| Genre: | Comedy |
| Runtime: | 24 minutes |
| Director: | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Voices: | Daws Butler Don Messick |
| Country: | United States |
| Producer: | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Language: | English |
| Company: | Hanna-Barbera Productions |
| Network: | Syndication |
| Num Seasons: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 52 |
Wally Gator is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that originally aired as one of the segments from the 1962–1963 block The Hanna-Barbera New Cartoon Series.[1] The other two segments that compose the series are Touché Turtle and Dum Dum and Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har.[2] The segment consisted of 52 episodes over one year.[3] Wally Gator appears in the HBO Max series Jellystone! where he is portrayed as the town ditz and played by Jeff Bergman.[4]
Wally Gator (voiced by Daws Butler impersonating Ed Wynn) is an anthropomorphic, happy-go-lucky alligator who wears a collar and a pork pie hat. Although his catchy theme song describes him as a "swingin' alligator of the swamp," his home is in the city zoo.[5] Mr. Twiddle (voiced by Don Messick) is the zookeeper who keeps a close watch on Wally, who likes to check out what life is like in the outside world.[6]
Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman noted that Wally Gator follows the formula that Hanna-Barbera established in the previous series, such as the Yogi Bear series. The set up in which these shows placed an animal character within a human-controlled environment and had these characters deal with the social boundaries placed and enforced by humans.[7] An example being: Yogi lives in a park under the care of a park ranger; Wally lives in a zoo under the supervision of a zookeeper. The theme that drives the series is Wally's desire to escape the zoo, a derivative of the Top Cat series, where the titular character keeps trying to get away from life in the alley.[7]
Lehman notes a rather depressing underlying theme: the zoo and life in captivity seem to be the proper place for Wally. No matter how much he struggles to fit in the society of the outside world, Wally remains an "Other" and is doomed to fail. The status quo follows every unsuccessful attempt at change.[7]
Episodes of Wally Gator were released on VHS many times. A DVD set release of the complete series was originally announced for 2006 from Warner Bros. for the Hanna-Barbera Classic Collection but was later canceled due to the poor condition of the masters and was delayed. In 2006, a Warner spokesperson said of the DVDs: "They were pulled because significant remastering work needed to be researched. We are exploring adding them back to the schedule next year." The first episode is available on the DVD set “Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960s Vol. 2”.[8] The show was released on iTunes video in 2017 as part of Hanna-Barbera's 60th anniversary and was released on a made to order DVD set from Warner Archive on June 25, 2019.[9]