Line #9 YMMV/TopCat


1	* AwesomeEgo: Top Cat himself.
2	* EnsembleDarkhorse
3	** [[{{Adorkable}} Choo Choo]] and [[CoolCat Spook]] tend to be the fan favorites of the gang. Chooch is loved so much that he got picked to be Top Cat's partner in the Fender Bender 500 series, even though Benny the Ball is typically TC's right hand.
4	** Top Cat's one-time rival, [[TheRival Jazz]], shows up frequently in fanworks.
5	* FountainOfMemes: Choo Choo has spawned lots of memes, including "Jazz's bingo party" and "This fucking cat has been stuck on my TV for 12 hours." He even has his [[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/choo-choo own page]] on Know Your Meme.
6	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff
7	** The series was only a modest success in the United States, where it ran for a mere 30 episodes and [[MainstreamObscurity is relatively obscure to modern audiences]] (unless you're a classic cartoon historian/fan, like Jerry Beck or Leonard Maltin or those who found it either on Creator/{{Boomerang}} or a episode of ''WesternAnimation/HarveyBirdmanAttorneyAtLaw''). The show was however successful outside the United States:
8	** In Latin America, it's Hanna-Barbera's biggest franchise, rivaling only ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' and ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDoo'' in its success and has reruns up to the late 2010s. It is so popular that Officer Dibble's name, dubbed as "Oficial Matute", became slang in several Latin American countries for "police officer". It is even so popular that in 2011, Creator/WarnerBros (who now owns the franchise after taking over Hanna-Barbera) licensed out the property to Anima Studios of Mexico to create a ''Top Cat'' animated feature specifically targeted at the Latin American fanbase. The ticket sales in Mexico alone paid for the film and it's the fifth highest grossing Mexican-produced film of all time. The show's popularity owed a great deal to the {{Woolseyism}} of the dub. Each character name was changed to a typical Latin American name and each cat was given a distinctive and different Mexican accent appropriate to the character. Considering that Mexican media is very popular in most Latin American countries, people everywhere were familiar with those changes. ''Top Cat'''s popularity also stems in part from casually happening to be similar to a popular Mexican cinema character of the time called ''Tin Tan''.
9	*** In particular Benny (having being renamed in Spanish as Benito) is [[EnsembleDarkHorse wildly popular]] in Mexico far more so than the rest of the gang. While many might not remember the others' names, just saying "''Benito''" in Mexico will most likely get a response of "''Bodoque''" [[note]]ball/lump, the last name he was given in Spanish which while adorable for a little cat made the name Benito wildly unpopular in Mexico due to overweight associations [[/note]]. Sharing a name with the former mexican president Benito Juarez [[https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/cartera/economia/proponen-en-redes-otro-benito-para-billete-de-500?amp even got him featured on fake $500 peso bills]].
10	** ''Top Cat'' found a large audience in the UK (though, in the UK, the show was called ''Boss Cat'' when it was first shown to avoid associating it with a brand of cat food known as "Top Cat" – it's now shown under its original name), and even made an appearance in a commercial for the Halifax bank. In fact, the only reason an English language dub of the 2011 film was produced was to release the movie in the UK. Much like in Latin America, "The Dibble" is slang in some parts of England for police officers and more recently, a politician who included the initials "T.C." in his name was referred to by his opponents as "Top Cat" to mock him.
11	** It's loved in Sri Lanka, where it is known as Pissu Poosa (පිස්සු පූසා) (Crazy Cat), and it has been rerun several times on Rupavahini, the channel that aired it. The last known time it aired was in 2012.
12	* HoYay: The show had an entirely male cast, so there was bound to be a little bit.
13	** Often, when Fancy heard Top Cat summoning the group, the exchange between him and his date would go as follows:
14	--->'''Girl cat:''' And Fancy, darling, you promise never, ever to leave me again?
15	--->'''Fancy:''' Honey. Baby doll. What could ever make me leave ''you?'' (Hears T.C.) [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Top Cat! That’s who!]] (Runs off)
16	** In ''Choo Choo's Romance'', Choo Choo is devastated when he thinks Top Cat is dead, saying that he "meant more to me than anything."
17	** In ''King for a Day'', Top Cat has Choo Choo pose as his wife on a TV show.
18	* MemeticMutation:
19	** A screenshot of Choo Choo from the episode "Dibble Sings Again" was the subject of a viral Website/{{Tumblr}} post, where the original poster stated that the frame was frozen on their TV for 12 hours.
20	** Choo Choo's sign advertising Jazz's bingo party in "All That Jazz" is frequently edited to say something else.
21	* {{Moe}}: Benny and Choo Choo are generally agreed to be the cutest cats in Top Cat's gang. The former being friendly and small while the latter being a soft-hearted hopeless romantic.
22	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: From its 1960s slang to the running gag of Top Cat constantly using Officer Dibble's now obsolete police phone, the show can't really work after the 1960s. Hence why the series doesn't feel right when placed in a modern setting.
23	* ValuesDissonance:
24	** A few episodes have the term "Red Skin" thrown about when talking about Native Americans.
25	** This trope is why four episodes were omitted from the BBC rotation until the 1990s. Among these was "Choo-Choo Goes Ga-Ga", which centers on Choo-Choo [[SuicideAsComedy attempting to kill himself (and failing miserably)]] because a movie starlet wouldn't date him.
26	* VindicatedByHistory: The Creator/HannaBarbera television animation studio had been up and running since 1957, and had been enjoying at least middling success due to the popularity of its earliest shows, most notably ''Huckleberry Hound''. But it was the early '60s success of ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' which established a [[StealthPun rock-solid]] TV empire for them. They could throw together whatever they wanted and not worry about the ratings. ''Top Cat'' was one of the shows that came out of this early freedom, but only lasted one season in its initial run. Hanna-Barbera subsequently built a stable franchise out of it over the course of a few decades, to the point where its status as a mainstream classic became undisputed.
27	* TheWoobie: Benny, Choo Choo.
28	* {{Woolseyism}}: The Mexican dub, ''Don Gato'', changed all the characters' names apart from T.C. himself: Benny "The Ball" became "Benito" (whose voice shifted into that of a little kid), Choo-Choo became "Cucho" (a common nickname for cats), Brain became "Demostenes" (just like the philosopher -- [[GeniusBonus who was also a stutterer]]), Fancy became "Panza", Spook became "Espanto" and Dibble became "Matute". On top of this, every cat spoke in a different accent, with the result that the series became wildly successful in Mexico. The same 30 episodes have been rerun over and over in mainstream Mexican TV for about 30 years.

Context YMMV / TopCat