While he may not be Hanna Barbera’s most memorable animated animal, Huckleberry Hound has garnered his fair share of followers since his first appearance in 1958.

Voice actor Daws Butler is responsible for giving Huck his trademark drawl – but our favorite blue-hued hound dog wasn’t the first character to receive the laconic vocal stamp. Butler voiced at least two previous characters in exactly the same lazed drawl, Wolf of the MGM cartoon Droopy and Chilly Willy’s clutzy foe, Smedley the Bear.

Huckleberry Hound was Hanna Barbera’s first major animated TV series, but the characters introduced on the show, including Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looie and (most notably) Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, often stole the show and eventually surpassed its star in popularity.

The show won an Emmy during the 1959-1960 and became the first animated series ever to receive the distinction.

Though an explanation has never been offered for Huck’s obsessive fondness of the standard, “My Darling Clementine,” our actual theory is that Clementine was the raven-haired, coke-bottle-figured owner of Huck’s mother. She eventually became his first-ever crush, just before she released him and the rest of the litter into the unsuspecting streets to fend for themselves as strays. That’s just us, though.

Huckleberry Hound starred in his own comic title in 1959, which outlasted his television show by more than a decade.