The Bullwinkle Show (TV Series) Jet Fuel Formula/Bullwinkle's Ride or Goodbye, Dollink (1959) User Reviews

Off to a Great Start

[Hitchcoc · 9/10 · 4 September 2014]

Rocky and Bullwinkle was such a staple for me and my friends growing up. We were intelligent kids and this was intelligent animation. The Jay Ward factory created this unlikely couple, a rodent and a moose that commented on things during the Eisenhower administration and all that followed. They are as fresh today as they were then. In this first episode, the boys are spotted by astronomers, waving from the moon. It would seem that our moose friend baked a cake using his grandmother's formula. It exploded, sending their yet mortgaged stove to the moon. Upon their return (using another cake), they become celebrities. All efforts at space travel are forsaken so Bullwinkle can try to reproduce his formula (sadly, it was torn in half in the explosion). Of course, we are introduced to Boris Badinov and Natasha Fatale. They make their first effort to steal the formula and "keel" the moose.

Along with this, we see our first Fractured Fairy Tale, "Rapunzel" where a prince wanders in the woods for two years thinking he's blind (actually he didn't notice his hat was pulled over his eyes).

We are introduced to Mr. Peabody, who tells us how he adopted Sherman and how the Way Back Machine came to be. This is a pivotal entry in the series.

This unofficial fractured fairy tale . . .

[pixrox1 · 7/10 · 13 October 2023]

. . . depicts the early days of America's Space Exploration Program. Since much of the material was classified as Tip Top Secret in 1959, JET FUEL FORMULA redacts or renames many key aspects of its subject matter. Notice that Bullwinkle J. Moose's grandmother never is pictured here. That's because she herself was converted into rocket fuel to power the Prussian's V-1 and V-2 suborbital missiles which reduced much of London to rubble and terrorized the British populace during World War Two, less than 20 years prior to "Jet" Fuel's release. Both the Soviet and American governments awarded absolution to these Prussian child slayers, in order to launch their own rockets. For the sake of U. S. National Security, Bullwinkle never is shown shoving Granny into one of those infamous Dutch ovens, either.

Crude beginning to great show

[aramis-112-804880 · 6 February 2024]

The early Bullwinkle episodes weren't promising.

The announcer (William Conrad) is extremely low-key. Boris doesn't have his iconic shape, where he's about the same size as a squirrel. I've even seen the first few episodes played to a laugh track.

The fractured fairy tales aren't as fractured as the would become (though Edward Everett Horton's narration is superb). They begin as fairly straight-forward tales with a twist of humor.

The first serial story, about rocket fuel and moon creatures, plays into the popular "space race" of the era.

Nevertheless, the writing is sharp and the puns fly as freely as ever. And fortunately, the first season catches up fast to the Bullwinkle we all know and love. But the first few episodes were painful.

One trivial note: Paul Frees does a dead-on Orson Welles impersonation, with a humorous take on his infamous "War of the Worlds" broadcast. Though popularly believed to have caused a panic, I've seen studies that show no such panic was reflected in the newspapers (the Internet of that era) and that the whole "panic" might have been invented by Welles, who was certainly not shy of PR.