Tooter Turtle

Tooter Turtle (sometimes spelled Tudor or Tutor) was a cartoon about a rather dopey-looking, Mortimer Snerdish talking turtle who first appeared on TV in 1960, as a segment, along with The Hunter (a Foghorn Leghornish detective dog), as part of the King Leonardo program.

Plot

Tooter Turtle's (voiced by Allen Swift) segment was always a simple morality play, which involved Tooter calling on his friend, Mr. Wizard the Lizard (voiced by Frank Milano), to change his life to some other destiny. He usually accompanied his request with the phrase "Please, Mr. Wizard; it's what I want to be!" Since none of Tooter's alternate lives ever worked out, the moral of each segment was always the same: "There's no place like home", or perhaps "Be satisfied with your lot."

When Tooter's trip finally became a catastrophe, he always called out the same thing, the famous, "Help me, Mr. Wizard!" Mr. Wizard would rescue him with the incantation, "Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome; time for zis one to come home." Then, Mr. Wizard would always give Tooter the same advice: "Be just vhat you is, not vhat you is not. Folks vhat do zis are ze happiest lot." Tooter never learned, though.

One major pop culture reference to Tooter Turtle comes from "The Matrix". In a scene where Neo is attempting to find a way to return to the real world, he contacts his operator and says to him, "Mr. Wizard, get me the hell out of here!" This is a reference to Mr. Wizard's rescuing abilities. Another reference comes in "Hold My Life," a song from The Replacements album "Tim," in which Mr. Wizard's incantation is part of the lyric. There is also a more oblique but definite reference to Tooter Turtle in the novel "Bright Lights, Big City", in which the second-person narrator recalls these cartoons from his childhood, and wishes that he (like Tooter) could be rescued from his current predicament by a friendly wizard.

Tooter debuted on NBC, on Saturday, October 15, 1960, and ran for 43 episodes over two years. His voice was done by Allen Swift, who also did Simon Bar Sinister, the main villain on "The Underdog Show". The voice of Mr. Wizard was Sandy Becker.

Episodes

*Season One (1960)

*Two Gun Turtle
*Tailspin Tooter (Plane Failure) (not "Failspin Tooter")
*Sea Haunt (Follow The Fish)
*Highway Petrol (Road Block-Head)
*Knight Of The Square Table
*Mish-Mash-Mush (Panting For Gold) (not "Muddled Mounty")
*The Unteachables (The Lawless Years)
*Kink Of Swat (Babe Rube)
*One Trillion B.C. (Dinosaur Dope)
*Olimping Champion (Weak-Greek)
*Stuper Man (Muscle-Bounder)
*Buffaloed Bill (Custard's Last Stand)

*Season Two (1961)

*Moon Goon (Space Head)
*Robin Hoodwink (Thimple Thief)
*Steamboat Stupe (Captains Outrageous)
*Souse Painter (Brush-Boob)
*Railroad Engineer (Stupefied Jones)
*Quarterback Hack (Pigskinned)
*Drafthead (Overwhere?)
*Lumberjack (Topped)
*Jerky Jockey (Kenducky Derby)
*Fired Fireman (Hook And Batter)
*Sky Diver (Jump, Jerk, Jump!)
*Tuesday Turtle (Private Pie)
*Snafu Safari (Trackdown Tooter)
*Anti-Arctic (North Pole Nuisance)
*The Master Builder
*Taxi Turtle
*Canned Camera
*Slowshoe Mountie
*Duck Haunter
*Bull Fright
*News Nuisance (Sub Scribe)
*Foreign Fleegion
*Waggin' Train
*Anchors Awry
*Vaudevillain
*Rod And Reeling (Field and Scream)
*The Man In The Blue Denim Suit

External links

* [http://www.toonopedia.com/tooter-t.htm Toonopedia: Tooter Turtle]