With plenty of 80s nostalgia to go around it was just a matter of time until a box set of Heathcliff & The Catillac Cats became available. On September 20th, Shout! Factory released a 4-disc set that includes the first 24 episodes of the animated cartoon series. Although not reaching the same level of fame as his similarly shaped and colored competition Garfield, Heathcliff came 5 years before Garfield did. The animated series, which was based on the comic strip, is remembered fondly by the same demographic that is now buying cartoons for their own children. It's only natural that parents would want to share their television memories with their kids and this new DVD set will help them do it.
Created by George Gately, Heathcliff was born as a side character in a little-know comic strip called "Auntie" in the late 1960s, from this he evolved into his very own newspaper comic strip that first ran on September 3, 1973 and was syndicated by McNaught Syndicate. The name Heathcliff comes from the character in Emily Brontë's 1847 novel "Wuthering Heights". In 1994 George Gately began teaching his nephew Peter Gallagher to draw the strip. Peter took over the creation of the famous one-toothed cat after George Gately's death on September 30, 2001. The Heathcliff comic strip is still syndicated in about 200 newspapers through Creators Syndicate.
The animated television series debuted on ABC on October 4, 1980 as The Heathcliff & Dingbat Show then later as The Heathcliff & Marmaduke Show. Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats came in 1984 and ran for 65 episodes. Heathcliff was voiced by the most famous vocal talent in animation: Mel Blanc. For those not familiar, Mr. Blanc also voiced such cartoon superstars as Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Sylvester Pussycat, Woody Woodpecker, Speedy Gonzales, the Tasmanian Devil, Pepe LePew, Marvin the Martian and the Roadrunner to name a few. Sadly, Mel Blanc would die in 1989, not long after Heathcliff finished it's run.
The DVD set includes 24 episodes of Heathcliff and 24 episodes of The Catillac Cats. They can be viewed separately or back-to-back just as the original series was shown. The Catillac Cats features a motley crew of "junkyard cats" led by the short-of-stature Riff Raff and his gang, which consists of his leggy girlfriend Cleo and sidekicks Mungo, Wordsworth and Hector. Neither the Heathcliff nor the Catillac Cats cartoons offer much in the form of moral or educational teaching. These are pure entertainment, mostly consisting of mischievous slapstick. After each episode there is a 30 second short which deals with a moral lesson, but other than that do not expect your children to learn anything of any lasting value. All kids do need to just have fun sometimes and this set gives you over 9 hours of mindless children's entertainment.
Article comments
1 - Bob A. Booey
Heathcliff, Heatchliff, no one should terrorize his neighborhood.
I loved this show as a kid.
Much better cartoon than Garfield, although I found the Garfield comic books funny.
That is all.