Top Cat Goes Live

 Another day, another piece of obscure Hanna-Barbera media here on the Exposure Sheet. Last year, I made a post focused on a series of interviews featuring Top Cat made in the late nineties. These interviews showcased a CG-animated Top Cat speaking to a live-action guest. If you'd like to see that post, check it out here. At the time, I didn't know much about them, but since that post went up, I think I've come across enough to warrant a follow-up. 

These Top Cat interviews, officially known as Top Cat Live!, were the creation of a company called Modern Cartoons. Not a super well-known animation studio, but it did have at least one hit, that being the children's series JayJay the Jet Plane. The series was also a coproduction with Trash Television and Craftsman Productions (the latter I mentioned in the original post). What's interesting about the production side of this series is that Top Cat himself was brought to life through real-time motion capture, a technique that was pretty new at the time. Even more interesting is that the actor performing as Top Cat was none other than the legendary Tom Kenny. He's performed as T.C. a couple of times, and considering the timeframe this was produced in, this may have been the first. If you'd like to know more about the behind-the-scenes side of this series, check out this archived page on the Modern Cartoons website.

According to the December 1995 issue of Television Business International, twenty episodes of Top Cat Live! were created, intended to air on Cartoon Network's international feeds. I mentioned in the original post that Joe Barbera was interviewed, but Slash of Guns N' Roses, David Hasselhoff, and Dean Cain (Superman in Lois and Clark) also appeared. The series page on the Lost Media Wiki has a whole host of other guests featured on the show, but I didn't see any source for them, so I'm not too sure about how accurate they are. I also recommend checking this page out, as their updates are a big reason you're seeing this post.

While it seems like they were intended for international incarnations of CN, I think there were also plans to air them over here in the States as well. I brought these up on the Cartoon Research Facebook group, and a member mentioned having seen a segment on Entertainment Tonight about them. The segment focused heavily on the tech used to bring the series to life and featured Tom Kenny using the mocap technology to play Top Cat. Unfortunately, like most of this show, it too seems lost to time.

Now, I did say "most" of the show, because believe it or not, here is a segment from Top Cat Live!...in Italian. This is the Slash interview, and even though I don't understand the language, it's still rather cool to see Top Cat brought to life with 90s CGI. Hopefully, in the future, more episodes will be uncovered. Considering there were twenty episodes made, I'd say it's more likely than not. Until then, check out the Slash episode below, and give me your thoughts.