The Kwicky Koala Show (1981)
First episode title: Sink or Swim / Gold Crazy / A Close Encounter of the Canine Kind
How familiar with the show am I?: I hadn't heard of it before.
Is this the first episode?: There seems to be some confusion about which individual segments of the shows that make up The Kwicky Koala Show were aired together. Both Wikipedia and IMDb place "Sink or Swim" as the first instalment of Kwicky Koala himself, but put it together with different shorts of the other characters from the ones that were actually there when I went and sought out the episode myself. I don't know whether this means the episodes were constructed differently in different markets, or if the internet is just wrong about this.
Tex Avery. If you haven't heard his name, you've almost certainly experienced his work. He created Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, then moved from Warner Brothers to MGM where he created Droopy. For the last few years of his life, he was working at Hanna-Barbera, and this show, The Kwicky Koala Show, was one of his final works. I can tell you now, the show doesn't hide its inspirations, but that doesn't mean it's not fun in itself!
So this show is one of those "multiple different shorts" shows as you may have gathered - in this case, there are three main shorts that are essentially different shows, but each one is preceded by a very short short featuring the Bungle Brothers, for six shorts in total. Let's get started with the first of this episode's Bungle Brothers segments, then!
The Bungle Brothers are a pair of dogs - a big one called Joey and a small one called George - who are always attempting to come up with some sort of act that will make them stars. The setting appears to be a theatre or circus.
In this first short, George is making some realistic train noises with his mouth, which he tells Joey is practice for their new act. Joey doesn't get it, and pushes George to the ground, hoping to save him from the "train". George tries to explain that it's just him doing the noises, and demonstrates with a bird call, but Joey still doesn't understand, throwing George out of the way to make sure he's not crushing a little bird.
Yes, Joey is not very bright.
George says "Up, Joey", and Joey raises the little George up to Joey's face level, suggesting this is a command he already knows the response to. He's been trained like a dog... by another dog! George tells him again that it was just his voice, and Joey understands now, making... some sort of crashing sound that George can't identify. As George is laughing at that attempt, an actual small storm cloud floats into the room and strikes him with lightning!
Joey reassures George not to worry as that was just his voice. I'm fascinated. Did he somehow summon it? I need to know more about his powers!
So now we're on to the one actual Kwicky Koala short of the episode: "Sink or Swim". Kwicky Koala's gimmick, as per the opening, is that he's the "world's fastest Australian bear". Koalas aren't actually bears, but yes, he's fast, able to move so quickly that he disappears and reappears instantaneously with a squeaky sound effect, especially if he's about to be caught by his adversary, Wilford Wolf. This may make him sound like the Road Runner, but in terms of personality he's very much like Droopy, always talking politely to everyone and seeming to be oblivious to the danger even as he avoids it.
As it starts, Wilford is standing outside Kwicky's house - you can tell that's whose house it is because the mailbox is labelled - and he sees something off-screen which excites him. The next thing we know, a postman is walking along towards Kwicky's mailbox, with no wolf in sight, and when he tries to put a letter in, Wilford's hand emerges and grabs it!
I doubt I would be the only one to say that Wilford has a distinctly Squidward-like voice, although it's probably just that they took inspiration from the same places - apparently Wilford's voice is a Paul Lynde impression.
Just then, the cute fuzzy-eared little Kwicky comes out of his house and checks his mail. He takes the letter, Wilford tries to catch him, but Kwicky does his little zoomy thing and ends up on top of the mailbox instead. Wilford tries to catch him there and he zooms away again. The whole time, Kwicky continues to serenely talk to himself as if he hasn't even noticed Wilford, about how the letter is from a contest he entered, and he hopes maybe that he won some of his favourite food, eucalyptus leaves. Then he gets inside his house in time to "accidentally" slam the door on Wilford.
As you can probably see, the backgrounds in this show are quite minimalist. I don't know if it was a cost-cutting thing - this was Hanna-Barbera, after all - but it makes the characters stand out pretty sharply.
The mention of eucalyptus leaves gives Wilford an idea, and he sets about building a trap outside the house. He turns to the camera to explain it - there is a eucalyptus leaf on top of a hole covered by branches, and then... well, he unintentionally gives us a demonstration, as he accidentally steps in the hole himself.
Wilford: From here on it's pretty obvious!
