scatman crothers

As Brad mentioned several months ago, they're making a big-screen version of Hong Kong Phooey? It comes out in 2011. For some reason I have the theme song stuck in my head today, even though I haven't seen an episode in 30 years. Here's the opening credits. Scatman Crothers did the voice of the janitor/kung fu master.

By the way, he was a dog who changed into the superhero by going into a filing cabinet. Seriously.

There are two cartoons I remember very fondly and distinctly from my days as a youngster. Both of them ceased production before I was born, but I gobbled them up in reruns. The first was Underdog, and the second was Hong Kong Phooey. So, naturally, I was ecstatic when I found out that all thirty-one episodes of Hong Kong Phooey, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon which featured Scatman Crothers as the voice of an inept crime-fighting dog who knows kung fu, would be coming out on DVD on August 15. Of course, when Phooey wasn't fighting crime he worked as mild-mannered (all super hero alter egos are mild-mannered) janitor Penrod "Penry" Pooch.  The DVD set will also feature a documentary on the making of the series.

Oh yeah, and the complete series of Magilla Gorilla comes out on the same day, but I never watched that.

[via ToonZone]