The Cartoon That Inspired 'Wander'

A look at 'Professor Balthazar.'

A still from Professor Balthazar

Happy Thursday! After a busy last week, we’re back to our usual schedule. And this issue of Animation Obsessive is all about Professor Balthazar (1967–1978).

It’s a cartoon series made in the former Yugoslavia. Today, one of its major claims to fame is that it inspired Craig McCracken, creator of The Powerpuff Girls.

He and art director Alex Kirwan stumbled upon it in the early 2010s. “I just loved the look of it,” McCracken told one outlet. “[I]t’s like Jay Ward meets Yellow Submarine,” he told another. The encounter with Professor Balthazar helped to chart the course of Wander Over Yonder (2013–2016), McCracken’s third TV series.

As he tweeted, “This brilliant show was a huge influence on the design style.”

Wander is cartoony and psychedelic. Squat, silly-looking characters inhabit a nonsense world with a wavy shape language and bold colors. It shares all of these tics with Professor Balthazar. Plus, coincidentally or not, the hero of each series is someone who helps others for no reason besides his own goodness.

But Balthazar’s story doesn’t begin and end with its influence on another great show, decades after the fact. This series, created by the master cartoonists at Zagreb Film, was a real phenomenon in its time. It was the studio’s biggest success.

That’s the story we’re telling in this issue. Here we go!