Wally Gator! I thought. I remember that name, if not the exact look.
So I looked him up:
Huh, I thought. I guess it didn't really click with me as a kid that Wally Gator is just a gator-rip-off of Yogi Bear.
Yogi Bear is an animated American icon and is to Hannah-Barbara what Mickey Mouse is to Disney and Bugs Bunny is to Warner Brothers. His cartoon has been updated more than once and has even been the subject of a CG/live action film voiced by Dan Ackroyd (do you remember that Boo-Boo was voiced by Justin Timberlake?). His catchphrase of "Smarter than the average bear" is a cliche, and he's even the subject of plenty of tattoos, some even well executed:
It makes sense that Yogi would be copied by his parent company.
I just didn't realize how many knock-offs Hannah-Barbara made until I looked up Wally Gator.
The list was surprising: After Wally was Hokey Wolf, who I slightly remember, and his own little Boo-Boo (whose name I do not remember):
Almost exactly Yogi-as-a-wolf.
And then a different wolf (maybe a fox), whom I don't recall at all, Loopy de Loop:
And then they get kinda off track with Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, a hyena, a pair I had never seen once in my life before that fateful Google search:
I have to say that an updated and re-imagined Lippy and Hardy Har Har could be pretty damn good.
Here's Snagglepuss, just because I should:
What I was reading about him is that DC Comics is bringing him back as a Tennessee Williams-styled southern gothic gay playwright fighting McCarthy-era politics, If Huckleberry Hound is Faulkner, then, apparently the thinking goes, Snagglepuss is Williams.
They're going with the fully gay aspect that is hinted at or joked about by fans. Here's a page from the first upcoming story, and it's pretty good, if a little serious:
DC Comics has been updating many of the Hannah-Barbara properties that it controls, like the Flintstones:
...and Scooby Doo:
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