Stepping into the hole sets off a kind of Rube Goldberg machine - he gets dragged up by a plunger, sprayed with water, bounced off a mattress, and blown by a fan into a safe, which locks on him. It's an "Ace Safe Co." safe - if they're trying to play on Acme, that's not something Looney Tunes can claim to own (it was a common company name when they started using it), so they would have been safe to use the real name. But anyway, Wilford is somehow able to reach out of the safe and unlock it - I hope he built it to make sure Kwicky wouldn't also be able to do that!
He sets up the trap again, and gets out of the way, before Kwicky comes out of his house again, marvelling at what a beautiful day it is, in his delightful manner. The koala sees the leaf, eats it, and walks away unscathed, despite stepping on the branches. Wilford comes to see what's wrong with the trap - steps on the branches himself - and yes, gets caught and goes through the whole sequence again.
Kwicky, talking to himself again, tells us that he's been selected as "winner for a day" and won a free luxury cruise. Wilford says "free, my foot" - he likes to say "my foot", it seems to be something of a catchphrase for him - and declares that Kwicky will pay. A-ha-ha.
At the cruise ship, Kwicky gets out of the fancy car that brought him there, followed by his luggage, which is walking by itself on suspiciously wolf-like feet and is labelled "KWIKY KWALLA". I wonder what that could be? And for anyone else who's thinking of a certain other Luggage about now, this is two years before Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic.
So now Kwicky is on the ship, and Wilford is struggling to get out of the suitcase.
Kwicky: I think I'll unpack later.
Wilford: No! No! Unpack now! Unpack now!
"Luckily" for Wilford, when Kwicky leaves the room without him, Wilford crashes into the door and the suitcase opens (well, it looks pretty much destroyed). I have to wonder whether the suitcase really had been Kwicky's and wasn't just Wilford's disguise - he seems to acknowledge it as his luggage when he says he'll unpack later, but the bad spelling made me think it was just the disguise, unless Kwicky can't spell his own name! Of course, some of Kwicky's obliviousness is definitely intentional, so even if it wasn't his real luggage he could still be playing around.
Later, Kwicky is relaxing on a deckchair outside on the ship, lamenting that the trip is lonely on his own, so Wilford decides to keep him company, forcefully - but of course, Kwicky casually escapes his clutches once again, immediately continuing to whine in a different chair. The wolf's second attempt gets him trapped in a folded chair - when Kwicky finally realises he's there, politely greeting him from on top of his head as if nothing's unusual. Have I mentioned how cute he is?
Another little time skip, and Wilford is hiding in a... um... one of those pipe-looking things on ships. But a portable one, so he's sneaking up behind Kwicky in it. A sailor greets Kwicky and then pours the bucket of water he's holding into the pipe, so I suppose the pipe is for disposing of water or something. I'm not a sailing expert... Anyway, Wilford is of course soaked.
Wilford: Must've been a... tropical storm!
Then Wilford goes back to basics with a net, repeatedly trying to catch Kwicky, who zips away each time while casually asking the wolf whether he's enjoying the trip. Wilford ends up tangled in his own net! He tries to get Kwicky when he's going up some stairs, and gets his muzzle flattened by someone's shoe! He tries to get Kwicky when he's hoping to play some shuffleboard, and gets an octopus by mistake! The octopus was just casually moving along the deck of the boat - I'm curious whether it's another sentient animal or just wildlife, as it doesn't speak.
In the next scene, Kwicky sits down to eat dinner, lifts up a cloche to find Wilford - "wolf Wellington", as he calls himself here, although there's no sign of any pastry - and somehow this works, Wilford running out of the dining room with the koala in his hands! No zoom if he's already been grabbed?
Next we see Wilford securing the string around a parcel, you would assume containing Kwicky. Wilford starts remembering the "bad things" Kwicky did to him, as we see a thought bubble of Wilford falling into his own trap, and Kwicky's voice echoes (because he's inside the box?), pointing out that he didn't have anything to do with any of that. The wolf tells him to shut up, as he hammers nails into a crate - where's he getting all this stuff?
Wilford: Hush up, I know what I'm remembering! A wolf never forgets!
Kwicky: That's an elephant!
Then he's putting a padlock around a chest, and finally he dumps that off the side of the boat into a little wooden rowboat... immediately putting a hole in the boat. He starts rowing and starts sinking, and has to admit that the one thing he forgot is that he can't swim. Kwicky, voice still echoing, says that he can swim, and Wilford starts desperately trying to unlock the chest, gets it open, and the crate, and the parcel, and... can't find Kwicky, who suddenly appears behind him. Where was he all this time, for his voice to be echoing?!
The short ends with Kwicky rowing Wilford back to the ship - yes, using Wilford as a raft, and admonishing him for not learning to swim!
Now for another Bungle Brothers section. Joey is casually petting a whale in a pool - this is the main reason I'm getting "circus" vibes from their sections, I think - when George comes in with a bunch of horns and a bodysuit, telling Joey to put on the latter, resulting in an accident involving Joey's foot and George's mouth:
Once the outfit is on, George tells Joey he's going to be a "trained seal", and gets him to honk out Yankee Doodle on the horns. Joey proceeds to play something that sounds nothing like Yankee Doodle, but anyway, he gets stuck on one note, and George does the classic thing of looking into the end of the horn to see what the problem is - he gets blown away, and ends up on top of the whale!
Joey: Gee, George, if you wanted to do an act with the whale, why didn't you just say so?
The next short, "Gold Crazy", stars Crazy Claws. He's a wild cat that's always being hunted by Rawhide Clyde, who has a big beard and a Southern accent... so yes, Crazy is this show's Bugs Bunny, and he has the personality to match - in fact, he sounds just like Groucho Marx, who was a big influence on Bugs in the first place.
The toon starts with Clyde's dog, Bristletooth, who is the non-speaking "normal animal" type, following a trail of footprints:
Clyde: Keep sniffing, Bristletooth, 'cause I thinks we's getting real close!
They proceed to bump right into Crazy! I'm not going to note every single quip and one-liner that Crazy makes in this cartoon, as they're pretty constant, but he ends up jumping right into Clyde's hands while feigning fear of the wildcat Clyde is hunting, as if it's not himself.
Crazy: You call those hands? They look more like rejects from a gopher. You know, what you need is a manicure. If you were a girl, you'd need a girlicure. If you were a dog, you'd need a pedicure!
Once Clyde drops him in annoyance, Crazy starts cleaning up his own nails instead, and finds what he calls "one of those bothersome baubles", but what Clyde immediately recognises as a lump of gold. As Crazy leaves, Clyde tells Bristletooth that Crazy must have some big stash of gold somewhere, and that they have to keep the cat safe until he happens to lead them to it... completely failing to realise that the two of them are right in front of a cave mouth with a big sign over it that says "Gold Mine".
Ahhh... I love a stupid villain.
So Clyde starts trying to talk a lot nicer to Crazy than usual, as a park ranger, apparently named Ranger Rangerfield, hammers a sign outside the mine that says "Keep Out".
Crazy: Now, that means dangerous to enter.
Clyde: Oh yeah? Well me and my hound dog, we laughs at danger! Don't we, Bristletooth?
Bristletooth: [laughs nervously, sweating]
Clyde and Bristletooth stride in as the Ranger warns them it's dangerous, and almost immediately there's a crashing sound as part of the cave collapses and they fall to their deaths - I mean, they fall, landing on their heads. They're not dead. Sorry for the confusion.
Now Clyde and Bristletooth are searching around the mine to find Crazy - we never actually saw Crazy go in so I suppose we're skipping ahead a little. Clyde refers to Crazy as "that phony 24-carat cat", and Crazy pops out from around a corner, quipping that he doesn't have any carrots but can offer a head of lettuce, holding it up as proof. Crazy wanders off again and Clyde worries that, if Crazy gets away, so does the gold - yes, Clyde somehow still hasn't realised that he's literally in a gold mine!
Clyde and Bristletooth follow Crazy into one of the more dangerous parts of the mine, and they nearly get killed by a collapsing beam, which they catch:
Not only is Crazy in this part of the cave, but the Ranger is there too for some reason. There's a bat hanging upside down from the beam, which he points out, not even bothering to acknowledge the characters holding it up:
Ranger: Well, well! Look what I see! A bat!
Crazy: Good! I'll go get my ball and mitt, and we'll have a game!
