Saturday, January 28, 2017

Toons You Might've Missed: Possible Possum (1965)

Possible Possum gets his catchphrase, "It's possible, it's possible", from Deputy Dawg's frenemy, Muskie Muskrat, and one must assume that the folks at Terrytoons had Muskie in mind for a spinoff series.

However, in 1965, it was Possible who was the first spinoff from Deputy Dawg. Problem is, Possible's shorts, produced between 1965-8, aren't in general circulation, unlike a lot of other Terrytoons characters. Lionel Wilson performed all the voices, including the Don Messick-esque laugh of the bull, the villain of the piece in this 1965 short, "Hobo Hassle":



As you could by the name of Macon Mouse, these shorts were set in Georgia, while Deputy Dawg & pals were further down south in Florida.

Rating: B.

2 comments:

Chris Sobieniak said...

A local CBS affiliate in my town used to play the Possible Possum cartoons sometime during the mid 80's along with other Terrytoons early Saturday mornings before the CBS schedule came on, they were lumped into a local children's program called "Patches & Pockets", feature two women dressed as rag dolls similar to Raggedy Ann and Andy.

The Intro used by Dandy Deal is really an "International intro" used outside the US for the Terrytoons in general. I was told this from someone I follow on Facebook since I remember this intro from one of the VHS tapes sold in the 80's that had it at the start. These later 60's cartoons never had end credits at all as CBS and later Viacom often removed these for TV releases thinking nobody would care to know anyway.

Ironically, though the studio closed up in '68, the cartoons including James Hound, The Mighty Heroes, Sadcat and Possible Possum continued to be distributed by 20th Century Fox for another few years right until 1971, which makes it pretty weird to see cartoons that had already been played on TV showing up in theaters years later.

hobbyfan said...

Per Wikipedia (not always reliable, I know), 1971 or '72 sounds about right.

There's more Terrytoons obscurities coming soon.