I definitely remember Wally Gator, but here’s something I never really thought about — depending on where we grew up, we may not all have watched him the same way.
Wally debuted in 1962, but he wasn’t originally created as a regular network half-hour show. His cartoons were part of a syndicated package with Touché Turtle and Dum Dum and Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har. Local television stations could package those cartoons differently. Chicago’s WGN, for example, actually ran the half hour under the name Wally Gator, while New York’s WPIX used the cartoons in a locally hosted program called Cartoon Zoo.
That may explain why some of us remember Wally almost as his own show while others remember seeing him mixed in with other Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
And that voice wasn’t accidental either. Daws Butler based Wally’s voice on comedian Ed Wynn, who many of us would recognize as the Mad Hatter from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Mr. Twiddle was Don Messick, several years before he became the original voice of Scooby-Doo.
Wally only produced 52 original shorts, but like so many Hanna-Barbera characters, the reruns gave him a much longer life than that original 1962–63 production run. He even came back with Yogi and the gang in the 1970s and returned again decades later in Jellystone!
For a cartoon that originally lasted only about a year, Wally Gator sure seemed to be on television forever!
Do you remember Wally as his own show, or do you remember him mixed in with Touché Turtle and Lippy the Lion?