Blondie (comic strip) was adapted into a long-running series of 28 low-budget theatrical B-features, produced by Columbia Pictures. Beginning with "Blondie" in 1938, the series lasted 12 years, through "Beware of Blondie" (1950). The two major roles were Penny Singleton as Blondie and Arthur Lake (whose first starring role was another comic strip character, Harold Teen) as Dagwood. Faithfulness to the comic strip was a major concern of the creators of the series. Little touches were added that were iconic to the strip, like the appearance of Dagwood's famous sandwiches—and the running gag of Dagwood colliding with the mailman amid a flurry of
What a Cartoon! Burbank, as the rightful Hanna-Barbera successor to produce original programming for the network and future projects. Two "What a Cartoon!" shorts, "Wind-Up Wolf" and "Hard Luck Duck", were the last cartoon shorts directed and produced by co-founder and co-chairman William Hanna. In addition, "What a Cartoon!" and spin-offs were the final original productions released by Hanna-Barbera. Creator of "The What a Cartoon! Show", Fred Seibert, left Hanna-Barbera in late 1996 to open up his own studio, Frederator Studios, and has persistently continued in the tradition of surfacing new talent, characters, and series with similar shorts "incubators", including (as of 2015)