Bobby Benson & The B Bar B Riders - The Ghost Rustlers

<p><strong>Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders is an old-time radio juvenile Western adventure program in the United States, one of the first juvenile radio programs. It was broadcast on CBS October 17, 1932 to December 11, 1936, and on Mutual from June 21, 1949 to June 17, 1955.</strong></p> <p><strong>Background.</strong></p> <p><strong>Bobby Benson was created by Herbert C. Rice, who had already originated dozens of local drama series as a director at a radio station in Buffalo, New York. In 1932, representatives of the Hecker H-O Company of Buffalo sought to develop a children's radio program for the company's cereal products. Rice associated the H O name with a cattle brand and soon developed a concept about an orphan named Bobby Benson and his guardian, Sunny Jim, an icon used to represent H O cereals. The program was called The H Bar O Rangers while it was sponsored by Hecker.</strong></p> <p><strong>Format.</strong></p> <p><strong>After his parents' deaths, 12-year-old Bobby Benson inherited the B Bar B Ranch in Big Bend, Texas. That development paved the way for adventures as, week after week, outlaws and other bad people tried to cause problems for the ranch and its people. Young Bobby was helped by Tex Mason, his foreman. Jim Cox, in his book, Radio Crime Fighters: More Than 300 Programs from the Golden Age, described the program as capturing the imagination of little tykes and older adolescents as Bobby and his ranch hands stumbled upon exploits well beyond an ordinary youngster's reach. Most of Benson's escapades involved the pursuit and capture of contingents of bandits and desperadoes of diverse sorts. Rustlers, smugglers, bank and stagecoach robbers dotted the scripts like cactus spread across the Western plains.</strong></p> <p><strong>Relief from the show's drama and suspense came in the form of songs sung around a campfire and humorous tall tales told by handyman Windy Wales. In a column in the May 15, 1938 issue of the trade publication Broadcasting, writer Pete Dixon noted that inclusion of c