Wacky Races
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Wacky Races is an American animated television series from Hanna-Barbera Productions, about a group of 11 different cars racing against each other in various road rallies, with each driver hoping to win the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer." The cartoon was unusual in the large number of regular characters, twenty-three in total.
The series was inspired by the movie The Great Race. The series ran on CBS from September 14, 1968 to September 5, 1970. Seventeen episodes were produced with each episode featuring two different races for a total of 34 races in all.
Attempting to foil the racers' efforts was the show's resident stereotyped villain Dick Dastardly and his sidekick, Muttley the dog. Dastardly would gain a large lead then, like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, execute all sorts of elaborate schemes to trap, divert, blow up or stop the other racers, only to see them backfire spectacularly. The intended object lesson may have been that Dastardly had what was arguably one of the fastest cars in the series and might have won several races had he only kept his mind on the race and off dirty-tricks. Like Wile E Coyote, Dastardly never saw victory. Many of Dastardly's plots look suspiciously similar to those used in Road Runner episodes, which might be explained by the fact that Mike Maltese was a scriptwriter on both series.
One of the original plans for the series was that the races themselves would be part of a live-action quiz show with Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley Productions, the team behind the television series Hollywood Squares. Heatter-Quigley's plan was that contestants would actually bet on which Wacky Racer would cross the finish line first. Although the game show concept was eventually scrubbed, the series still retained a Hanna-Barbera Heatter-Quigley dual production credit.
The drivers
The eleven racers and their numbers are:
- Number 00: The Mean Machine, driven by Dick Dastardly & Muttley - the villains of the series, in a rocket-powered car with lots of concealed weapons.
- Number 1: The Bouldermobile, driven by The Slag Brothers (Rock Slag & Gravel Slag) - cavemen (covered with hair like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family; their design was recycled for Captain Caveman) driving a wheeled boulder. The Slag Brothers sometimes reconstructed their car from scratch using their clubs.
- Number 2: The Creepy Coupe, driven by The Gruesome Twosome (Big Gruesome & Little Gruesome) - monsters (Big spoke like Boris Karloff and Little like Peter Lorre), driving a car with a belfry; the belfry housed a dragon and various ghosts and ghouls. The Creepy Coupe was able to fly short distances through use of the dragon's wings.
- Number 3: The Convert-a-Car, driven by Professor Pat Pending - a scientist in a car that can change into just about anything that moves.
- Number 4: The Crimson Haybailer, driven by RED MAX - an air ace (loosely based on WWI German aviator, Max Immelmann) in a car/plane hybrid that was capable of limited flight, usually just enough to leapfrog over racers and/or obstacles in its path. The Haybailer also had a machine gun mounted, which was sporadically used.
- Number 5: The Compact Pussycat, driven by Penelope Pitstop - a woman racer driving a pink feminine car with personal grooming facilities. Said facilities would sometimes backfire on the other racers---shampoo foam hitting the faces of the other racers, for instance.
- Number 6: The Army Surplus Special, driven by Sergeant Blast & Private Meekly - two soldiers racing an army tank/jeep hybrid. The Army Surplus Special made use of its tank facilities while racing, including its cannon.
- Number 7: The Bulletproof Bomb (aka The Roaring Twenty), driven by The Ant Hill Mob (led by Clyde) - gangsters in a 1920s salon car. Their car was renamed Chugga-Boom in the spinoff The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, where it also seemed to gain sentience.
- Number 8: The Arkansas Chuggabug, driven by Luke & Blubber Bear - hillbillies in a wooden buggy driven by a coal-fired range.
- Number 9: The Turbo Terrific, driven by Peter Perfect - a jock (he had a crush on Penelope, so often stopped to help) driving a drag racer that often falls to bits.
- Number 10: The Buzz Wagon, driven by Rufus Ruffcut & Sawtooth - a lumberjack and a beaver in a wagon with buzzsaws for wheels, which gave it the ability to cut through almost anything, damaging or destroying the object in the process.
Spinoffs and similar series
The Penelope Pitstop character was spun off into another cartoon series in 1969, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Also in 1969, Dick Dastardly and Muttley were given a spinoff; the two villains appeared in the series Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines (sometimes mistakenly known as Stop the Pigeon, after the show's working title and theme song).The basic idea behind Wacky Races was used again by Hanna-Barbera in later years. The late 1970s series Yogi's Space Race featured Hanna-Barbera stalwarts such as Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, and others racing against each other across outer space (and fending off a villain and his canine sidekick). In the early 1990s, the syndicated series Wake, Rattle and Roll featured a segment called "Fender Bender 500," which once again featured Dick Dastardly and Muttley (and their "Mean Machine"), only this time racing against Yogi Bear, Winsome Witch,Quick Draw McGraw and other Hanna-Barbera stars.