After some more banter of this sort, we have what I assume to be a bit of attempted education, where the Ranger explains how bats used high-pitched squeaks to see, in a manner similar to radar. When Clyde doubts this, the bat shrieks so loud that the beam and the rocks collapse onto him and Bristletooth! I'm pretty sure a bat's ultrasound is too high-pitched for us to hear and isn't loud enough to collapse a cave, so - attempt at education: failed.
Anyway, the Ranger wants Clyde and Bristletooth out of there, but they still can't move, so Crazy decides to help, by... spinning his claws like a circular saw?! I love that I have no reference for whether this is a random cartoony gag in this one scene, or the very reason for the character's name.
When the dust clears, Clyde and Bristletooth are free, but Crazy is gone. They find a minecart somewhere and start rolling along, but Bristletooth rocks it too much in excitement at spotting Crazy, and they end up speeding down the track towards him! Clyde still doesn't want Crazy to get hurt, so the two of them "make like a cowcatcher" in order to pick him up instead of crushing him. Meanwhile, Rangerfield is walking towards them in the other direction, sees what's heading towards him, and starts to flee, resulting in this striking scene:
The Ranger ends up running out onto thin air as the cart rounds a corner, and does the classic cartoon bit of hovering for a second before falling - although for some reason he says "put me down!" as he does so, suggesting to me that something was lost in translation between dialogue and animation.
As the rest of them continue to speed along, Clyde demands to know where the gold is, and Crazy shows him - by jumping out of Clyde's hands right before the cart crashes into a huge boulder, the surface of which crumbles to reveal it's full of gold! Wow, Crazy really did know where to find some!
Clyde starts celebrating his newfound fortune ("Gold! GOOOOOOLD!"), but the Ranger approaches, informing him that the law says that any gold found in this mine belongs to the park department. And presumably Clyde was making too much noise while celebrating, because the whole place starts to shake!
Clyde: What's that?
Crazy: It's those noisy upstairs neighbours again.
Clyde: Let's vamoose!
Crazy: We don't have time for that. Let's get out of here!
As they flee, the Ranger lets everyone know that you have to be silent to avoid a cave-in. Nice time to tell everyone that! They get outside, but Clyde doubts there was going to be a cave-in, and runs back in, yelling about "GOOOOOLD!" again - and of course, the cave collapses on him. His head pops out of the rubble, his hat crushed by massive slabs of gold...
Clyde: But then, you've always had rocks in your head anyway!
The third and final Bungle Brothers short of the episode gives us Joey in a ballerina outfit, and George holding a bunch of flowers, all for their latest act. Joey is complaining that he can't do ballet because he can't get up on his toes, which he demonstrates, jumping around with a noticeable lack of grace. In frustration, George throws down the flowers and walks away, at which point, a bee flies out of the bunch:
Joey, upset at letting George down, is trying to get him to come back, for which purpose he is crouched down and looking off-stage. He's in the perfect position for the bee to sting him right in the arse, which it does. And Joey starts hopping around in pain... on his toes! George comes back in time to see this and congratulate Joey on his improvement. So, you know, as long as there's a bee around when they have to perform the act...
OK, we're up to the final short! "A Close Encounter of the Canine Kind", starring Dirty Dawg, a wily homeless dog, whose main adversary is a police officer called Bullhorn. So I suppose the main inspiration here is Top Cat - pretty redundant, as he's already a Hanna-Barbera character they would've just been able to use! Comparing this to Top Cat, though, I'm thankful for the absence of the laugh track.
And so we begin. Dirty Dawg is walking along with his sidekick, Ratso the Rat. Ratso is complaining about how hungry he is - because, y'know, they're homeless - but the suave dog picks him up and reassures him:
Dirty: Relax, my ravenous rodent! Our din-din dilemma is over!
He's spotted a nearby cinema, where they'll be able to eat a meal and watch a film - but how will they get in with no money? That's easy - they walk in backwards, talking about how great the film they just watched was, and say goodnight to the man at the door, who doesn't realise what has just happened until it's too late! The big sign above the cinema lets us know they're currently showing "Space Saucer", but a poster to the right is advertising their next film, which appears to be about a monstrous version of Crazy Claws.
So they're in the cinema, eating popcorn and watching a movie, when it becomes suddenly clear that the popcorn they're eating belongs to Officer Bullhorn, who's sitting right next to them!
