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Top Cat Is A Thriving Film Franchise In Mexico

Hanna-Barbera's Top Cat was not a hit. The cartoon only ran for 30 episodes before it was scrapped so HB could focus on more lucrative shows like Magilla Gorilla or Peter Potamus. But after the U.S. flop, Top Cat found a new alley to prowl all the way down in Mexico.

Hanna-BarberaJust like the discarded American baseball players and pop stars before him.

Don Gato first appeared on Mexican television screens in the 1970s, and hasn't left since. They fell in love with the lil guy, and a lot of that had to do with how well he was presented to his new audience. Instead of being another poorly translated import like all other American cartoons, Don Gato carefully translated all the jokes so they still worked, and swapped out any obscure American references for Mexican ones. The Mexican dub also got some big voice actors in, like Jorge Arvizu, known as the "Mexican Mel Blanc."

Eventually, Warner Bros. (which owns Hanna-Barbera) noticed the show's lasting success and decided to cash in on it. The result was the Mexican-Argentinian Don Gato Y Su Pandilla (Top Cat And His Gang), a feature-length animated film initially released only in South and Central America. Yet despite garnering some pretty bad reviews for its cheap animation, shameless cash-grab nature, and a particularly out-of-place joke about prison rape, the movie was a massive success. It saw the biggest box opening weekend in the history of Mexican cinema, and immediately received a sequel. Finally, a Top Cat get-rich-quick scheme paid off.

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Typewriters Are Still Being Made (For Prisoners)

After the advent of the thing used to type this sentence, typewriters became obsolete. Or did they? There's actually still a big, lucrative market for dumb computers you can't watch porn on: the U.S. prison-industrial complex.

The one benefit(?) a typewriter has over a computer is that you can't plug it into the web. That's why people still use typewriters in prisons, but there is a drawback: they're perfect for illegal inmate activities. They're easy to hide contraband in, and they're full of metal parts -- basically starter kits for shanks. Worse, in order for guards to inspect typewriters, they need to be completely disassembled, which is such a frustrating and delicate procedure that they are often broken in the process, or so the guards say.

SwintecWe all know they only want to silence Mad Dog Maddox's Property Brothers fanfiction; it's too seditious.

That's why one New Jersey company, Swintec, is making and servicing typewriters made entirely of clear plastic. They have contracts with prisons in 43 states for the production of shank-and-drug-free typewriters. They even manufacture clear typewriter ribbon cases.

Access to typewriters isn't a human right according to the prison system; it's a very expensive privilege. A Swintec bought through a prison commissary can be anywhere from $200 in California to well over $300 in Kentucky. That's a lot for a typewriter that prisoners claim types like hot garbage and breaks constantly. But without bloodstained drafts snail-mailed from state prisons, where would this website be?

Steven Assarian is a librarian. He writes stuff here. Michael Battaglino is a new contributor to Cracked.com. Be sure to check out some of his other work if you enjoyed this article.

But since you're presumably not in prison, you can still get a nice typewriter yourself and just kinda use it to show off.

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