Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Bullwinkle Goes to Press

I'm not sure if the misspelling of "acquainted" is deliberate.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Bullwinkle Goes to Press
ABC
May 6, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C

The "Box Top Robbery" arc wraps up, and a role-switching "Little Red Riding Hood & Wolf" story is balanced by Mr. Peabody's of course racist encounter with African cannibals.  The season, and thus the series, averages out to a C+, so you can see why I didn't buy more, although this is definitely not the last of Jay Ward Productions.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Fools Afloat

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Fools Afloat
ABC
April 29, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C+

"Kindly old Geppetto" exploits Pinocchio on television, and "our boys" float around in the elevator.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Adrift in the Lift

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Adrift in the Lift
ABC
April 22, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
B-

More satiric than in awhile, this has such moments as Boris cheerfully admitting that his plans never work, a Walt-Disney-looking prince opening Sleeping Beauty Land, and a Lawrence-Welk-loving Dudley the only person not put to sleep by Nell's singing.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Hickory Dickory Drop

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Hickory Dickory Drop
ABC
April 15, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C

Notable for the nice little moment between R & B talking about their friendship, but otherwise dull, especially Aesop.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Calaboose Moose

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Calaboose Moose
ABC
April 15, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C

Boris disguises himself as Hemlock Soames, to pretend to solve the box top robbery he's responsible for.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Box Top Robbery

The Aesop segment, like the main plot,
also has a "friendly neighborhood grocer."

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Box Top Robbery
ABC
April 8, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C+

A new, much shorter arc starts, with Boris counterfeiting box tops (the secret basis of the world's economy), leading to the arrest of innocent box-top collector Bullwinkle.  The Do-Little segment isn't as good as before, although it is notable that the love Nell has for Horse appears to be mutual.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Some Like It Shot

And Peabody and Sherman help Don Juan, I kid you not.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Some Like It Shot
ABC
April 1, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C+

The "Jet Fuel Formula" arc is finally completed.  Rocky wants to make the Moonmen into Americans so that Americans can land on the moon.  But Gidney and Cloyd fail their naturalization test, given by a senator who thinks naturalization should be more difficult.  (Even being born in new states Hawaii and Alaska is suspect to him.)  In a bit of poetic justice, his coat gets stuck in their rocket door when they're deported, so he blasts off with them.

The 1960s have now passed the 1950s in quantity, a record they'll obviously hold for awhile.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: The Star-Spangled Boner

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: The Star-Spangled Boner
ABC
March 25, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C

G & C make it out of Pottsylvania but R & B don't.  Yet another segment of Fairy Tale or Aesop (this time the latter) where domestic abuse (usually wife on husband, but once sisters on sister) is played for laughs.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: The Moonman Is Blue

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: The Moonman Is Blue
ABC
March 18, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
B

As the subtitle suggests, Gidney and Cloyd return.  Their gig in Las Vegas [sic] led to a TV show called Moonsmoke, but unfortunately they scrooched the whole viewing audience, so now American TV is nothing but commercials.  (Ironically, this is as bad as what the Pottsylvanian government was planning.)  The moonmen want to go home, so Rocky agrees to allow them to use the mooseberry bush for the jet fuel formula, but Bullwinkle is aghast at Rocky's lack of patriotism, since they're supposed to be taking the bush back to the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, Tom Thumb is a tiny juvenile delinquent who ends up in pyschoanalysis; and Snidely falls for Nell, who doesn't seem to mind the idea of marrying him.  Possibly the most satiric episode so far, or even of the whole first season.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Snows Your Old Man

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Snows Your Old Man

ABC

March 11, 1960

Cartoon

DVD
C

The two villains and two heroes continue to roam the mountains, where the supposedly nonexistent Abominable (elongate that word) Snowman proves to be real.  A pretty good Aesop and Son, about a fox who tries to overcome his bad reputation in order to become a pillar of the community, is balanced by an of course racist Peabody about Marco Polo.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Watch Out for Falling Rockys

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Watch Out for Falling Rockys
ABC
March 4, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
B

