Another relaxing and entertaining day here in San Diego, but the highlight didn’t come until about 10:45pm, during Jerry Beck’s “Worst Cartoons Ever” program, when I sat in an audience of several hundred people and watched a Bucky and Pepito cartoon provoke fairly raucous laughter.
This was not the first time I’d seen animation fans weirdly transfixed by B&P. In about 1993, at the Cinefest convention in Syracuse, I bought a $10 reel of 16mm cartoons which included a Bucky and Pepito. It was from a series I’d never heard of, about a cowboy kid and his Mexican pal. I showed it that night in my room for a small, startled audience.
Very quickly, we decided that Bucky and Pepito was the worst cartoon series ever produced. Eventually, I wrote an Animato column declaring it as such, and naming its producer, Sam Singer, as the Ed Wood of animation. (I was pleased that Jerry’s remarks tonight made both of these points.)
The B&P we saw tonight–The Vexin’ Texan–was new to me. And it was, I’m pleased to report, terrible.