times. October 15, 1989. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
  8. ^ "Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends – The Complete First Season". DVD Talk. Archived from the original on October 13, 2012. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
  9. ISBN 978-1-4766-6874-1
    .
  10. ^ "Alex Anderson interview". Hogan's Alley. October 26, 2010. Archived from the original on October 26, 2010.
  11. ^ Marsh, Jeff; Dan Abrams (1997). "Contributors". The Rocko's Modern Life FAQ. Retrieved November 9, 2011. It was always our intent to create shows that would be entertaining on many levels. Rocky and Bullwinkle are still funny to me now, but on a new level. There were jokes that I didn't get as a child that I now understand the references to. They were able to create shows that were funny to both groups without sacrificing anything. That is a hard job to do and we always strove to emulate that quality
  12. ^ "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle – Rotten Tomatoes". Flixster. Retrieved November 10, 2011.
  13. ^ "Dudley Do-Right". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 18, 2014.
  14. ^ Hulett, Steve (August 14, 2014). "Animation Work In And Around Los Angeles". The Animation Guild. Retrieved August 15, 2014.
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References

  • 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Further reading

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends.
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