Ratso immediately begs forgiveness and blames it all on Dirty, before the two of them run off, chased by Bullhorn, baffling the cinema employee even more. Dirty and Ratso jump safely into an alleyway. Ratso is annoyed because he wanted to see that "flying saucer movie", and Dirty tells him there's no such thing as flying saucers - I feel like that's an odd observation considering they were only talking about watching a movie, and on top of that, he's immediately proven wrong when one lands right in front of them!
Dirty and Ratso are cowering inside a pile of cars, when a short yellow alien with a screen on the top of his helmet emerges from the flying saucer, and fires a ray gun, which makes the cars fly away but leaves Dirty and Ratso behind (and yes, they briefly remain in the air for a second before falling down).
The alien declares that he's taking the two Earthlings prisoner, but Dirty has his eye on that marvellous gun - a "rip-off ray", as the alien calls it. Dirty claims that he has an even more powerful weapon, a "zap-o-whacker" - in other words, his umbrella. He "fires" it at Ratso, who gives a very over-dramatic death performance, and the alien is so impressed that he takes the umbrella, handing off his old gun to Dirty! See what I mean about him being very Top Cat?
Anyway, Bullhorn shows up, and is enraged by the illegally parked flying saucer, writing up a ticket for all the things wrong with it. The alien slides over to him - literally slides, that's how he moves, despite having feet.
Alien: Stop, Earthling! You are my prisoner!
Bullhorn: Very funny, but Hallowe'en is over!
The alien starts zapping him with the umbrella, so Dirty makes sure the alien doesn't work out what's happened by using the ray gun on Bullhorn. The effect is to remove some, but nowhere near all, of his clothes - although he certainly acts like he's been stripped naked! Is this where levels of modesty were at in 1981?
Is moving stuff around all this gun can actually do, by the way? Why did the alien think it was so powerful in the first place?
Bullhorn, now fully convinced of the alien threat, flees. The alien gets angry that he escaped and starts jumping up and down, making everything shake - how heavy can he be?! Dirty calms him down by telling him there are plenty of Earthlings to capture if he follows him into town, and the three of them head off, the alien apparently not finding it odd that Ratso is alive again.
Dirty leads them to a supermarket, which he assures the alien is full of Earthlings, and the alien orders him to zap them out - what he does instead is zap a load of food into a shopping trolley he seems to have conveniently prepared:
Bullhorn, witnessing this, is determined to catch all of them, anticipating a medal, presumably because of the alien involvement. But the alien, angry at still not having caught any Earthlings, jumps up and down again, causing the groceries to go flying, and a pumpkin lands on Bullhorn's head. As he stumbles around blind, he's spotted:
Alien: A Centaurian Bobblehead! Run for your lives!
The alien grabs Dirty and Ratso and zooms along, dragging them behind, while Bullhorn stumbles into the trolley and crashes into a telephone pole (shedding the pumpkin in the process). The alien threatens to take Dirty and Ratso back to his galaxy if they don't find him an Earthling, so Dirty points out the newly re-humanised Bullhorn - the alien is a little too dim to realise that's the same person as the "Centaurian" he just saw. Bullhorn is making a desperate call (there's a phone on the pole) to his chief to explain that aliens are invading, and it should not be surprising that the chief hangs up on him!
The alien, still with Dirty and Ratso in tow, pursues Bullhorn, who runs away, but forgets to let go of the phone, and gets pulled back by the phone's wire - everyone crashes into everyone else, and the whole mess ends up with Dirty, Ratso, and the alien in what looks like a junkyard. In the absence of Bullhorn, the alien declares he's going to take Dirty and Ratso back, but then:
Another alien appears on the helmet-screen, clearly our alien's superior, and demands a report. The boss alien isn't impressed by Dirty and Ratso - "Is that the best you can find?" - and when the boss realises the alien has also been tricked into trading his gun for an umbrella, which he charmingly refers to by the old-timey American name of "bumbershoot", he recalls the alien. The alien, the spaceship, and the ray gun all vanish into thin air. Hey, if they can do that, why the spaceship?
Just then, Bullhorn, who still thinks Dirty and Ratso were working with the alien, comes out of hiding, and Dirty sees the opportunity for one final trick, acting as if the alien was a good friend of theirs who could be back any time to take over. So Bullhorn takes his two new "friends" to dinner on him, as the flying saucer flies away in the distance...
...Wait, didn't it vanish?