The partnership of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Also, the animation studio formed by the two shortly before leaving
MGM's animation studio (where they'd spent almost twenty years producing
Tom and Jerry shorts), which came to dominate
Western Animation on television
for decades.Responsible for creating
Scooby-Doo,
The Jetsons,
The Flintstones,
Tom And Jerry,
Yogi Bear,
Space Ghost and many, many more — including the infamous live action acid sequence
KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park.
Hanna-Barbera pioneered the use of many
Limited Animation techniques, such as
Ring Around The Collar, to produce cartoons on a low budget quickly enough to meet a television schedule. The company has been accused of fostering the
Animation Age Ghetto as a result of their popularizing of kiddie fare for
Saturday Morning Cartoons* that is one of the primary elements of the trope
was scarcely ever characteristic of their work. However,
low comedy certainly
was, so maybe such accusations aren't entirely
unfair either.]] They've also been cited as one of the causes of the so-called "
Dark Age of Animation" due to the supposedly low quality of production and writing in their cartoons, especially in the wake of a wave of
knock-offs of their programs (especially
The Flintstones,
The Smurfs and
Scooby-Doo) starting in the 1960s. This wave of copycat cartoons was spurred on by networks searching for the next big hit in that vein, who would then cancel the copycat show when it didn't meet ratings expectations. The low quality of some of their cartoons, probably a by-product of producing so many at once (you could argue that their biggest competitor was themselves), sometimes ran into severe
They Just Didn't Care territory, though some of their shows, such as
Hong Kong Phooey and
The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, are cult classics to this day as a result of their
Narm Charm, while other series, such as
The Herculoids and
Jonny Quest, are little masterpieces of design and layout, and worthy competitors with animated works produced with vastly greater amounts of time and money. They also showed greater ambition with
The Pirates Of Dark Water, which (while not perfect) had a lot more time, money and thought put into the animation and storytelling, although it was sadly
Too Good to Last.
The studio often produced
crossovers starting in
The Seventies, such as
Yogi's Ark Lark and
Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics.
Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law acts as a
Spiritual Successor to that tradition even while unendingly mocking it.
They also produced the films
Charlotte's Web,
Heidi's Song, and
Once Upon a Forest. These have the distinct honor of being the only movies they ever made that did
not feature any of their trademark characters.
Another popular aspect of the company was their distinctive sound effects library. Said sounds have become so common in cartoons that
they have become ingrained in our minds to the point of becoming
Stock Sound Effects.
After the purchase of the studio by Turner Broadcasting in 1991, the studio was an integral part in the founding of
Cartoon Network; while its archives (and the MGM and pre-1948
Looney Tunes library, the post-1948 Looney Tunes coming with the Time Warner acquisition in 1996) filled up the schedule, its studio was revitalized to serve as the network's in-house production unit. Noted programing from this period included
Dexter's Laboratory and
The Powerpuff Girls. The name Hanna-Barbera was retired after Bill Hanna's death in 2001; Cartoon Network programming is handled by Cartoon Network Studios while
Warner Bros.. assumed the production of
Scooby-Doo, the company's
longest-running franchise. Joseph Barbera spent his final years producing new
Tom and Jerry movies and the very first episodes of
Tom and Jerry Tales, returning to his roots.
The Other Wiki
has information about this. See also
The Hanna-Barbera Wiki and
Wang Film Productions, a Taiwanese studio first established by a former employee for outsourcing to (eventually expanding their services to other companies too).
For a complete list of their shows, check out IMDB.com or TV Tome:
List of Hanna-Barbera works:
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