by Moe Zilla

Created on: June 17, 2008   Last Updated: June 18, 2008

"Here Comes The Grump" was a favorite cartoon in 1969, and it was so fanciful that the Science Fiction channel re-broadcast it in the 1990s. "Get 'em, dragon!" shouts the shaggy-haired grump, chasing two teenagers flying away in their giant balloon. But something always goes wrong - a wall, a low branch, a moat, or a manhole. "Whoa, dragon. Whoa!" the grump shouts - but always too late.

Every episode of the cartoon included some variation on that joke. The dragon stops abruptly, and the grump bounces down his neck and straight into a catastrophic collision. "You stupid dragon," he mutters bitterly. And sometimes the dragon would sneeze - leaving the grump blackened and bitter. "You stupid dragon," he'd mutter again...

Those jokes were borrowed from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, when Yosemite Sam was "the Black Knight," a medieval bully also plagued by a sneezing dragon. But the grump inherited the joke honestly, because he shared the same animator as Yosemite Sam. (When Warner Brothers closed their animation department in 1963, director Friz Freleng had started a new studio with David H. DePatie.) Their animations became famous - including the Pink Panther opening credits and the opening credits for "I Dream of Jeannie". But "Here Comes The Grump" represents their playful expansion into full-length TV cartoons for Saturday Morning.

Each episode opens in "mid-chase," and it's one of those shows where the theme song sets up its premise.

"In a magic place
There's a princess caught in a chase.
And no matter how fast she goes
right on her heels, it goes...
Here comes the grump! Here comes the grump!"

Through the magical lands they run, Princess Dawn and her new friend Terry (a red-haired boy with the friendly voice of Jay North, who'd played Dennis the Menace in the TV sitcom). They enter funny new kingdoms with names like Jack-in-Boxia, Balloonie-Woonie land, or the Great Thorn Forest. And the friendly inhabitants would always end up creating surprise traps for their pursuer - the determined but unsuspecting grump.

Only 17 episodes were filmed, each with two 10-minutes segments, so each story moved quickly to the grump's come-uppance. Balloonie Woonies hoist a brick wall in front of his flying dragon. Peter Paintbrush draws the grump into a birdcage. The dopey King of Gagville throws the grump in jail for refusing to laugh at his jokes. The Wheelies of Wheelieville shove a firehose down the dragon's mouth.

Some episodes included a token line about how the princess was searching

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