Western Animation / Yogi's Gang

"Come on, everybody! Let's join Yogi's Gang!"

- Yogi Bear

"We're on a trip with a wacky ship/

We'll have a lark... on Yogi's Ark...!"

- His Gang

Yogi's Gang is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series from 1973. A made-for-TV movie, Yogi's Ark Lark from 1972, served as a pilot.

In the series, Yogi Bear and his friends travel around the world in a flying ark and meet villains who want to spread their faults and vices. One of the many big Massive Multiplayer Crossover shows popular in the 1970s and 1980s era of Hanna-Barbera, only this one is presumably trying to display a social conscience.

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That's one trope-lution to stop pollution:

• Adaptation Dye-Job: Ranger Smith is depicted in this show with blond hair instead of his usual black.
• Adapted Out: Several characters who appeared in Yogi's Ark Lark do not appear in this show, like Noah Smitty and Top Cat.
• Anthropomorphic Shift: Characters who were treated as Civilized Animals in their own shows (like Yogi, Boo Boo, Snagglepuss and Magilla) are bumped up to the level of Funny Animal for the show.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: Technically, the logo shows several characters that never appeared in the show proper. Others may appear once or twice for an occasional line, while still others only appear as background extras.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Yogi and his friends defeat Hilarious P. Prankster by trying to see if he can take as much as he gives.
• Big Fancy House: Mr. Waste's manor. He's so wasteful that, since the manor is too big to be thrown away, he keeps adding new rooms so he'll never have to use the same more than one night. He eventually abandons it and the island where it's located to look for a new home after wasting the island's resources.
• Clueless Aesop: It's a little hard to take the Dr. Bigot episode's lesson about not discriminating seriously when they present the source of all bigotry in the episode as an olive-skinned man with a funny accent who turns a perfectly nice white man into a raging bigot using a mind control ray.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Mr. Hothead of Hothead Enterprises. He has a device that turns people into hotheads and uses it on Yogi's Gang as part of a plan to force Cindy to sell her dude ranch. He later sabotages the ranch's water supply.
• The Corrupter: Each Villain of the Week wants to make people have his namesake character flaw.
• Critical Encumbrance Failure: When Snagglepuss tries to become a circus strongman, he does a fine job supporting the combined weight of several of his friends until Atom Ant joins the group and everyone falls down.
• Crying Wolf: In "Mr. Fibber", the titular villain convinces the animals to become liars like him and they come up with fake emergencies to trick Yogi into landing so they can stop to buy things like lemonade or ice cream. When a tornado shows up, Yogi thinks they're lying again. Fortunately, everyone survives and the animals learned a lesson about lying. Fibber doesn't learn.
• Deal with the Devil: The Greedy Genie will grant any wishes on the condition that his "master" doesn't share the wished goods with anybody.
• Driven by Envy: The Envy Brothers. Whatever they want, they want because other people have it. They have a magic ring that can make people driven by their envy.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Four of the Villains of the Week appear in the title sequence. Three of the four have different appearances in their actual episodes when they finally debut, likely due to the production order of the episodes vs. when the opening was made.
  • Mr. Smog has a different color scheme, appearing as solid blue in the credits rather than shades of green in his episode proper.
  • Lotta Litter has a completely new costume and hair style when she finally appears.
  • Hilarious P. Prankster looks exactly the same, but he is referred to as just "The Prankster".
• Ecocidal Antagonist: The series has its share of anti-environmental villains, such as Mr. Smog, who has a smog factory and tries to convince everyone that smog is good for them, and Lotta Litter, who litters at Jellystone Park.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: After cheating Yogi out of his ark, Peter D. Cheater learns about the gang's treasure map and, believing it to be real, offers to trade the ark back to Yogi for the map. When Yogi tells Peter the map is fake, Peter assumes it's a trick to keep him away from the treasure and makes the trade anyway. Yogi later states that people who cheat a lot end up expecting others to do the same.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: A lot.
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: The target audience for Peter D. Cheater's school is people wanting to get rich quick.
• Ghost Town: Quick Draw McGraw inherits one in the episode "Mr. Vandal" and turns it into a tourist attraction. But their first visitor, J. Wanton Vandal, has plans to wreck the town.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The Envy Brothers. They want to take over the circus where they work because they're envious of their boss for owning it and try to accomplish it by using a ring to make everyone envious. Bonus points for wearing green and making their victims' eyeballs green. When that fails, they try to go to outer space because they're envious of astronauts for doing so.
• Hamster-Wheel Power: Magilla powers up the ark's flying mechanism by running on a treadmill.
• Have a Gay Old Time: In the theme song: "If those big goons were out of the way / the world would be so bright and gay."
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Sheik of Selfishness wants to spread selfishness through the world. He ends up locked out of his own home because he never leaves a key under the doormat so nobody will share his stuff and his subordinates won't help him to reach a window because he taught them to never share.
  • Happens to Wally Gator twice in the show. In "Mr. Prankster" his desire to showcase an actual talent leads him into being an Unwitting Pawn for the villain while "Captain Swipe" has him used as an Unwitting Pawn to help steal the ark and being too tired to do anything when he catches on.
• Honest John's Dealership: Peter D. Cheater's school has a course on how to run those.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every episode is named after the Villain of the Week, but only in official records and the like. There are no onscreen episode titles.
• Insistent Terminology: Yogi takes it for an insult if his hobo friend Smiley is called a "bum". This is Justified because, as Smiley explains it, a hobo looks for work and that makes them different from bums.
• I Will Show You X!: Or in this case, "We'll show them X":
  Boo Boo: Uh oh, it's the Prankster, and the Greedy Genie, at 3 o'clock!
  Yogi: Hey, hey, hey, hey! Let's fix their clocks!
• Just the First Citizen: Smokestag Smog. He lives in a castle made of smog and persuaded the people of Smog City to think the smog from his factory is a good thing but, as he claims that whenever someone asks whether he's the mayor, he's really just the number one citizen. Another character is later revealed to be the mayor and Smog is never shown to have anything to do with how the city is ruled.
• Karma Houdini: Zigzagged as a whole. Some villains like Smokestag Smog and J. Wanton Vandal escape without any punishment and even vow to continue their bad ways. Other villains get punished such as Fibber chased off by an angry bull.
• Laugh Track: Quite possibly the only Yogi Bear show to use one, only created by Hanna-Barbera themselves.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The pilot is Hanna-Barbera's first time having a wide range of their characters in one story.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Each villain has a name that represents their respective character flaw. Some of them come up with fake names to trick the heroes.
  • Smiley, Mr. Cheerful and the Sheik of Sharing are non-villainous examples.
  • Smog City is the polluted wasteland its name suggests it to be. Two of the city's streets are named "Dingy" and "Dirty".
• Monster of the Aesop: Every episode featured a villain who encouraged or reveled in bad behavior such as greed, bigotry, vandalism, or littering.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Ties into Meaningful Name, as presumably nobody would consider someone named Dr. Bigot, Gossipy Gossip, or Peter D. Cheater as a person to rely on. The character's reactions to these obvious names seem to change from episode to episode - sometimes they NEVER question why, say, there's a problem with negative gossip when a witch named Gossipy Gossip is around or whether it's a good idea to go to a school taught by Peter D. Cheater. Other times the villains of the week seem aware of this trope and disguise themselves with a "safe" sounding name. For example, Mr. Sloppy becomes Mr. Neat, presenting himself as a "neatness expert."
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: When Yogi and his friends are ready to leave Smog City, Smokestag Smog tricks them into installing a motor that'll make their ark spread smoke through wherever they go. Once they wise up, they throw the motor away at the local dump, inspiring the townsfolk to stop polluting their atmosphere. Mr. Smog is even more responsible for his undoing because his smog is what ruined Yogi's gang's banana supply and made them land in Smog City in the first place.
• Not So Above It All: Yogi usually serves as the Only Sane Man but can be just as prone to falling for the villains' ploys as the others.
• Only Sane Man: Yogi and Boo Boo serve this role, though the former can sometimes get caught up in shenanigans like the others.
• Our Genies Are Different: The Greedy Genie is free to roam the world with a flying lamp and is free to offer his wishes to anyone he wants. In his case, it means people who agree to never share anything he gives them.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The Envy Brothers are said to be trapezists but they're never seen performing.
  • Somewhat subverted with Captain Swashbuckle Swipe. In which case he is shown to be very good at swiping things as his name suggests, but for most of the episode all of "his" swiping is done by convincing Wally Gator to do it for him. So does that make him a pirate who doesn't do anything for not physically doing it, or a pirate who does do something but just is so good at it he makes others do it for him?
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The episode with Captain Swipe introduces us a lot to Fumbo Jumbo, a Zorro-like elephant. Later interviews revealed that Fumbo was a recycled character that up to this point had never sold as a show. More than likely this episode had him written in to try to convince a network to buy a potential spinoff.
• Polluted Wasteland: Smog City, thanks to Smokestack Smog's smog factory.
• Riddle for the Ages: When Peter D. Cheater cheats Yogi out of the ark, he makes the whole gang leave, including Magilla, who powers up the ark's flying mechanism by running on a treadmill. Despite not having anyone to replace Magilla, Peter somehow makes the ark fly. Provided, of course, Cheater actually didn't somehow know how to cheat gravity... or did he?
• Rule of Cool: Don't ask how the Ark flies. It just does.
• Rule of Three: In "Mr. Fibber", there are three times when Yogi is asked to land because of some emergency. He initially refuses during the third time because the other two turned out to be lies.
  Yogi: You fooled me twice. Three times isn't nice!
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the villains is the Gossipy Witch of the West and she says there's a Gossipy Witch for each one of the three other directions.
  • The only one in Yogi's Gang who never subscribes into Mr. Waste's policy of being wasteful is Atom Ant, who claims that all ants believe in saving for a rainy day.
  • When a flying carpet shows up to deliver the gang's invitation to the Sheik of Sharing's birthday party, Yogi wonders if it's a bird or a plane. Upon getting close enough for a recognition, he would say who he thought it was but fails to remember the rest of the name after saying "Super".
• Sibling Rivalry: Downplayed with the Envy Brothers. During their episode, they never oppose each other for anything and work together without any disagreements towards the goal of becoming owners of the circus where they work as trapezists. When they're discovered and fired, however, they set a new goal for themselves by wanting to become astronauts and argue over who'll become the pilot and who'll become co-pilot.
• Title, Please!: Except for the pilot, "Yogi's Ark Lark", the episodes' titles don't appear on-screen.
• Unwitting Pawn: Many of the villains are slick enough to convince members of the crew to do their bidding without them realizing they're doing the wrong thing or putting the rest of the ark's safety at risk.
• Villain of the Week: Each episode features a different villain or team of villains.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: In "Captain Swipe" Wally wonders where other crew members got the beach gear that they're using. Yogi implies that the crew do each other favors to get such things, outright telling Wally how he can get a surfboard.
• Wicked Wastefulness: Mr. Waste is a unique example of this trope in that he thinks wastefulness is good and being frugal is bad, meaning that he goes out of his way to be wasteful. He does things such as throw away perfectly good food after one bite, replace clothes after wearing them only once, and creating extra rooms in his house so he doesn't have to sleep in the same place twice. As a result of his lifestyle, the islands that he lives on are wastelands because he used up all of their resources.

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