Promotional Calendar (Hanna-Barbera Productions, 1978) Godzilla! Super Friends! ........Godzooky.

 

Who knew, but in December of 1978, Hanna-Barbera sent out promotional calendars as gifts, which were printed on 11 x 14 glossy paper, and bound at the top with a green comb, the type of which is still used today. We can obviously spot our favorite kaiju right there on the front, inside of a giant stocking (I mean a GIANT stocking) with everyone else!

Oh, and Godzooky is also there.

Let's jump in, and take a look at the contents!

January shows us YOGI'S SPACE RACE, a short-lived attempt to space-ify some HB characters in the wake of Star Wars, which is what everyone else was doing too.  It was also one of those Saturday-morning shows that was part of a "programming block," (in this case, 90 minutes) that included some other features we are going to see shortly.

February's subject might be unknown to you, but JANA OF THE JUNGLE was 1/2 of the original GODZILLA POWER HOUR, and did not go over at all. It's pretty obscure, but episodes are on the YouTubes.

March and April are even more obscure, if that's even possible! GALLOPING GHOST was originally a segment of YOGI'S SPACE RACE, and was later given half of a show, combined with THE BUFORD FILES (hold on for that one).

May is the main attraction, of course. This is a pretty well-used piece of promotional artwork for the series, but the composition is sort of odd, the more you look at it.  It almost seems like a paste-up. Godzilla's image is at a weird angle, and then Godzooky is just sort of tucked into the back.

For June, we have DINKY DOG, and I have no memory of this one whatsoever.  Wikipedia tells me it was part of THE ALL-NEW POPEYE HOUR, and later spun off to its own show.  It was also Hanna-Barbera's first show produced in Australia.

As previously mentioned, THE BUFORD FILES (which I don't remember either) was part of YOGI'S SPACE RACE.

August, however, is pretty special, and my second-favorite page in this calendar.  Not only was Saturday morning my introduction to Godzilla, but Super Friends was very important to me, and I didn't miss it. The 1979 season of the show would've been WORLD'S GREATEST SUPERFRIENDS, which was a good year!

September is SCOOBY-DOO, and if you can sort out the million permutations and combinations of Scooby-Doo shows that have aired over the decades, you are a better man than I.  I will point out that for the 1977-78 season, CAPTAIN CAVEMAN AND THE TEEN ANGELS was shown in the same 2-hour block, which brings us to October.  Do you remember kids running around the playground yelling "Captaaaaaain Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaavemaaannnnnnn!"???

We wrap up the year with two more easy ones.  Huckleberry Hound would've been seen on LAFF-A-LYMPICS about this time, and A FLINTSTONE CHRISTMAS was a prime-time TV special in 1977.

As a bonus, here is the original outer envelope that the calendar was mailed in!

Note the extra artwork up by the postage--9 years old by this time, Scooby-Doo was already the ambassador and symbol of Hanna-Barbera:

You may be interested to know, just in case you save and printout these calendar pages, they will be perfectly good to use again in the years 2029, 2035, 2046...and so on! Enjoy!