I keep seeing ads online for old breakfast cereals I never heard of before. This is a spot for Kellogg's Cocoa Hoots which was apparently marketed somewhere around 1972. Even with all the cartoons I watched back then, I never saw a commercial for it and I always cruise the cereal aisle at the market and never saw it in Los Angeles. I'm assuming it was test-marketed somewhere and people didn't give (or buy) a hoot.
The mascot, Newton the Owl, was voiced by Pat Buttram, who we later had as a semi-regular voice on Garfield and Friends. What a great, funny man he was. He'd saunter into the studio with a batch of either old new jokes or new old jokes and that alone was reason to hire him…but he was also very good on the show. He had, of course, one voice…so we did an episode with his character's whole family. Some of them were voiced by other cast members imitating him, including Louise DuArt doing a female version of Pat's voice to play his mother. Some of the family members were voiced by Pat and we sped him up a bit or slowed him down so he'd sound a wee bit different. After the recording, he went over, phoned his voiceover agent and with a note of pride said, "Guess what? I finally doubled!"
The other owl in there doesn't have enough lines to make a positive i.d. on his voice but if I was forced to guess, I'd say it's Paul Winchell. There's a bit of debate on the 'net between people who say the live-action little girl at the end is definitely Jodie Foster while others say it absolutely is not. Decide for yourself and don't send me your opinions…
