Although this show has held up well for over half a century, there's no denying that it's extremely strange and probably not something that today's kids would even get.The first bizarre thing to happen is Peabody explaining how he has come to own a boy.It seems like the kind of origin story that could mess up a kid.After the first episode they make an intro for them and it shows Peabody in various places in time even though he explained in the first episode that he built the Way-Bac machine just so his boy could have a place to play.But it's weird in a good way and I love the constant recapping of the story for some reason.I was going to watch the whole first season before I reviewed this but after hearing Bullwinkle read a poem called "I Love Little Pussy", I had to get this done.Yes that's really a poem that he read.Game over, Bullwinkle wins.

Huge irony, as animation (aided by computers) is being re-discovered in the present, that the highest compliment one can pay to an animated feature in our current age is to say that "the market is kids, but adults will find things in the script to enjoy also." Folks, here is big revelation. That trick is not new. In fact, the producers of this ground-breaking series, Jay Ward and Bill Scott, not only invented that approach, they virtually patented it. The segments, especially the poetry, fractured fairy tales, and trips back in history, had puns within puns within puns. And, of course, puns only work if you already know the answer, so in effect this series was written by adults, for adults, and, in order to bring home a paycheck, I am sure these guys had to console themselves with the inevitable truth that the vast majority of their audience would, unfortunately, be children. (But, through the magic of DVD, streaming video and God-knows-what-new-media will arrive in the decades to come, adults can finally get a chance to match wits with the writers of this half-century old show.) And the casting? William Conrad was a "force" in Hollywood in those days, directing behind the scenes, doing voice-overs, and ultimately had his own show (Cannon). Horton had one of the most distinctive voices in the history of TV, with a pitch un-matched even to the present. And Hans Conried actually appeared on talk shows of the era to show how many different voices he could do. Even the intros to the commercials were unique and ahead of their time -- "SAY ROCKY WATCH ME PULL A RABBIT OUT OF A HAT!" Defines the word "classic."

As a kid, I wasn't a big fan of the Saturday morning kid shows, even though I was a TV addict. But then I discovered "Rocky and His Friends". What a difference! Clever, witty plots and dialog - even the episode titles were hilarious. Then some network executive with brains and imagination (a rare breed) apparently noticed that some of the jokes were going over the heads of the kids, and adults would enjoy them more. Theshow moved to a different network and to a Sunday evening time slot, so the whole family could watch. The format changed slightly, and the title became "The Bullwinkle Show." But the wit remained, and the show became a long-running success.Now, more than four decades later, the show has held up very well. It is still funny, still full of surprises. And the humor is still far above the level of most of the comedy shows on TV (live or animated).As a teenager, I thought I understood the humor in the name of the villain Boris Badinov (bad enough, get it?) It took me another fifteen years to realize that it is also a pun on the name of the Russian opera Boris Gudinov. I wonder how long it will take before I get ALL the plays on words in all the episodes.By the way, fans of this show should look out for "Sheep in the Big City", which, though by no means a copy, is obviously inspired by Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Long before Bart, Homer and the rest of the Simpsons came along; this show revolutionized animated cartoons and showed that cartoons could not only be entertaining, but could also provide a great deal of social satire. This was definitely the crowning achievement of Jay Ward and his troop of actors and writers. This also was the first cartoon series that could appeal to both adults and children. It appealed to children because its two titular stars were a couple of fuzzy animals and the adults were able to get into it because of the fact that it provided a great deal of social and political satire that they could relate to, especially in the dark days of the Cold War. Also, the supporting features (Peabody and Sherman, Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop and Son) all helped make this one of the most entertaining and influential cartoon series ever.