FOCUS ON: Animation : Timeless Toons Tour the Galleries

Yogi and Boo Boo . . . Fred and Barney . . . Tom and Jerry . . .

Since their inception in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, these comedy teams have been synonymous with success. Baby boomers, hippies, yippies and yuppies have tuned in, at one time or another, to the animated antics of these timeless toons.

Just as timeless is the prolific team that created these animated duos, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, whose Hanna-Barbera Productions is the world’s leading producer of animated entertainment.

In celebrating their 50th anniversary as creative partners and their 30th as corporate partners, Hanna and Barbera are touring with an exhibit of signed, limited-edition cels--single celluloid panels of original art--featuring some of their most popular characters.

Barbera and Hanna opened their first exhibition on Wednesday at Circle Gallery in San Diego. The cels will be shown worldwide in more than 30 galleries owned by Chicago-based Circle Fine Art Corp.

“It’s great,” Barbera said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “We are at the peaks of expansion, and are delighted with new ideas--showing our various cels in art galleries is a whole new market.”

About 150 brightly colored cels featuring such animated characters as Scooby Doo, Top Cat, the Flintstones and the Jetsons will liven the gallery’s walls through Sept. 21.

The 8-by-11 inch Hanna-Barbera cels have been selling for $500 to $700, according to Circle Gallery director Barbara Cox.

“A lot of people grew up with these characters,” Cox said. “So they’ve been a pretty popular exhibit.”

The Hanna-Barbera stable of animated characters are known worldwide and remain as popular today as ever.

“We didn’t know we were creating something that would go on forever,” Barbera said. “But animation has proved to be timeless. I love it when I hear people saying, ‘I was raised on your stuff.’ ”

For Hanna and Barbera, who were presented the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at Sunday’s Emmy Awards show, it’s just the beginning.

Besides gallery showings, Barbera said, they are working on a new Flintstones pilot, a new Scooby Doo series and--by popular demand from his fans--they are running 65 episodes of Yogi Bear in full syndication this fall. They are also producing several videocassettes on the characters they’ve created.

“What we did 25 years ago is running in demand now,” Barbera said. “The warmth and great personalities our characters have seem to appeal to many. People seem to remember them.”