The intrepid heroes of this bizarre early Hanna-Barbara installment.
The Adventures of Don Coyote and Sancho Panda is a 1989 cartoon produced and animated by Hanna-Barbera as part of its defunct cartoon programming block The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera.
Taking direct inspiration from the 17th-century classic novel about a delusional Spanish noble who fancies himself a knight and wishes to live a life bound by an honorable code, the main character is an anthropomorphic coyote who drags his dear panda friend Sancho throughout the countryside, seeking to gain fame as a valiant knight who can best any monster and save beautiful princesses.
The show ran from 1990 (1989 in Italy) and lasted until 1991, with 26 episodes.
Tropes in this work include:
- Anthropomorphic Animal Adaptation: The series took the two leads and turned them into the pun-based animals.
- Belly Dancer: Featured in "Who’s Got the Genie" and "A Knight in Arabia"
- Cloudcuckoolander: Don Coyote's main attribute is being easily swept away by his overactive imagination and pretending reality is nothing but playing knight with everyone around him.
- Foil: Unsurprisingly, the titular characters closely followed the theme of the Cervantes work. The ever-hallucinating Don was the cloudcuckoolander who never met a damsel he didn't have the urge to save or a dragon he didn't have the urge to slay. Sancho remained his loyal, albeit cynical, voice of reason.
- Fully Dressed Cartoon Animal: Sancho Panda is fully clothed.
