Right before I started watching this set, I finished watching The Huckleberry Hound Show Blu-ray collection, a pristine release with only one fuzzy episode. Unfortunately, Wally Gator simply doesn’t measure up to Huck from a technical perspective, with a majority of the shorts suffering from focus issues and washed-out colors, seemingly sourced from second or third generation copies. While it’s great to have all of the Gator shorts together on Blu-ray, their swampy presentation leaves little reason to upgrade from DVD.
Buy Wally Gator: The Complete SeriesIf you’re unfamiliar with the shorts, Wally is a restless resident of the Bronx Zoo, always searching for ways to break out and return to the Everglades. Picture Madagascar with just one lead character, and that character typically addressing the audience since he has nobody else to talk to. As voiced by Hanna-Barbera and all-around animation legend Daws Butler, Wally sounds closest to his Snagglepuss character, especially when he addresses an ancillary character named Murgatroyd in an early episode. Wally constantly tries to outsmart the zookeeper, Mr. Twiddle, something like Yogi Bear and Ranger Smith’s adversarial but convivial relationship, and runs afoul of numerous other characters during his outings in the wild. In short, it’s very much a Hanna-Barbera toon, with much of the entertainment coming from the very familiar, comfortable formula.
The toons were never a standalone series on their own, instead serving as recurring segments over the two seasons of The Hanna-Barbera New Cartoon Series in the early 1960s. That’s a positive for collection purposes, since the shorts are simply presented in one continuous play with no filler, spread across two discs. The most annoying thing about the Huck collection is its insistence on presenting the episodes as they originally aired, including multiple repetitive Kellogg’s animated ads and other time-killing interstitials as well as repeat shorts, easily doubling the viewing time if watching without constantly skipping to the unseen shorts. With Wally, viewers can just pop in a disc and bask in entirely uninterrupted shorts, just the way we always wished we could have watched all toons back in broadcast days.
The back of the Blu-ray mentions that the 52 shorts are “all newly remastered from the best available film elements.” It’s a shame that those available film elements aren’t up to snuff, but fans of the Hanna-Barbera formula will still enjoy the complete adventures of the lovable gator.
