The Pogo Special Birthday Special (1969)

This came out when I was seven but I only just saw it recently (on YouTube). It had been out on VHS but is not yet on DVD. I enjoyed seeing Kelly's characters come to life via the animation directed by Chuck Jones and Ben Washam; as for the voices, Jones himself is Bun Rab and Porky Pine and Kelly winds up doing P.T. Bridgeport, a song-and-dance-bear at the start--with June Foray just perfect as Pogo and Mlle. Hepzibah. The characters are cute and the backgrounds attractive (I feel like moving there to be with the critters!)It's too bad more wasn't done with Pogo in animation (I have yet to see the 1980 "I Go Pogo" claymation effort).

It used to be easier.We used to be smarter. Our politics was simple and reflected in the popular culture. For example, "liberal" meant that you had a more intellectual approach to difficult problems, and "conservative" designated a more common sense or direct philosophy.We had comics that reflected these two now obsolete poles. On the conservative side was "Lil Abner" of dogpatch written by Al Capp. And for the more nuanced thinkers we had Pogo. Pogo was pretty deep and often very timely. I know of no regular strip of today that has the same power through metaphor. Well, meanwhile in the late sixties we had a spate of TeeVee versions of Comic strips, a trend started by "Peanuts." Now Peanuts was easy to adapt for TeeVee audiences because it had a homely humor, a sort of early Lake Woebegon template centered on children. Unfortunately for us, it was successful, so Pogo was enlisted and bent to the model.This is an absolute disaster. None of Walt Kelly's wit is apparent. What we have is some unholy merger of Winny the Pooh and Peanuts but with Pogo's characters. Stay away; this will burn you.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

***SPOILERS ON THE BARBIE***This spaces out like a made-for-TV holiday special. It would have been nice if Pogo had had more of a television presence, but I suppose they DID cover every single holiday (plus a few) in this one half-hour.I don't agree with all the voice characterizations, but since Walt Kelly was involved, one can only assume he had final approval, so what we get from him and Mel Blanc are the voices Kelly had in mind for the characters, all along.The special itself is your typical light feel-good fare with a little bit of swamp humor sprinkled in, such as the eternal disagreement over the words to 'Deck Us All With Boston Charlie'. For me, the biggest treat was hearing Kelly's inimitable songs and poetry on the screen.

Those loveable characters from the swamp are trying to decide which holiday is the best, and so you get a clever mixture of 4th of July, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Arbor Day, as only Walt Kelly can. Fans of the strip will recognize parts of the storyline. The only thing missing is the running gag about Porky's glum demeanor. The perfect ending would have been a demonstration of how the strip handled Porky smiling.