Top Cat IRL

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Topcat only ran 30 episodes, 61-62.  They were in endless rerun when I was a kid.  I really dug him.  Arnold Stang voiced Topcat, and his sidekick Choo-Choo was played by Marvin Kaplan.  Here the two of them team up to deal with a homicidal crazy man -  youtu.be/u0HtDsEuJgI   Stang is the shorter one.  Topcat ran a gang of streetwise cats keepin' it real in Hoagy's Alley, Manhattan.  I only recently started reading the history of animation, and while I despised Hanna-Barbera because of the low production values, I have found out that because of that we had new cartoons to watch, the economics were no longer there for high grade stuff like MGM's Tom and Jerry, which is where William Hanna and Joseph Barbera decided to strike out for the TV market.  Jay Ward did the same with Rocky and Bullwinkle, somehow the primitive line drawings worked in his favor, beats me why.    (Because of the high quality writing, excellent sense of timing and humor, and great voice actors like Paul Frees and Hans Conried).

  youtu.be/NToYkBYezZA



Topcat and Choo-Choo




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