The Peter Potamus Show

The Peter Potamus Show is an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for ABC and first broadcast on September 16, 1964. (Early promotional materials for the series carried the title Peter Potamus and his Magic Flying Balloon, but that title never appeared on screen.)

The Peter Potamus Show was a syndicated series consisting of three seperate segments: Peter Potamus and So-So, Breezly and Sneezly and Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey. The Peter Potamus Show was a companion series to The Magilla Gorilla Show, and both series premiered in first-run syndication before being picked up by ABC in 1964. At that time, the Breezly and Sneezly segment was swapped with Ricochet Rabbit & Droop-a-long, a segment on The Magilla Gorilla Show. After the ABC run ended in 1965, cartoons from the Magilla Gorilla and Peter Potamus shows were syndicated together.

The Peter Potamus Show appeared in reruns on Cartoon Network from 1992-2000 (2000 to 2004 via Boomerang program block). In 2000, The series began airing on Cartoon Network's sister channel Boomerang and can occasionally still be seen as part of its programming block "Boomerang Zoo".

During the original run of the cartoon (1964), at the end of each episode, the closing song ended with the phrase: "And there he goes Peter Potamus, our ideal" (The Ideal toy company was the sponsor of the television series. A similarly subtle sponsor reference appeared in the Magilla Gorilla theme song lyrics: "He's really ideal").

Peter Potamus and So-So
It featured Peter Potamus the hippopotamus (voiced by Daws Butler impersonating Joe E. Brown) and his sidekick, So-So the monkey (voiced by Don Messick). Peter was big, purple, and friendly. Episodes generally consisted of Peter and So-So exploring the world in his time-traveling hot air balloon. When faced with a certain situation, Peter uses his Hippo Hurricane Holler technique to blow away his opponents.

Breezly and Sneezly
Breezly Bruin (voiced by Howard Morris) is a comical, resourceful, polar bear. His friend is Sneezly Seal (voiced by Mel Blanc), a droopy seal with a perpetual cold whose sneezes pack devastating power. They live in an igloo in the Arctic. Many of their episodes deal with Breezly's ambitious yet ultimately doomed plans to break into the local army camp for various reasons while trying to stay one step ahead of the army camp's leader Colonel Fuzzby (voiced by John Stephenson)

Yippee, Yappee, and Yahooey
Three dogs named Yippee (voiced by Daws Butler), Yappee (voiced by Hal Smith), and Yahooey (voiced by Doug Young) work as royal guards for their king (voiced by Hal Smith). They must always protect, serve and obey the King. At times, the three heroes find themselves fighting a fire-breathing dragon and other villains. A common mistake in nearly every short is that Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey's voices tend to get mixed up with one another.

Ricochet Rabbit & Droop-a-long
The fastest lawman in the West, Sheriff "ping ping ping" Ricochet Rabbit and his deputy Droop-a-long Coyote kept the peace in the small town of Hoop-n-Holler. Ricochet got his name from his habit of bouncing off objects while chasing bad guys. With the speed to outrun bullets, Ricochet created a gale of wind that pulled everything after him when he took off at top speed. Deputy Droop-a-long, who moved at a considerably slower pace, learned to grab hold of something solid or be deposited in a heap with other loose objects caught in Ricochet’s wake.

Not relying on speed alone to round up the rustlers and bring down the bandits, Ricochet's trick bullets had the quality of being able to circle around or track his target - or to stop mid-air in front of something, then pop open and produce whatever object was needed to finish the job; like a pin to puncture a hot air balloon, a cork to plug a robber's gun or a mallet to strike his opponent on the head. Obviously using a different brand of bullet, most of Droop-a-long's projectiles struggled to exit his gun, then just dropped to the ground.

