oppity
was a lovable but naive frog who was duped into teaming with a
pair of dishonest peddlers. While evading the police, the
conniving fox, "Professor" Waldo Wigglesworth and his
dim-witted partner Fillmore, a bugle-blowing bear, chanced
through Foggy Bog, Wisconsin, the hometown of Hoppity Hooper.
In order to escape the law, the two roving retailers visited
Hoppity's home and convinced the unsuspecting amphibian that
they were his long-lost uncle and cousin. Perpetuating this
charade provided the two with a base of operations from which
to hide out, and also drew Hoppity into their comic
misadventures - traveling the country in a medicine-show wagon
exploring Waldo's various get-rich quick schemes. The series
also included Susan Swivelhips, Waldo's Mae West sound-alike
girlfriend.
The character of Hoppity Hooper had been through several
incarnations before he ever appeared in his own show. The frog
first came to life on a popular segment of The Bullwinkle Show
entitled Fractured Fairy Tales, which took a classic story and
bent it in that inimitable Jay Ward fashion. Using "The Frog
Prince” as its source material, a frog named Filburt was
introduced as the title character. Writer Bill Scott, who had
worked with Jay Ward before, thought he could make a star out
of the frog, and so he and “Frog Prince” scripter Chris
Jenkyns wrote a pilot called The Green Hopper. The title was
then changed to Hippity Hooper before the writers were told
that the name was too similar to "Hippity Hopper," the
kangaroo on the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. So once more,
the name was changed slightly, and finally, to Hoppity Hooper.
Each week the series presented two episodes of a Hoppity
four-part cliff-hanger, along with repeat episodes from other
Jay Ward (Rocky and his Friends, Bullwinkle) and Total TV
(Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo) series. The repeated episodes
included Ward's Fractured Fairy Tales, Peabody's Improbable
History and Mr. Know-It-All, and Total TV's Commander McBragg.
In 1965, while The Adventures of Hoppity Hooper was still
running weekly on ABC, the show was sold into syndication as
Uncle Waldo and His Friends. It was also seen from September
through December of that same year as part of Cartoon Fun, a
thirteen episode Sunday afternoon series on ABC.
