The pink cat

Back from Orlando by melaniethebobcat
http://www.deviantart.com/tag/melaniethebobcat

Choo Choo by melaniethebobcat

http://www.deviantart.com/tag/melaniethebobcat

Hey Chooch by bamboodog

http://bamboodog.deviantart.com/

now i haz cheezburger by ladysomnambule

http://ladysomnambule.deviantart.com/

Choo Choo by iraccoon

http://iraccoon.deviantart.com/gallery/

Choo Choo from Top Cat by phraggle

http://phraggle.deviantart.com/

Choo Choo mug shot by hognatius

http://hognatius.deviantart.com/

Untitled by bobthetanuk

http://bobthedalek.deviantart.com/gallery/

Le chat rose by rafael gonzales

http://rafaelgonzalez.deviantart.com/

The DeviantArt site never fails to knock me out with the calibre of talent and imagination therein. Just dipping into the Top Cat section was overwhelming, so I tried to keep to my favorite character.

Looking at all these, I am reminded of how spectacularly untalented I am! But I am also delighted to see that people remember and love Choo Choo and all the other Top Cat characters (but especially Choo Choo, because he is, let's face it, frankly adorable).

I can't, however, identify these last two.  They had been posted and reposted, likely on the Satanic Pinterest site (which makes me want to slit my wrists every time it forces its way into my image searches) and proved to be unidentifiable, at least by me. But if anyone knows who did them. . . For sure, I know one thing. I didn't make them, and I wish I had.

Top Cat in Brazil!

I should explain. One might call Top Cat a Latino phenomenon, a Spanish or Iberian or Ibero-American thingie, because for some reason these countries absolutely love him, even if characters' names and personalities are sometimes changed, and even the location shifted.

From Wikipedia:

In spite of the modest success of the show in the United States, the show was a massive hit in Mexico, Chile, Peru and Argentina, where it is recognized as one of the most famous Hanna Barbera characters ever, being as popular as The Flintstones. In Mexico the show is aired under the name Don Gato y su pandilla (literally Mr. Cat and his gang) and the main characters adopted different accents. : Benny was renamed Benito B. Bodoque y B. and given a more childlike voice than was the case in the original dubbing, Choo Choo was renamed Cucho and spoke with Mexican-yucatan accent, Fancy-Fancy was Panza (belly), Spook renamed as the word's rough translation Espanto, The Brain was called Demóstenes (honouring the Greek statesman Demosthenes, with whom he shares a speech impediment) and Officer Dibble renamed as Oficial Carlos "Carlitos" Matute. This name, "matute" was used in Argentina and Uruguay as a slang reference for policemen. In Brazil, the character is known as Manda-Chuva (Brazilian Portuguese for big shot) and was voiced by actor Lima Duarte. In addition, the city of New York was replaced by Brasília (federal capital) in the Brazilian version.

SO! I also found an incomplete list of countries in which Top Cat was a hit, much more so than in the U. S. where it was cancelled after one 30-episode season (whereas the Flintstones went on for something like 35 years). T. C. was no more than a footnote in the Hanna-Barbera lexicon until he went international. VERY international, like this:

Mexico, Canada, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, S. E. Asia, Japan, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Poland, Hungary, Middle East and Africa, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and OH SHIT, I cannot do any more!

Is this a sort of Fawlty Towers effect, where the scarcity of episodes makes the show that much more of a cultish hit? Perhaps it's the adaptability, though T. C. does seem more Hispanic than anything else. 

This is the city: Top Cat's neighborhood

Top Cat: still in love with Choo Choo

Why Choo Choo is the coolest character on Top Cat

Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs

OLYM-PI-AAAAAAAAAAAA!

