Every animation studio had at least one break-out character and for UPA the star of the studio was Mr. Magoo.

From the Saturday morning cartoon series of 1960, Mr. Magoo's popularity remained solid. As cartoon characters go, Mr. Magoo was able to take on a more varied persona that was fully realized in the hit 1962 animated holiday special, "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol", with Magoo in the title role of Scrooge. The overwhelming reaction to Magoo as Scrooge gave the animators at UPA an idea to expang on Magoo's range.

And this is where the Tracy meeting is planned. In 1964, a re-imagined animated series re-casts famous heroes from literature with Mr. Magoo in the hero role. The series would be called, "The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo".

In the episode titled, "Dick Tracy and the Mob", Tracy convinces Magoo to impersonates a hit man and find out what a criminal mob is planning. There was hope that the popularity of Mr. Magoo would add some shine to the character of Dick Tracy, another UPA character that didn't fare as well from his 1961 television cartoon series.

What makes "Dick Tracy and the Mob" unusual is seeing Tracey's famous villains all together, co-operating as a gang - something that never happened in the Sunday funnies comic strip series.

So here is my example of Dick Tracy done badly.

UPA's, "The Dick Tracy Show", from 1961, was full of bad ideas. For starters, how do you not draw Dick Tracy properly? They got Tracy's face all wrong, then they never let him move from his desk. Each episode featured Tracy passing an assignment to one of his four subordinate officers, pictured below.

And yeah, the rank and file policemen were idiots, none of my friends around the neighborhood liked this setup. It all made Dick Tracy look lazy, and the storys were juvenile. Take look and judge for yourself.

Who thought it was funny in 1961 to use 1930's style Keystone cops in a TV show?