Ahh, Augie Doggie. You and your dear old dad Doggie Daddy entertained an entire generation with your flippant one-liners, your bright-eyed admiration of your pop, and your charming naïvete.

In the early days of the studio, Hanna-Barbera was creating characters primarily based on the ability of their lead voice actors to create a voice. Daws Butler's small boyish voice (already in play with Pixie of "Pixie and Dixie" fame) proved an easy voice to workaround, and thus was born Augie Doggie and his dad. The gag would be that the son admired the dad, although the dad didn't really know much about what was going on. (This was later used to much more cynical effect in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.)

Augie's first appearance with his father was on the Quick Draw McGraw show, in "Fox Hound Hounded Fox," aired October 22, 1959. All in all, 48 mini-episodes (7½ minutes) were created of the duo. Among the highlights:

  • Going camping and ending up in outer space in "Mars Little Precious";
  • The classic H-B brain switcheroo, where Augie becomes dad for a day in "Pup Plays Pop";
  • Switcheroo Version Two: while trying to teach Augie to hate cats by beating up on a little kitten, Doggie Daddy inadvertently ends up facing a giant feline in "Party Lion"; and
  • the surprisingly absurdist plot whereby Augie takes a potion and begins growing uncontrollably in "Growing Growing Gone."

Later, Augie and his dad reappeared in the Laff-A-Lympics and on several of the Hanna-Barbera television specials. Although little has been heard from the duo lately, the name lives on quite handily in dogs today, as indicated by my Google searches.

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