The Beagles (partially found animated series; 1966-1967)

Cover of the album "Here Come The Beagles."

Status: Partially Found

The Beagles was the last cartoon produced by Total Television Productions. It aired on CBS from September 10th, 1966, to September 2nd, 1967. It was inspired by the rock group The Beatles, who had a cartoon series (produced by King Features) airing on ABC. The show focuses on the lives of the members of "The Beagles," including Stringer (voiced by Mort Marshall), Tubby (voiced by Allen Swift, a recurring voice actor for TTV dating back to The King and Odie), and their manager Scotty (also voiced by Allen Swift).

While Joe Harris (co-founder of Total Television and creator of Underdog) mentioned in an interview with Mark Arnold for the 2009 book Created and Produced by Total Television Productions that he has the masters of the show, it's unknown whether or not DreamWorks Classics, the current rights holder, will help or hinder a re-release of the series onto a new medium. Much like its sister show Underdog, The Beagles episodes were typically told in four-part stories, with two per 30-minute episodes, with the exception of the first and final episodes. YouTube channel “dandydeal” has uploaded the first two parts of the episode Man in the Moon, with a slightly obscured outro, and both parts for the final episode, I Feel Like Humpty Dumpty. The YouTube channel “toontracker” has uploaded the first part of the episode “Foreign Legion Flops.”

The “dandydeal” channel later disappeared, though the Man in the Moon episodes were also uploaded by the channel “The Hardy Boys Cartoon Show,” with its watermarks intact. The Humpty Dumpty episode, however, disappeared.

Rediscovery

According to producer Joe Harris, the series' editor died on the job, and his widow threw out the editing material and the master negatives. When Golden Books acquired part of Broadway Video's catalogue in 1996, neither company had possession of the series' master tapes. However, the original broadcast negatives and audio tracks of all the episodes were discovered in a warehouse. As of 2009, Harris had possession of the master tapes. The series has never been released on home video due to legal issues; probably because of music licensing.

On March 26, 2021, the YouTube channel “Total TeleVision Cartoons” uploaded the entirety of The Beagles original songs, which includes a song from every episode. On July 25, 2021, they uploaded the complete I Feel Like Humpty Dumpty. On Jan 22, 2022, the same channel uploaded parts one and two for the episodes Foreign Legion Flops and Man in the Moon (without watermarks), along with previews for the part three of these episodes. They were also uploaded to Archive.org.

On February 23, 2022, Twitter user “aleslostmedia” posted a thread revealing animation cels from various episodes and storyboards from at least two, originally posted on eBay by “investorcollectables,” on Hakes.com by an unknown user, and printed in the book Created and Produced by Total Television Productions.

External Links

• IMDb page on the show. Retrieved 30 Jan '16
• Wikipedia article on The Beagles. Retrieved 30 Jan 17.