CB Bears

1 9 7 7 – 1 9 7 8 (USA)
13 x 60 minute episodes

This 60-minute Saturday morning animated series from Hanna-Barbera aired on NBC from 10 September 1977 to 28 January 1978.

The CB Bears were Hustle (voiced by Daws Butler impersonating Phil Silvers), Boogie (voiced by Chuck McCann) and Bump (voiced by Henry Corden). The trio were detectives disguised as trash collectors and travelled around in a gadget-laden garbage truck.

A sultry-voiced female named Charlie (voiced by Susan Davis) contacted the bears on the truck’s CB radio to give them their assignments. The show was inspired by the hit series Charlie’s Angels. Bump even had a blonde hairstyle similar to Farrah Fawcett.

Other segments on the show were Blast Off Buzzard (a no-dialogue desert chase with a bird pursuing a snake); Posse Impossible (a quartet of bumbling cowboys led by a strong-willed sheriff with deputies Big Duke, Blubber and Stick the hillbilly); Shake, Rattle & Roll (a trio of ghosts running a hotel against the wishes of its operator, Sidney Merciless); Undercover Elephant (with the titular elephant investigating crimes with his partner Loudmouse) and Heyyy, It’s the King! (featuring a city cat, a hippo, an ape, an alligator, a mole, an ostrich and a lioness).

On 4 February 1978, the series was absorbed into the two-hour Go Go Globetrotters, which ran until September.

Hustle
Daws Butler
Boogie
Chuck McCann
Bump
Henry Corden
Charlie
Susan Davis

King
Lennie Weinrib
Big H the Hippopotamus
Sheldon Allman
Clyde the Ape
Don Messick
Sheena the Lioness
Ginny McSwain
Skids the Alligator
Marvin Kaplan
Yukayuka the Hyena
Lennie Weinrib
Zelda the Ostrich
Susan Silo