Cast

 * Daws Butler - Peter Potamus, Yippee
 * Don Messick - So-So, Ricochet Rabbit
 * Howard Morris - Breezly Bruin
 * Mel Blanc - Sneezly, Droop-a-long Coyote
 * John Stephenson - Colonel Fuzzby
 * Hal Smith - Yappee and the King
 * Doug Young - Yahooey

Season 1
Episode 1
 * "Fee Fi Fo Fun"
 * "No Place Like Nome"
 * "The Volunteers"

Episode 2
 * "Lion Around"
 * "All Riot on the Northern Front"
 * "Black Bart"

Episode 3
 * "Cleo Trio"
 * "Missile Fizzle"
 * "Double Dragon"

Episode 4
 * "No Rest for a Pest"
 * "Mass Masquerade"
 * "Outlaw in-Law"

Episode 5
 * "Wagon Train Strain"
 * "Furry Furlough"
 * "Horse Shoo Fly"

Episode 6
 * "Monotony on the Bounty"
 * "Bruin Ruin"
 * "Wild Child"

Episode 7
 * "The Good Hood"
 * "Freezing Fleas"
 * "Witch is Which?"

Episode 8
 * "Stars on Mars"
 * "Stars and Gripes"
 * "Wise Quacking"

Episode 9
 * "Kooky Spook"
 * "Armoured Amour"
 * "Nautical Nitwits"

Episode 10
 * "The Island Fling"
 * "As the Snow Flies"
 * "Job Robbed"

Episode 11
 * "Courtin Trouble"
 * "Snow Biz"
 * "Unicorn on the Cob"

Episode 12
 * "Big Red Riding Hood"
 * "Unseen Trouble"
 * "Mouse Rout"

Episode 13
 * "Hurricane Hippo"
 * "Nervous in the Service"
 * "Handy Dandy Lion"

Episode 14
 * "What a Knight"
 * "Birthday Bonanza"
 * "Sappy Birthday"

Season 2
Episode 15
 * "Mask Task"
 * "Bad Guys Are Good Guys"
 * "King of the Roadhogs"

Episode 16
 * "Pre-Hysterical Pete"
 * "Itchy Finger Gunslinger"
 * "Palace Pal Picnic"

Episode 17
 * "Trite Flite"
 * "Clunko Bunko"
 * "Sleepy Time King"

Episode 18
 * "Marriage Peter Potamus Style"
 * "Slick Quick Gun"
 * "Pie Pie Blackbird"

Episode 19
 * "Calaboose Caboose"
 * "Mostly Ghostly"
 * What the Hex Going On?

Episode 20
 * "Eager Ogre"
 * "Will 'O The Whip"
 * "Eviction Capers"

Episode 21
 * "The Reform of Plankenstein"
 * "Cactus Ruckus"
 * "Hero Sandwiched"

Season 3
Episode 22
 * "Dept and Taxes"
 * "Rapid Romance"
 * "Throne for a Loss"

Episode 23
 * "Wrong Time No See"
 * "El Loco, Loco, Loco, Loco, Diablo"
 * "Royal Rhubarb"

Episode 24
 * "America or Bust"
 * "Big Town Show Down"

Episode 25
 * "Rebel Rumble"
 * "Space Sheriff"

Episode 26
 * "Pilgrims Regress"
 * "Red Riding Ricochet"

Episode 27
 * "The Crossbow Incident"
 * "Jail Break-In"

In Other Media

 * Peter Potamus and So So appeared in Yogi's Ark Lark and its spin-off series Yogi's Gang.
 * Peter Potamus guest starred in some episodes of Yogi's Treasure Hunt.
 * Peter Potamus made a cameo appearance in The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound as a captain of a boat to Tahiti.
 * Peter Potamus appeared in teenager form in the early 1990s series Yo Yogi, voiced by Frank Welker. He and So-So were shown to own a plant store at Jellystone Mall called Peter Potamus' Plant Palace.
 * Peter Potamus and So-So were seen as animatronics in the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Chubby Cheese" during Chubby's song sequence.
 * Peter Potamus was a recurring character on Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, voiced in a Brooklyn accent by Joe Alaskey and later voiced by Chris Edgerly. In the series, he is a sexually charged hippo and a lazy, sleazy lawyer who is forever obsessed with strippers and sandwiches working at the Sebben & Sebben law firm with Harvey Birdman. Peter has the trademark phrase, "Did you get that thing I sent you?"