Joseph Barbera, exit stage left...

What can you say about a guy whose life defined Saturday Mornings through three decades? Anyone born in a TV-equipped household between the years 1955 and 1980 grew up in a Hanna-Barbera world.

The accumulation of titles and credits for Joe Barbera (1911-2006) is endless, but his Greatest Hits compilation would look something like this:

The Flintstones · Yogi Bear · Huckleberry Hound
The Jetsons · Top Cat · Magilla Gorilla
Jonny Quest · Tom and Jerry · Secret Squirrel
Space Ghost · Atom Ant · The Herculoids
Fantastic 4 · Banana Splits · Dastardly and Muttley
Scooby-Doo · Josie and the Pussycats · SuperFriends
Speed Buggy · Hong Kong Phooey · Dynomutt
Jabberjaw · Grape Ape · Godzilla
Jana of the Jungle · Richie Rich · The Smurfs

I hit my Hanna-Barbera years at the tail end of the 70s — Speed Buggy, Jabberjaw, and Captain Caveman were in my strikezone, and SuperFriends was right in my wheelhouse. I also remember liking Blue Falcon a lot, even though he was really just a straight man to Dynomutt (the Scooby-Doo cyborg).

My brother and I were only allowed to watch one show on Saturday morning, so we learned to choose carefully — in the post-SuperFriends era, the Hanna-Barbera cartoons almost always lost out to the 90-minute juggernaut, The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Show. Fortunately for us, The Flintstones was a weekday-afternoon show, and thus didn't have to face off with the likes of Wile E. Coyote and the Legion of Doom. No telling how that would have turned out.