Briefly Noted: Moose and Squirrel Never Die
Here is a question that came to mind after Alex Anderson, the long-overlooked artist who created Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose, died in October: Why does a grown man (me) work in an office (editor's note: a home office) that contains a Rocky and Bullwinkle lunchbox, along with plush likenesses of Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris Badenov, and Natasha Fatale?
My fondness for The Bullwinkle Show (available on DVD as Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends) is due partly to nostalgia and partly to the limited TV options for kids in the early '70s, when I was growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania with four channels and no VCR. Like Mad magazine, another important influence on my 10-year-old self, The Bullwinkle Show had a subversive satirical style that set it apart from its competitors and appealed to the anti-authoritarian in me, even if I appreciated "Fractured Fairy Tales" and the show's shaggy-dog puns more than the Cold War jokes. —Jacob Sullum