Trivia

Representatives for Red Skelton contacted the producers claiming that Bullwinkle's voice was an unauthorized use of a character voice created and owned by Skelton for his character "Clem Kadiddlehopper". Jay Ward responded by having a segment on the show where Bullwinkle would address the issue . . . in a voice that was a deliberate imitation of Clem Kadiddlehopper.

The first episode, Part One of the Jet Fuel Formula story arc, was recorded in February 1958. However, subsequent episodes were not recorded until February 1959, using a different soundtrack stock. This led to some notable changes in the performances of the voice cast: in Part One of Jet Fuel Formula the clarity of the voice cast is noticeably better than in subsequent episodes, particularly the voice performances of June Foray and Paul Frees; a close listen finds that the studio echo of the session bleeds into the soundtrack. For subsequent episodes the different soundtrack stock used eliminated this echo. In addition, the voice cast's performances began changing, particularly William Conrad's narrations. Throughout Part One, Conrad's narration is totally straight, but in Part Two he began to inject a mild flamboyance to his narration in keeping with the show's whimsical flavor, and as the series continued his narration became ever more comically melodramatic.

During a brief, experimental run in prime time, "The Bullwinkle Show" incurred the wrath of no less a Hollywood heavyweight than Walt Disney. Each prime time episode was "introduced" by Bullwinkle himself (as a hand puppet, voiced by Bill Scott ), and social commentary was often sprinkled in with the gags. Disney had recently changed his own weekly show's name from "Disneyland" to "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" (see The Magical World of Disney (1954) ) and was appearing on screen to relentlessly promote the sale of color TV sets, still a relatively newfangled phenomenon. Bullwinkle, taking note, told his audience there was no need to buy an expensive new set, telling them instead to think of all the nasty things Walt Disney had said about their old black and white TVs. "Now then," he said, "don't you see red?" By all accounts, Uncle Walt was not amused.

The series' second story arc was "The Great Boxtop Caper," where Boris planned to control the world's economy by counterfeiting cereal boxtops. This arc had to be resolved and wrapped up early, because of objections from cereal manufacturer General Mills, the show's sponsor and owner.

The likenesses of Boris and Natasha were modeled after the spooky husband and wife portrayed in Charles Addams's comic strip in The New Yorker, which latter became the official basis for Gomez and Morticia Addams of The Addams Family (1964).