More than three decades after he disappeared into syndication obscurity, cartoon character Mr. Quincy Magoo, the oblivious, nearsighted geezer too stubborn to wear glasses, is back to amuse a new generation of viewers, and to tickle the memories of their Baby Boomer parents and grandparents.
Only now, instead of stumbling across black-and-white TV screens, Magoo is out on DVD — another instance of old pop culture being recycled for contemporary pop culture.
The old Magoo, voiced by the late Jim Backus (so memorable in Gilligan's Island), can be seen and heard in Mr. Magoo in Sherwood Forest($9.93), a rerelease of an old favorite from the 1960s TV show. (Magoo plays Friar Tuck in the Robin Hood tale.)
The new Magoo, voiced by Jim Conroy, is out in Kung Fu Magoo ($14.93 ), in which Mr. M and nephew Justin fight giant robot spiders, ninjas on jet skis, and a clutch of super-villains in a kung-fu-style comic adventure.
"It's an all-audience picture, but it accomplishes the purpose of introducing Magoo to a new generation of viewers, with something for the generation that grew up watching him," says Eric Ellenbogen, CEO of Classic Media, which recently released the DVDs.
Created in 1949 for theatrical cartoon shorts, Mr. Magoo went viral, so to speak, in the '60s in The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which featured Magoo blundering his way through satirical retellings of classic literature and fairy tales.
"Why did he ever leave? He was such a strong character," says Darrell Van Citters, a California animator, self-described historian of Magoo and author of a book about the cartoon curmudgeon. "He's a character based on human truth and human failings, and that's what makes him resonate with audiences."
Indeed, Magoo matters in American pop culture and in the history of animation, Van Citters argues.
Who knew that the first animated Christmas special on American TV involved Magoo? It was 1962's Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, a musical adaption of Dickens' story. It was a huge hit, involved major musical stars of the era, and inspired the TV tradition of holiday specials we have to this day, says Van Citters, author of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special.
"This is the one that started it all — it's the granddaddy of animated holiday specials," he says.
At one point in the early 1960s, he says, Magoo was second in familiarity only to Andy Griffith with the American TV audience, thanks to his show, which went into syndication in the late 1970s. A catchphrase from the show, "Oh, Magoo, you've done it again," caught on, too. Magoo also was on TV regularly as an advertising spokesman for General Electric (like Ronald Reagan), and as late as 2005 he was the face and eyes of Sterling Optical ads. In a 2009 Vanity Fair interview, Dustin Hoffman even named Mr. Magoo as his favorite "hero of fiction."
In 2000, Classic Media acquired the successor of the old UPA animation studio (known for its lush style of animation) that created Magoo, along with other Boomer-familiar cartoon characters such as Casper the Friendly Ghost.
"We are the stewards of these properties," Ellenbogen says. "We look at what made them appealing to begin with and then make new versions."
In a similar move, Warner Bros. is bringing back the Looney Tunes characters in a new series for the Cartoon Network in the fall starring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The studio also will send Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner back to theaters in new 3-D cartoon short.
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