After two years away, Heathcliff returned to television, this time in syndication, this time as a daily series, paired with an original series, Cats & Company.
In the opener, Heathcliff (Mel Blanc) is jealous when his girlfriend, Sonja, falls for an opera singer in a story that predates the Milli Vanilli scandal by five years. You'll figure it out in "The Great Pussini". Then, Riff Raff and friends decide to spring Riff's honey, Cleo, from the kennel while her owners are on vacation in "Kitty Kat Kennels".
There is an alternate theme song that turns up in some videos on YouTube, so they did alternate themes depending on the market. The standard theme we all know plays on this video.
Rating: A.
2 comments:
And now the answer to the age-old question: why did Heathcliff and Riff-Raff never meet on the show? Well, DiC had originally planned to establish Riff-Raff as a rival/frenemy to Heathcliff, but the MacNaught Company, who owned the right to Heathcliff at the time (and may still, not sure) was vehemently against the idea, so the 2 never shared the screen except for a brief bit during the show's closing credits.
Riff-Raff's boys, Hector, Wordsworth and Mungo, did occasionally co-star with Heathcliff, again as sort of frenemies/rivals, but by the show's second season, even they stopped appearing in the Heathcliff shorts, replaced by 3 background alley cats, now dubbed Lefty, Knuckles and Raoul, respectively. From then on, there was no further crossing over of Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats; the characters strictly stuck to their own segments.
That to me is a missed opportunity. DIC could've gotten Cats & Company licensed for their own newspaper strip, but that didn't happen. McNaught didn't want to play with the ball of yarn tossed in their direction. Their loss.
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