Mildew Wolf, one of the forgotten Hanna Barbara villains, never really achieved the status of Dick Dastardly or Muttly; Hanna Barbara’s premier bad guys. The reason for that is probably because…he just wasn’t very evil.
But for everything he lacked in the evil-department, Mildew Wolf made up for ten-fold in flaming homosexual ambiguity. Probably the thing that made him so flamboyant was his voice. It’s hard to describe, but…okay, do you remember Samurai Pizza Cats?
Alright, so maybe that isn’t the best example, but try real hard. Anyway, remember the guy who sang the theme song (“Samurai Pizza Cats! They’re so bad! They’ve got more fur than any turtle ever had!”)? Well, Mildew Wolf sounded like THAT…only considerably gayer.
It didn’t help that, as one of the commentators for the All-Star Laff-a-Lympics, they paired him with Hanna Barbara’s second most flaming cartoon character, Snagglepuss, the effeminate pink mountain lion with an unsettling obsession for theater. Still, it was their flamboyant commentating mixed with the “All-Star” cast which made the show so entertaining.
But before his high-profile status in the All-Star Laff-a-Lympics, Mildew Wolf got his start in some stupid cartoon where he was trying to eat a lamb all the time but a sheep dog kept beating the crap out of him. I honestly can’t remember what it was called, but the lamb had this annoying catchphrase that went “It’s the Wool-ulf! It’s the Wool-ulf!”
Those cartoons were especially disturbing because Mildew Wolf was less like a starving Wile E. Coyote and more like an overly-motivated Michael Jackson. He’d kidnap the lamb, who couldn’t have been any older than Auggie Doggy, and try to carry him off to some secluded location, saying creepy stuff like “I’ve got you now, my little tid-bit”. I think there’s a good reason they don’t rerun those cartoons anymore.
So that’s all I have to say about Mildew Wolf, Hanna Barbara’s flaming pedophile. I suppose he wasn’t an utterly terrible character, he just wasn’t very good. Better than Mush Mouse and Pumpkin Puss, at least.