So let's go back into time. It was the summer of 1998, my second trip to Cedar Point. This time well knowing what was there: rides, roller coasters, the beach, and more importantly...the Bears (Berenstain that is). Matter of fact the ONLY thing in my book. So when the rest of the family wanted to do something else like go to breakfast outside Cedar Point property, my mother would tell you I was stubborn. More than stubborn. But what could I do, I was outnumbered. In any case, while all I wanted to do is see the "Bears", we ate at I believe a Ponderosa Steakhouse. Given the amount of families with young kids coming to the Sandusky area to visit Cedar Point, they had on television with kids shows. The strange thing was, these weren't Nicktoons or PBS or anything like that. These were very different shows I remembered watching instead of eating breakfast (again....stubborn). Seeing that the Berenstain Bears were on my mind, it was easy to see or me to think that all but one looked like Berenstain Bears ripoffs. Until my adulthood, these shows I saw once and only once. So I had to go by memory for at most two of the three shows I remember.
So let's play a game for a moment and see if you can guess the animated program based on my description of my memory for at the time. You'll probably get at least one of them right and I can guess which one too:
1. A bunch of kiddie woodland creatures with the main focal one a bear. They get chased around by some reptiles who were the villains and the female adult bird turns out to be a villain as well. They get scared away by the adult woodland creatures. And oh yes, in the end credits the NBC logo appears.
2. A giant bear (possibly a polar bear) is with this wacky professor testing out his latest inventions on the bear. Some scenes take place in the city. Had an Inspector Gadget vibe to it
3. A live action clown is the star and host of his show doing juggling acts and such and shows off cartoon episodes starring said clown. He said things along the lines of "I hope you are enjoying the show" or "You seem to be really enjoying the show"
So the 3rd one was obviously the easiest one to figure out as it was for me. Yup, it was Bozo. A year or so later going to Chuck E Cheese, Bridgeville had the arcade kiddie skeeball type game called Bozo's Grand Prize Game, stemming of course from the actual game on the show. As the years went by I knew to learn how important Bozo the Clown both was and is, especially in the Chicago area as it was franchised to many local TV stations unlike many kids shows. There are tons of videos, articles, and other stuff to research on Bozo the Clown if you want more info, and while I have been enjoying going down this rabbit hole as to its rich and unique history, I don't claim to be an expert to continue this discussion. Now.....I knew that the last Bozo Show was in 2001, so I thought maybe this was WGN's Bozo Show, but this had no live kids so I figured "ok, maybe this was one in the Cleveland Toledo area", but I wasn't sure. Later on I learned there were live kids, but they weren't "live kids". Instead, it was a prerecorded edit into the program which was in all actuality a compilation of some Bozo cartoons. Regardless, the 3rd cartoon was Bozo.
That leaves 1 and 2. 1, eventually, I found out. Whether it was on the animation boards or me doing my own research searching for "cartoon bears of the 80's" or something like that I've forgotten. Regardless, it was one of the two, and the key clues were 1. it was somewhat an NBC production and 2. it was a little cub bear, not a Yogi Bear type character. The problem was that those type of bears were all over the 80's. Care Bears, Gummi Bears, Berenstain Bears, Paw Paw Bears, the list goes on and on, but it was finally solved....Kissyfur. It basically stars a Bear Cub and his Papa. I can't really say anything too special about the cartoon since I never grew up with it, but it's just like I remembered; typical 1980's Saturday Morning funny animals type show. A little bit frightening, but in a fun cartoony way. And by the way, an all star talent too with names like Frank Welker, Russi Taylor, Ed Gilbert, Lennie Weinrib, and more. Whether I found out about it on accident or through my own research through memory I can't remember, but either way, that solves cartoon number 1.
That leaves number 2. What in the world was it? Nobody's brought it up on the animation boards unlike Kissyfur and Bozo. Every once in a while I tried researching it using keywords like "bear, scientist, professor, polar bear", but nothing came of it, so I would give up, forget about it, and maybe a year or so later try again with the same results. Rinse, wash, repeat, then finally forget..............until one night I had a dream that we had Peacock on our house and for some reason we had on Beethoven the Animated Series. As I watched it I said, "ah...ha.....THAT'S what I saw, and it wasn't a bear, it was a dog!" But like all dreams, then end when you figure it out. Beethoven was based on the movie series and was one of those family movies about a real life dog causing trouble. The dog didn't talk, this character on the mystery show did. And I could have swore he was all white regardless of species. So, research happened again. Same keywords, same results. Rinse, wash, repeat, but then I had an idea; usually shows would syndicate a la cart. Bozo was decades old by this point, so I shoved that aside, but if I could find some sort of connection with Kissyfur be it studio or distributor, I might be able to solve a 25+ year long mystery at last. So a Google search for Kissyfur began....images first for some reason. One such image was a VHS cover. So I clicked on that finding a distributor, and when I saw it was Celebrity Home Entertainment I said "Wait a minute!" Although Celebrity did a line of public domain cartoons, they also did sub-licensing mainly from Filmation among others. One such license........was through Larry Harmon for Bozo the Clown.
"Bozo was distributed by Celebrity," I thought, "And I know I saw that one over there with Kissyfur. What if what I saw was NOT from broadcast TV but rather from a best of VHS tape." So a Google search of Celebrity Home Entertainment was done. Some VHS covers appeared of compilations. Not the one I saw, sadly, but enough to know they were the ones who did such releases. So going through them on Images, I saw tons of different 80's cartoons similar to Kissyfur, but no match. There was one about a Dragon. Ok, a big animal as I remembered, but the description of the story does not compute. Going with the "What if it was a dog?" idea I checked Foofur, a show I've heard about. But there were too many dogs, not enough humans, and the design did not match. On Wikipedia, I saw a list of shows sub-licensed to Celebrity, so I went through the list through process of elimination. Obviously shows like Ghostbusters weren't it, and I searched through all kinds of names. "Sherlock Hound........nah......" All hope seemed almost lost as I was clicking on almost anything. I saw one that said Wowser. I clicked on it, and sure enough I was met with disappointment as the picture of a comic showed no animal characters and the wrong type of design. But wait a minute.......this is a page for the WORD Wowser and the comic is just one that uses said word. "See [link to Wowser TV show]". I clicked on the link........................
But wait, it gets weirder. This is a LOST anime. Some episodes have been uploaded online, but no sub seems to exist anymore. Thanks to the VHS releases of the series by Celebrity, we have a good number of episodes to watch. Mediatoon Distribution claims to have distribution rights to the series. All that may be needed is someone like Discotek Media to pick this up cheap. Seeing this back officially is not out of the question.
Bozo, Kissyfur, Wowser......none of these (at least in animated form) are all that special. But if I was able to remember even the slightest memory of all these shows, then they must have done something right to make a brief impact on my childhood. Whether it was a possible first taste of anime, the earliest education of the World's Most Famous Clown, an early sighting of rare TV animation, or all of the above, none of these should be forgotten. ALL animation is history, and these examples are why animation history preservation is important right now, because somebody remembers, and the memories are fading fast
