The Hillbilly Bears 1-Disc Box Set DVD

The Hillbilly Bears is the mid-1960s Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning short series about the Rugg family, a clan of bears living a country life of fishing, woodpecking, and small backwoods adventures filtered through the studio's signature Hanna-Barbera comedy register. The series aired on NBC across 1965 and 1966 as part of the broader Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel block, with a 26-episode run.

The format is short-form bear-family comedy: each episode pairs a fresh country-life complication (a detour, a fishing trip, an angler's adventure, a Goldilocks parody, a courtin' disaster) with the Rugg family's running cast (Maw, Paw, Floral, and Shag), holding the show's signature blend of Stone-Age-meets-Appalachia humor as the engine. Episode titles like "Detour For Sure," "Goldilocks And The Four Bears," "Slap Happy Grandpappy," "My Fair Hillbilly," and "Buzzin' Cuzzins" telegraph the era's punny, gag-driven titling. The animation has the unmistakable mid-1960s Hanna-Barbera look.

For mid-1960s NBC Saturday morning programming, this was a piece of the studio's deep run of country-set short cartoons, sitting alongside the era's other animal-family animation. Suited for fans of vintage Hanna-Barbera, viewers with affection for the era's particular brand of country-comedy programming, and anyone curious about the lineage of bear-family cartoons that the studio loved to revisit.

Memorable installments include "Detour For Sure" (the opener), "Goldilocks And The Four Bears" (a fairy-tale parody classic), "Courtin' Disaster" (a fan-favorite romance riff), "Slap Happy Grandpappy" (a goofier swing), and "Buzzin' Cuzzins" (the closer). This single-disc collection brings all 26 episodes of The Hillbilly Bears into one place, the complete short-format country-comedy run in one set.