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

The Mighty Hercules versus the Big Bug Thingie

This is my second try at posting these gifs of Hercules Versus the Big Bug Thingie. I don't know what the actual title is, but it's surely the silliest cartoon I ever saw. We all watched this show in the mid-'60s and made fun of it, especially that theme song: "Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs. . . "

My first set of gifs wouldn't post, maybe because they were too long. I love the long ones I can make with Gifsforum, but my blog doesn't seem to want to take them. Indigestion? Anyway, now I was down from a magnificent 15 seconds/gif, in which I can tell quite a bit of story, to only about 5. There's still a lot of action here as Hercules, anxiously watched by Newton ("That's me! That's me") and Helena the bountiful of chest, whops the daylights out of the bug creature. No doubt sicced on him by Daedelus. But first, he must endure the worst ECT since One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

If Alfred Hitchcock were making gifs in the '60s, which would be kind of weird because they didn't exist then, they might have looked something like this. Obviously these cartoons, cranked out in their hundreds by TransLux and only half the length of a decent cartoon, are divinely inspired, and on a budget of only $39.00 a pop.

The monster has these weird antennae with basketball-like thngs attached to it, which Hercules bravely tries to duck and evade. Go, Herc!

Herc somehow gets the Big Bug Thingie to electrocute itself. Neat! The testicle-like appearance of these antennae-blobs was completely lost on me then.

Another victory for Hercules. Until the next cartoon, when he will face another 4-minute challenge.

OLYM-PI-AAAAAAA!

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

How Woody Allen stole Manhattan, Part 2

Can you see T. C. and the gang strolling down the street?

The Wizard of Oz as you never wanted to see it

j


It was very strange to see these again. This is a bizarre take on The Wizard of Oz, with everything turned upside-down: Rusty the Tin Man really is heartless and nasty; Socrates the Straw Man (straw man? Just what IS a straw man, anyway? Sounds like something out of The Wasteland: "We are the hollow men, head-piece filled with straw") is really brainless; Dandy the Lion (an interior decorator who has definite "tendencies") is scared shitless of everything. So the weird twist in the original, i. e. that the characters already possessed the things they wanted, is twisted the other way. Nobody has any good qualities at all. The result is. . . pretty twisted.

You can find virtually pristine-quality videos of this 1961 series on YouTube, but for some reason the opening and ending sequences have been cut. When I look at them, it's very strange: I originally watched them on a grainy b & w set, so seeing them looking so brand-new and vividly, even garishly coloured is disconcerting. Almost hallucinogenic. Were the animators dabbling in exotic '60s substances, I wonder?

I wanted to include those opening and closing sequences, so I had to use this faded, slightly blurred cartoon as an example, even though it doesn't include all the characters (i.e. the Wicked Witch, who has a voice that could shred steel). There are other oddities, such as teardrop-shaped munchkins that seem completely expendable (i.e. they are casually killed in nearly every episode), a Wizard that talks like W. C. Fields, a dragon that pops up now and again (scaring the shit out of Dandy), and a land where everything is upside-down.

I can't find any one cartoon that gets all this across, so I chose this one where the main three characters demonstrate their "special" qualities. When I was about seven and watching these for the first time, I just sucked it all in like Jell-o or Junket or Cream of Wheat, without analyzing it. It's only now that I see how very strange and even disturbing it all is.

(Post-script: someone posted a comment on YouTube claiming that these cartoons were made in Canada, and I wondered: could it be? They were produced by an American animation giant, Rankin-Bass, best known for their cheesy-but-beloved Christmas specials with stop-action figures that reminded me of that annoying little Alka-Seltzer guy.  (And Davy and Goliath? We'll get into that later.) This series isn't stop-action, in fact it falls under the category of hallucinogenic art. But when I began to probe, some familiar names popped up. This series was apparently created by the '60s entertainment impresario Budge Crawley. Among the voice actors were Bernard Cowan and Carl Bana: I remember Cowan as an announcer on game shows or something. All Toronto guys. Well, why not: Spiderman was voiced by Paul Soles, a veteran Canadian jack-of-all-trades actor and entertainer, and where would we be without catch-phrases like "Walloping web-snappers!" and "My spidey-sense is tingling." There's just something about Canadians. Strange people.)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm