"Hoppy" was introduced in an October 1964 episode, "Hop Happy", and was seen during the final two seasons of the original series. The contest was held in early 1965, and apparently sponsored by Hanna-Barbera's distributor, Screen Gems/Columbia. Suggested live local announcer tag at 3:43- "Now playing at a theater near you. Check your local paper for theaters and show times..."
I noticed that these promotional films used the 1955 Screen Gems "Torch Lady" logo instead of the 1965 "S From Hell" logo to bookend their promo films. They must have used that old logo for transition from the 1963 "dancing sticks" logo to the "S From Hell" logo. An amazing and rare artifact. "The Flintstones" was in it's final season at the time, and the ratings on ABC were dropping dramatically, losing ground to "The Munsters" on CBS, and later "Batman" on ABC's own time schedule. As a result, Hoppy never really took off as successfully as Dino or Pebbles. Many of the Hoppy toys today turn up in antique stores and auctions for reasonable prices in spite of their rarity.
I really like Hoppy. Too bad he doesn't appear half as much in the Flintstones spin-offs and movies as Dino does. If anything, he's only been in two Flintstones movies ( _The Man Called Flintstone_ and that new _The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown!_ ) Also, he never appeared in the intro even though he's had _waaay_ more appearances than the Flintstones' cat has.
There was no "Hoppy" TV spinoff from Screen Gems. He appeared in the final two seasons on ABC (1964-66) and in the movie "The Man Called Flintstone." He was adorable, but he was usually second billed to Dino as a family pet, and he lived with The Rubbles, not The Flintstones. He made a recent re-appearance on the Flintstones/WWE movie special on Cartoon Network.
