It’s hardly surprising that the fantasy of a child who overwhelms adults, including his parents, would have an enduring appeal for kids.
“Huge, clumsy, innocently destructive kid … diminutive father, perennially angry but resigned … ditzy mom who loves both and is blind to the conflict between them — that’s a perfect description of The Three Bears, a minor series of cartoons Chuck Jones directed at Warner Bros. in the late 1940s,” observed comics historian Don Markstein.
“But the characters best known for those traits are the family of Baby Huey, whose creation is attributed to animator Marty Taras (Rags Rabbit), who designed the character. Huey’s family may have been totally derivative of the Jones creation, but they lasted far, far longer.”
Huey made his cartoon debut in 1950 in Quack a Doodle Doo. Harvey Comics licensed the character from Famous Studios for a healthy, decades-long run, spinning off titles such as Baby Huey & Papa and Baby Huey Duckland.
Comic books and comic strips have always supplied characters to the movies, and vice versa. That was particularly obvious at Harvey Comics.
For example, Joe Palooka — a comic strip hero created in 1930 and also published in Harvey comic books — made his movie debut in 1934, with Jimmy Durante appearing as Knobby. Felix the Cat, a silent film animated character created in 1919, also had a lengthy Harvey run.
Huey circled back to his original medium in 1999 with a live-action musical comedy, Baby Huey’s Great Easter Adventure, that pretty much vanished without a ripple.
