Say hello to my little friend--
For those of you who don't know who
that is (and I'm guessing that's almost every single one of you),
that is Hong Kong Phooey. Who, you ask? Well, I answer, he was a
cartoon legend when I was growing up. Well, okay, maybe “legend”
is a little too florid. He was a cartoon god.
Well, Hong Kong Phooey was a god if
you take the word “god” to mean a character from a cartoon that
was only on for two years and even then only appealed to the geekiest
of kids.
Not that anyone, say, writing this would
be considered a geek. Nope. No way.
Now, I’ll admit “HKP” is probably
not the first cartoon from our youth that most of us would recall,
but for a small and certifiably, uhm, intelligent group, the “number
one super guy” was the best reason to get up on a Saturday morning.
HKP was actually Penrod Pooch, mild-mannered police janitor, who
would slip into a file cabinet, change into a kung fu robe, and go
out to fight crime whenever the need arose. Of course, he actually
sucked at it, and kind of stumbled into solving the mysteries, but
that was one of the charms of the show, and maybe why those of us who
liked it REALLY liked it.
Unfortunately “Hong Kong Phooey”
was never marketed the way some classic cartoons have been. I think
I the doll pictured above may have the only toy ever made of a
character from the show, which resides in my bedroom closet at home.
I was so excited when I found it in a store a few years ago that I
thought I was gonna cry. Loraine just looked at me and shook her
head in bemusement.
In case you didn't know, she does that a lot.
Like so many things from our youth, I
watched an episode of the show a few years ago and was, well,
underwhelmed. The animation was very bad, and the story itself kinda
creaky, but I still did find a great deal of joy in hearing the late,
great Scatman Crothers voice the title character. And while I don’t
know that I’d watch the 17 episodes of the show over and over and
over (like I did as a kid, and like I still do with “Rocky &
Bullwinkle”) I did indeed purchase the dvd of the show, just to
have it.
One of these days, in fact, I might
even watch it!
Finally, if you're wondering why I'm
writing this, last week for some bizarre reason it came up in
conversation with Jen. I don't know how, I don't know why; I just
know it did, so I had to dig the doll up and bring it in. And then
that made me think—you know how some people have skeletons in their
closet?
I have dolls of Hong Kong Phooey. I
think I like my way just a little better.
8-)
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