  We reconsider the, by Brink and Vasiliev, recently proposed generalized Toda
field theories using the framework of WZNW$\rightarrow$Toda reduction. The
reduced theory has a gauge symmetry which can be fixed in various ways. We
discuss some different gauge choices. In particular we study the ${\cal W}$
algebra associated with the generalized model in some different realizations,
corresponding to different gauge choices. We also investigate the mapping
between the Toda field and a free field and show the relation between the
${\cal W}$ algebra generators expressed in terms of the two different fields.
All results apply also to the case of ordinary Toda theories.