A video game was produced in 1992 for the NES, in which the player took the role of Muttley, sent on missions from Dick Dastardly to defeat the other racers. In 2000, more video games based on the cartoon were produced for the PC, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Color and Sega Dreamcast systems. These were racing games. Voices for the video games' renditions of the characters included Jim Cummings as Dick Dastardly, Clyde, Private Meekly, Big Gruesome, Rock Slag, and Gravel Slag; Billy West as Muttley and Little Gruesome, Janet Waldo as Penelope Pitstop, John Stephenson as Luke, Scott Innes as Professor Pat Pending, Gregg Berger as the narrator, and Gregg Burson as the Red Max, Sergeant Blast, Peter Perfect, and Ruffus Ruffcut.
DVD Release
United States
In 2004 a DVD box set of the entire series was released from Warner Home Video.United Kingdom
In Britain Warner released the series on three separate discs with no extra features. This edition was exclusive to Virgin Megastores, from the time it was released to when it was discontinued. The complete box set of 'Wacky Races' which has until now only been available in the U.S. is due for release on the 31st July 2006 as a HMV exclusive.Race results
The show gave the results of each race at the end of each episode, but never indicated a particular scoring system or way to determine who won the Wacky Races as a whole. The cumulative totals for first, second and third place finishes for each contestant are presented below:
| Contestant | Results |
| The Boulder Mobile | 3-8-3 |
| The Buzzwagon | 3-6-4 |
| The Creepy Coupe | 3-3-6 |
| The Bulletproof Bomb | 4-5-2 |
| The Compact Pussycat | 4-2-5 |
| The Crimson Haybailer | 3-4-3 |
| The Convert-A-Car | 3-2-5 |
| The Arkansas Chugabug | 4-1-4 |
| The Turbo Terrific | 4-2-2 |
| The Army Surplus Special | 3-1-0 |
| The Mean Machine | 2-1-0 (although Dick Dastardly and Muttley were disqualified because they cheated)
|
Voice cast
- Daws Butler - Peter Perfect, Sergeant Blast, Big Gruesome, Rock Slag, Rufus Ruffcut, Red Max
- Don Messick - Muttley, Little Gruesome, Gravel Slag, Professor Pat Pending, Sawtooth, Ring-a-Ding
- John Stephenson - Luke and Blubber Bear
- Janet Waldo - Penelope Pitstop
- Dave Willock - Race Announcer
- Paul Winchell - Dick Dastardly, Clyde, Private Meekly
Cultural references / precursors
- Certain characters in the cartoon are clearly based on characters in Blake Edwards' The Great Race (1965). Penelope Pitstop took on the appearance of Maggie DuBois, played by Natalie Wood, down to the exact shade of pink on one of her outfits and the parasol. Dastardly has much in common with Jack Lemmon's portrayal of Professor Fate - though he has a non-canine sidekick in the form of Max Meen (Peter Falk). The pair indulge in similar acts of sabotage and Max has Muttley's knack for making mistakes. Although Fate's car does not look much like The Mean Machine it does bear the familiar spike on the front and is equipped with smoke screen, cannon and other assorted gadgets. The physical similarities, particularly between DuBois and Pitstop, can be seen from the cover of the DVD (right).
- Underground rapper Daniel Dumile makes a reference to "Dick Dastardly and Muttley with sick laughter" in the song "Accordion" on his collaboration album Madvillainy with producer Madlib.
- Underground rapper Saafir on the song "Swig of the Stew" from his debut album 'Boxcar Sessions', claims that "Dick Dastardly could never've mastered me".
- Wacky Races has also had an influence on Japanese animation. At least three anime shows have produced a Wacky Races-style special, complete with wacky cars usually based on a series prop. During the '80s, animation production house Artmic (now AIC) produced Scramble Wars, starring the super deformed versions of characters from Bubblegum Crisis, Gall Force and other shows that Artmic created. Bandai animation house Sunrise produced a similar special, as part of the SD Gundam OVA series of self-parodies of Sunrise's Gundam series. This is perhaps the most direct homage to Wacky Races, as the episode transforms one of the characters, the mad ace Yazan Gable of Zeta Gundam, into a clear Dick Dastardly homage (including oversized chin) and another villain as his Muttley-esque sidekick, complete with a dog-like snout and a raspy, hushed laugh. In 1993, Tatsunoko Productions released a Wacky Races-styled OVA special featuring the characters from the popular and long running Time Bokan franchise and its spinoffs, Yattaman, Zendaman, and Otasukeman.
- The animated series Dexter's Laboratory featured a parody of Wacky Races in the episode "Dexter's Wacky Races," featuring the show's major cast members (Dexter, Mandark, Mandark's mother and father, Dexter's mother and father, Dee Dee and her imaginary friend, Monkey and Agent Honeydew, and the Justice Friends) racing against each other in a road rally to Burbank, California. The opening credits of Wacky Races and the show's narrator are also parodied here.
Wacky Races in other languages
- Japanese: チキチキマシン猛レース (Chiki-Chiki Machine Mou race)
- Brazilian Portuguese: Corrida Maluca
- Spanish: Los Autos Locos
- French: Les Fous du Volant
- Polish: Odlotowe Wyścigi
- italian: Le Corse Pazze
- Hungarian:Flúgos futam
External links
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