Top Cat was created as a parody of The Phil Silvers Show (1955–59), a military sitcom whose lead character, Sergeant Bilko, was a fast-talking con artist; Hanna-Barbera sold the cartoon to ABC based simply on a drawing of Top Cat.

It was only the second original animated series to premiere in prime time on American network television.

Arnold Stang's voice for Top Cat was originally a direct impression of Phil Silvers, but the sponsor objected, insisting it was paying for Stang and not Silvers, so later episodes had Stang shift his performance closer to his own voice while still echoing Silvers.

Maurice Gosfield, who played Private Duane Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show, voiced Benny the Ball, and Benny's chubby design was directly based on Gosfield's own appearance.

Top Cat and his gang were also inspired by the East Side Kids, the roguish street-smart characters from a series of 1940s B movies.

The show was a ratings failure during its original prime-time run on ABC but became successful once it was rerun on Saturday mornings, and it also became especially popular in Mexico, other Latin American countries, the UK, and southern Europe.

In the UK the series had to be renamed 'The Boss Cat' (later shortened to 'Boss Cat') just four weeks after its BBC premiere because 'Top Cat' was already a well-known British cat food brand and the BBC did not carry advertising, even though the character's name and theme song still referred to him as Top Cat.

The Mexican Spanish dub, titled Don Gato y su pandilla, became a massive hit across Latin America (Mexico, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina), with fans crediting its success to an inventive dub that added new jokes, local accents, and renamed characters like Benito, Cucho, Panza, Espanto and Demóstenes.