Production sketches

I thought I'd better post these pics of Buford and his nemesis that've been floating around the Web lately. Why is the Raccoon's headband not shown?

Some Buford Production Stuff

Not that much stuff available on "The Buford Files," but here are some:

This first one is a background scene of old Jeb Crowly's place from the episodes "Swamp Hermit" and Missing Gator. The backgrounds for Buford were way better than the cheesy animation HB was doing at the time. This scene is very atmosphereic, and evokes place setting of the great Okefenokee Swamp very well. I can almost here the churring of the insects and frogs, and cries of night birds and the bellows of bull gators in the encroaching evening.

This next one is from the episode "The Magic Whammy" which featured the villainous magician The Grat Zambini. A great shot of Fenokee Theatre.

And, finally, an actual production cel of Cindy Mae Boggs, the crafty redheaded leader of the Buford gang! I just uncovered this on ebay, and am bidding on it as I type.

Buford Collectibles

Every once in a great while, some genuine items related to the obscure series The Buford Files actually come to light. As noted previously, sometimes real BF merchandies mostly in

other countries, is discovered. I recently found out that during the late seventies, early eighties, the time when most of HB's toon series weren't doing that well here in the US, the foreign market was rife for comic book readers, and a lot of HB comics, some of them featuring characters and series created during this period, featured in the foreign markets.

Here is an example of some pics I found form a Mexican newspaper on ebay. The actual item, BTW, escaped me--there must be more collectors of this sort of stuff now than there were a few years ago:

 

And yes, that's actually the Raccoon featured in one of the pics on the second page.

Another thing that came to light fairly recently was this production rough for the opening sequence, complete with notes:
 
 







Unfortunately, I couldn't find the rest of the sequence. Over a year ago, I also ran across a partial script for the first episode, with a line drawing of Deputy Goofer drawn in, but I could not locate that. But one never knows what the future may hold...

The Buford Files

The Buford Files was a cartoon about lavender bloodhound dog who lived in Okefenokee Swamp with his teenage pals, the Boggs Twins, Woodie and Cindy Mae. The show was one of various Scooby-Doo clones that poped up throughout the seventies. This one, like Clue Club, focused mainly on how the crimes were done, and did not feature a ghost or monster on the loose (wiht the sole exception of The Haunting of Swamp Manor).
Clue Club DID have some sort of goon in a mosnter costume running around, but the focus was still on the crimes.

Sheriff Bagley on Clue Club may well have been a predecessor to bumbling, overwieght Sheriff Chester "Muletrain" Pettigrew, and his incompetent Deputy, Leroy "Goofer" Mcgee. These two and their bumbling antics largely provided the comic relief. Muletrain considered himself "the Law" in thee parts, and always warned the Boggs Twins and Buford to "stay out of these dangerous situations."



A typical "Buford" episode ended with Buford and his friends solving the case, and handing the crooks over to Muletrain, who then took the credit. Cindy Mae was the leader of the Buford gang, and smartest of the three, while her brother could always understand what Buford mumbled, while she could not.

Cindy Mae was probably the first female leader of teen-mystery gang, other than the Teen Angels, who were all girls save for Captain Caveman himself.

The Little Raccoon provided a mischeivous foil for Buford. He most often showed up in Buford's Walter-Mitty-esque fantasies, where he would be caught. But Buford would always wake before he could harm or kill the raccoon. Outside the dreams, however, the Raccoon could always hold his own against the dog. He was shown less as the series progressed, and left out of the last few episodes. Other characters were Duchess, a show-dog, and a love interest for Buford, intorduced half-way through the season, and Jeb Crowly, a swamp hermit who ahd a pet gator named Gertrude, and who baked the finest Shoo-fly pie in Feneokee




"Buford" was shown during the 78-79 season, perhaps as a response to the movie "Smokey and the Bandit," which featured a fat sterotyped Southern sheriff named Buford (Gleason's Buford T. Justice). It was a fifteen-minute slot, part of Yogi's Space Race. Later it got paired with anohter fifteen, mintue Space Race toon, the Galloping Ghost, in thier own time slot, called "Buford and the Galloping Ghost." This show featured the spirit of a short, squat prospector named Nugget Nose. He, like Buford, was voiced by Frank Welker. Recently, I've noticed online that somewhere Buford his been paired with another 78-79 HB toon called Dinky Dog. Dinky was a huge pooch who was the pet of two girls and annoyed the heck out thier uncle Henry. He too, was voiced by Welker. it made more since to combine Buford with Dinky--they were both canines, after all.











My orginal "Buford" fan page is to be found here:

http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/buford/Buford1.htm

I can't edit it anymore. But I've uncovered a few more "Buford" items since:
A series of porduction drawings, and some color mark-ups. Color mark-ups were gudies used by the animators to color the characters. There is also one additional "Buford" comic strip. All these things may be found here:

http://hannabarberaworld.blogspot.com/search/label/ENG%20-%20Buford%20Files

This site belongs to my friend, Sergio Lehman, a native of Brazil. His an excellent site, featuring hundreds of rare HB items, and oodles of his own reditions of the characters. He did pics of Buford, Cindy Mae and the Raccoon, especially for me.


Also, some of my "Buford" fanart can be found here:

http://tackycat.deviantart.com/gallery/#_featured--5


Also, I found this comic interesting, also form Sergio's site. It's a ultra-rare Brazilian comic:


It is of Quack-Up, of the Galaxy Goof-Ups, another Space Race toon,not Buford. But it's extremely rare to find any item wiht ANY of the 78-79 characters. Als, the unique filmstrip is something else. It's a version of the same filmstrip on the HB comics produced by marvel in the US at the time, only featuring mostly 78-79 characters. Cool! There's Godzookey, Ben Cooper (of Jana of the Jungle), I think Buford (though they got his color wrong), among many others.


UPDATE: Here is another comic, the first apparently in the HB Extra series, and it features the Buford gang on the cover! Anyone seen it???

Here is a link to Serigo's "Buford" page. His site has a wealth of other HB stuff, including much of his onw art.

http://hannabarberaworld.blogspot.com/search/label/ENG%20-%20Buford%20Files

Here you amy find my "Swamp Phantom" story.

http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/buford/Buford8.htm

It is about Woundfoot, a panther (technically a black puma) who raids the Fenokee stockades. At one point, he saves the raccoon from Buford. The story invloves Buford actually getting his fantasies partially granted when he catchs the raccoon. The name of Woundfoot is a corruption of "Weakfoot" another black puma in The Ghost of Cypress Swamp, a Disney TV movie shown around that time. It is based on a book by Patrica Edward Cline. The puma in the book is treated more sympathectically than in the movie, in which he is sort of a semi-villain. in book, Weakfoot is female. Tough she is killed in the book, her offspring, some of which are melanistic, survive in the end. Here is a clip form that fondly remembered movie:




The original Buford Files intro: