Yogi the Easter Bear

Yogi the Easter Bear is a 1994 animated television special starring Yogi Bear and produced by Hanna-Barbera which was broadcast in syndication on April 3, 1994. This was the last time Don Messick voiced both Boo Boo and Ranger Smith (his last being Arabian Nights which was also first aired in 1994). Messick died in 1997.

Plot

Ranger Smith's boss, the Supreme Commissioner, is attending Jellystone Park's Easter Jamboree. Concerned about making sure the event goes off perfectly, Smith picks out an Easter Bunny suit and orders a truckload of candy for the celebration, ordering his guard, Mortimer, to watch over the candy truck and keep Yogi Bear away from eating any of the candy. Mortimer, however, is legally blind and Yogi steals the Easter Bunny outfit, tricks Mortimer into thinking he is the real Easter Bunny, and eats all the candy in the truck.

Smith is furious and threatens to ship Yogi off to the Siberian Circus, but Boo Boo offers to find the real Easter Bunny to fix things. Smith states that he stopped believing in the Easter Bunny after he didn't get a double-decker raspberry-filled dark chocolate egg from him; he nonetheless accepts Boo Boo's offer. Yogi and Boo Boo seek out the Grand Grizzly in the mountains to see if he knows anything about the Easter Bunny's whereabouts. The Grand Grizzly instructs Yogi and Boo Boo to seek the big ears in the sky (a grassy hillside in the shape of a rabbit's head). They reach the mountain, using the park's hot air balloon, only to find that the Easter Bunny has been kidnapped.

Behind the kidnapping is a short and deranged businessman named Paulie, hellbent on replacing all of the world's Easter eggs with plastic ones, and his massive but dim-witted sidekick named Ernest, who Paulie hired as a spokesperson and is always seen in a yellow bunny suit. Yogi and Boo Boo follow a trail of jelly beans to the factory, where the Easter Bunny is being held captive above a vat of molten plastic. Posing as health inspectors, Yogi and Boo Boo successfully free the Easter Bunny, only to find that Millicent, the Magical Easter Chicken, is the one responsible for laying the Easter eggs. Yogi and Boo Boo go to the henhouse to meet Millcent. However, the chicken's tough-as-nails guard dog refuses to let anyone near the henhouse, except for Ernest, who the dog mistakes for the real Easter Bunny. Yogi and Boo Boo, after using a giant slingshot to crash through the henhouse's roof, escape with the chicken before Paulie and Ernest can get to her and head for Jellystone Park. A madcap chase after the chicken begins, with the Easter Bunny getting injured (usually by falling off a cliff) at least three times.

Meanwhile, back at Jellystone Park, Smith is trying in vain to impress the children and the Commissioner at the Easter Jamboree. The stunts he tries either are ridiculously lame or fail spectacularly, and the Commissioner's children show no response except a few sarcastic claps and a stern look. The boss is on the verge of firing Ranger Smith when the Easter Bunny, Millicent, Yogi, and Boo Boo conveniently fall in to save the day. The Commissioner changes his mind and instead promotes Ranger Smith, who decides to let Yogi stay at Jellystone; to thank Ranger Smith for believing, the Easter Bunny gives him what he asked for all these years: a double-decker raspberry-filled dark chocolate egg.

Cast

• Greg Burson - Yogi Bear
• Don Messick - Boo Boo Bear, Ranger Smith
• Charlie Adler - Paulie
• Gregg Berger - Supreme Commissioner Clarence
• Marsha Clark - Female Ranger
• Jeff Doucette - Ernest
• Ed Gilbert - Grand Grizzly, Guard Dog
• Rob Paulsen - Easter Bunny, Male Ranger
• Jonathan Winters - Ranger Mortimer

Home Media releases

Warner Home Video released Yogi the Easter Bear on DVD in Region 1 on February 8, 2005. The special was re-released together with the 2010 film Yogi Bear in a limited DVD double pack on March 22, 2011.

External links

• Yogi the Easter Bear at the Internet Movie Database