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Why are Hanna-Barbera characters always wearing ties?
Bowties! Bowties everywhere!
Have you ever watched Yogi Bear or The Huckleberry Hound Show and thought, hmm...these guys wear a lot of ties! Yogi Bear has a necktie and collar, Boo-Boo wears a bowtie, Mr. Jinks has a bowtie, Wally Gator has a collar, Snagglepuss has a tie, and if Huckleberry Hound isn't wearing a bowtie, he is wearing a cape or a scarf. Those necks are covered!
But why?!
Is it a formality thing or a modesty thing? Or perhaps a tie makes a bear feel more human? Are they trying to be extra fancy because they're on TV? Why did those guys wear so many ties?
The answer is revealed by animator and lead Hanna-Barbera character designer, Iwao Takamoto in his memoir My Life with a Thousand Characters. Takamoto explains, "The earliest of the Hanna-Barbera characters, such as 'Ruff and Reddy,' 'Huckleberry Hound,' and 'Yogi Bear,' all tended to wear collars and neckties. This was so the head could be easily separated onto its own cel without a seam line." The reason goes back to the Hanna-Barbera developed practice of limited animation, or creating shortcuts so that an animator does not have to redraw an entire picture for each frame (which is how early cartoons like Looney Tunes were drawn). This method of having the character's head on a separate cel from the rest of its body allows the animator to only animate the head when the character is speaking.
Ultimately, the ties gave animators the ability to create cartoons faster, which means more cartoons for us fans!
