Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Ken the Wolf Boy

Don Messick’s voice can be heard on beloved Hanna-Barbera cartoons series starting with the very first series, Ruff and Reddy (1957). But that isn’t the only studio where he found work.

You can hear Messick in Spunky and Tadpole, which started appearing on TV screens in the late ‘50s. He and Roger Roger’s stock music theme song are probably the best things about it.

But he also dubbed voices for something called Ken the Wolf Boy.

There are people who get positively giddy and go into obsessive and minute detail about what, at one time, was called Japanimation. I am not one of them. The only background about this series I shall pass along from the August 5, 1964 edition of Variety.

Toei's 'Wolf Boy'
Acquired by MCA Tokyo, Aug. 4. In its first acquisition from Japan, MCA-TV purchased 26 episodes of a b&w animated cartoon series called "Ken, the Wolf Boy" from the Toei Motion Picture Studios for distribution globally, except Japan, Korea and Okinawa.
The kids' adventure series, dealing with a kind of Junior-league Tarzan, has been nicely rated on Nippon Educational Television (NET), where it has been running for about four months.
Toei now has another set of 26 episodes in production, but it remains to be seen if MCA will also buy these.
The initial purchase was on a flat basis with no time limit. It may be the first of its kind in this market; previous acquisitions by international distribs are believed to have been made with little or no advance coin with the distrib hoping to reap commissions from potential sales. Since some of this (product has not yet sold abroad and has therefore yielded no income to the producers—although exclusively tied up overseas—the Japanese are naturally much more receptive to flat buys.
It's understood that other Japanese product is being screened by MCA execs In New York and Hollywood, as well as in Tokyo.

The Guardian’s Jasper Sharp reported in the April 11, 2018 issue that Isao Takahata got his first cartoon directing job on the series.

Long-time reader Chris Sobieniak has alerted me to a full half-hour of the series posted on-line. What shocked me is there is another familiar voice. “That can’t be Daws Butler,” I said to myself. Well, yes, it is. I don’t know who the woman is voicing the kid and ridiculously doubling as adult men.

And who thought a good name for a wolf-boy was "Ken"?

I’m afraid I can’t sit through this. I’m sure there are some who can. Sorry, Don.