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:
