I remember watching Tennessee Tuxedo when I was a youngster growing up in New Jersey and in reruns for many years. It was a very entertaining and funny cartoon as Tennessee Tuxedo, a fast-talking penguin and his dim-witted walrus pal Chumley kept trying to improve conditions at the Megopolis Zoo, where there were constantly yelled at and punished by zookeeper Stanley Livingston. Whenever things went wrong, Tennessee and Chumley would escape from the zoo to see Phineas J. Whoopie, the Man With All The Answers. Mr. Whoopie would explain different scientific principles to the young home audience and I thought it was excellent to have a cartoon that was not only entertaining but educational.
But as the series went on, two new characters were added as frequent adversaries for Tennessee and Chumley, Jerboa Jump, a jumping mouse and Tiger Tornado, a boxing tiger. A lot of the later episodes featured our heroes battling Jerboa and Tiger and that's where I felt the show jumped the shark. It showed that the writers were running out of ideas.
Let's not forget the other two supporting characters of Yak, the steer and Baldy the eagle as well as the outstanding voicework of Don Adams, who also came to prominence on The Bill Dana Show, Larry Storch and Kenny Delmar. The show proved that TV in the 60s was not "a vast wasteland."