This is easily the best episode of the series so far.  Not only does Dudley Do-Right return (with a hypnotized Stokey the Bear as an arsonist), but the Fractured Fairy Tale has a few twists.  A painter wants to be a shoemaker, so he takes the advice of elves and travels around Europe, only to find that the best shoemaker is the wife he left back home.  As for the main show, B & N (disguised as Swiss and Indian guides respectively) lead R & B to a mountaintop and they find a mooseberry bush "in only one episode."  Also, we learn that Fearless Leader has a boss, too: Mr. Big.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: The Fright-Seeing Trip

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: The Fright-Seeing Trip
ABC
February 25, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
B-

I laughed out loud at the elaborate scheme to make rocket fuel and colonize the moon, in order to beam back bad Pottsylvanian television to the Earth.  And the fracturing of Cinderella, with both Prince and title character more concerned with money than romance, also amused me.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Axe Me Another

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Axe Me Another
ABC
February 18, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C

R & B arrive in Pottsylvania, where they're almost executed and then imprisoned.  Mr. Peabody and Sherman meet General Custer, and the Indian stereotypes aren't quite as bad as I dreaded.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Tell It to the Maroons

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Tell It to the Maroons
ABC
February 11, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C

"Our boys" are stuck on a small tropical island with Peachfuzz (and, depending on the scene, all the passengers), until Boris's Fearless Leader (looking less debonair than his later design) orders him to return for the moose and mooseberry bush.  At one point, Natasha says they've spent 14 episodes trying to get the mooseberries, but I think this is because each segment counts as an episode.  (Hence, there are 52 for the first season, although packaged as 26.)

In the Peabody feature, the Wright Brothers are portrayed as idiotic Southern hicks.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Captain's Outrageous

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Captain's Outrageous
ABC
February 4, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C

Capt. "Wrong Way" Peacefuzz accidentally steers the ocean liner all over the world.  The Fractured Fairytale tells of another "Fisherman and His Wife," only this time it's a talking fish instead of a mermaid who grants their wishes.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Adrift in the Mist

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Adrift in the Mist
ABC
January 28, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
B-

Most notable (at least in the version on DVD) for the introduction of Dudley Do-Right.  While R & B thrive on cliffhangers and other old-movie touches, this segment actually incorporates silent-movie touches, such as cards that say things like "A baby is crying!  Is it yours?"  Hans Conried (as Snidely Whiplash) and the other voice actors rise to the challenge of the very funny script.  I think even as a child, these "friends" were my favorite.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Bomb Voyage

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Bomb Voyage
ABC
January 21, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C+

Boris portrays another in a series of implausible ethnic identities, this time British.  So the mooseberry bush is disguised as Uncle Cholmondley, pronounced "Chumley."  This episode brings up the question of what the exact nature is of Boris & Natasha's relationship.  She's here passed off as his wife and they're sharing a cabin.  She often calls him "Darling," but that may not mean anything.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Farewell, My Ugly

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Farewell, My Ugly

ABC

January 14, 1960

Cartoon

DVD

C+

A couple shifts here: Aesop & Son replacing for the moment Fractured Fairytales (with Charlie Ruggles as Aesop), and B & N and R & B all returning to D.C. but soon planning to head for B & N's homeland of Pottsylvania.  The animation has reached surreally sloppy levels, with things like the room-size computer showing up in Las Wages (where the formerly fame-avoiding Gidney and Cloyd have a stage act) and the sign for the pier showing up in R & B's laboratory.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Canoe Who?

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Canoe Who?
ABC
January 7, 1960
Cartoon
DVD
C+

Welcome to the 1960s, even if it doesn't yet feel like it.  We'll be here much longer than the '50s.  This episode has B & N, disguised as Indians, paddling a canoe back to Washington, D.C., while R & B follow on a boat made of the crashed plane, with half a tree for a mast.  More memorable is the Fractured Fairytale with a Phil-Silvers-sounding agent and a beatnik-sounding town cryer, although unfortunately the characterizations are not carried over to the animation, which seems to be getting shoddier as time goes on.  (Like the moment when Queen Elizabeth is on her throne and a puddle briefly appears beneath her.)

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Bullwinkle's Water Follies

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Bullwinkle's Water Follies
ABC
December 31, 1959
Cartoon
DVD
C

Bullwinkle goes over the falls but is saved by a mooseberry bush and Rocky.  Boris of course absconds with the bush.