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"Wacky Races" was an integral part of my Saturday mornings. It was awesome!!! Then, POOF it was gone, and I never got to see a whif of it for years and years. Later, someone told me it was buried due to complaints about racial stereotypes amongst all those goofy characters. Who was offended by what I have no idea. Once, I remember seeing a commercial for Quisp cereal where you could send in a boxtop and a little money and get a NICE Wacky Races car! I believe I ordered Dick Dastardly's car. Mom can back me up on this, we ordered the car...sent in the boxtop with the right amount of money, and IT NEVER CAME! I'm still mad. Imagine the price I could get for it today! (If I didn't manage to break it, like all my other toys!) I'll have to check the cartoon channels and see if it's on again, so I can retreat to my cozy childhood, cuz this adult crap is making me old!

"Wacky Races" was created in response to the rather violent adventure/superhero cartoons of the previous two seasons, and even upon its premiere, it was blackballed by the watchdog group Action For Children's Television. They claimed that since it was bankrolled by game show producers Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley ("Hollywood Squares"), it was enticing children to place monetary wagers on the outcome of each of the show's 34 races. (Hogwash. I had the over/under on how many times Dick Dastardly's contraptions backfired on him.)

For all the atypical Hanna-Barbera use of repeat animation and low-budget movement, "Wacky Races" was still an unusual and entertaining cartoon which would beget such shows as "Bailey's Comets," "Laff-A-Lympics" and "Yogi's Space Race." A lot of the humor derived from Dastardly's machinations, although many of the other racers got to shine as well. In the Gold Key comics, Penelope Pitstop would eliminate Peter Perfect and Red Max by conveniently getting them to fight over her. That wasn't used in the show, although it should have. And it's dotted with great lines. When the narrator calls Dastardly "The Dracula of the drag strip," Dastardly counters "I resent that remark!" Narrator: "But do you deny it?" Dastardly: "No, I just resent it!" It's a comedy cartoon that doesn't forget it's a comedy cartoon, something that many cartoon shows of the 70s and 80s forgot.

And a bit of trivia, Dastardly did cross the finish line twice but was disqualified both times. The first time he extended the nose of the Mean Machine ahead of the others (yet in another episode, Rufus Ruffcut physically extended his neck to reach the finish line and the judges gave him the win--go figure). The second time, a chain reaction collision caused Dastardly and Muttley to get bounced into the Arkansas Chuggabug, which was in the lead. Dastardly also set a precedent the following year--being the first (and to anyone's knowledge, only) villain to get his own show, "Dastardly & Muttley In Their Flying Machines.

When I was five years old I never missed Wacky Races. Even though I'm now a grown man I still occasionally tape it. I think Dick Dastardly must be credited with introducing the phrase "drat and double drat" into the English language. My mother used to use old Dick as a piece of moral instruction telling me that he showed that people who cheat never win. They keep on doing remakes of cartoons with real actors these days so how about one of Wacky Races with say Rowan Atkinson as Dick Dastardly.

The Hanna-Barbera series "The Wacky Races" emerged as a slapstick antidote to the violent superhero shows which had saturated the overall landscape of Saturday Morning cartoons during the 1967-1968 season,and when it premiered as part of the brilliant CBS-TV line-up of Saturday Morning shows at the height of the 1968-1969 season,it set off some sort of precedent when a season after its debut,but spun off not one but two other cartoons while continuing its run on the network. The series ran on CBS-TV from the premiere episode of the series on September 14,1968 through the final installment of the series on September 5,1970 with repeated episodes from the first season produced by Hanna-Barbera productions. This was however one of the original Hanna-Barbera potpourri of shows that basically recycled the same formula which assembled a huge cast of characters and involved them in some kind of repetitious activity. The main antagonists in the never ending worldwide car race were the racers themselves and their situations,and to put it bluntly was repeated three times in various carbon copy format during the entire decade of the 1970's(which in turned several animation studios used the same formula for various shows...Filmation and DePatie-Freleng took the same story lines and characters to put in their own shows).

Basically,if you seen one episode of "Wacky Races",you've seen them all,since they rigidly in just about every episode follows the same plot each time:and this was a bunch of animated "theme" automobiles raced across various parts of the country and the world amid manic antics. As far as the characters were concerned they consisted of the following. There was the log-car driven by a beaver and a lumberjack; a spooky-mansion car driven by monsters;an Appalachian backporch car driven by a bunch of hillbillies and a bear;a car with a big engine driven by a handsome young stud;a dainty pink car driven by a female counterpart(Penelope Pitstop);a roadster driven a Ant Hill Mob,a gang of dwarfes in 1920's style clothing. Each episodes follows the same recipe as with one car ahead,and then the others that would used special tricks to catch up. But the straw that stirred the drink and what made the show interesting to watch was the duo of Dick Dastardly and his assistant snickering dog Muttley in their Mean Machine always trying to find ways to cheat,but at the end of each episode he would always failed miserably. The following year,Hanna-Barbera made a spin-off series of "Wacky Races" titled "Dastardly and Muttley" which featured these two characters as part of a squad of villainous World War I flying aces who flew a single four-seater plane(The other two pilots had weird speech impediments as their character shtick.). The pilots were given the job of stopping a heroic carrier pigeon and just like in about every episode was repeated with Dastardly trying any scheme he can to stop the pigeon only with mixed results. The was definitely the version of The Road Runner and the Coyote but not nearly as clever visually. This was part of the CBS-TV schedule for the 1969-1970 season. The other "Wacky Races" spin-off that came around for the 1970-1971 season,"The Perils of Penelope Pitstop",was totally different from the rest of the pack,with one exception. In fact,it was one of the weirdest shows to ever appear on Saturday Mornings. This show was a combination of Snow White,and the combination of the 1930's serial The Perils of Pauline with just about every clinche every added for grand measure. They took two of the characters of Wacky Races;Penelope Pitstop and made the Ant Hill Mob her guardian protectors. In just about every episode she was also stalked,pursued,and sometimes captured by her evil guardian The Hooded Claw(voiced to perfection by Paul Lynde). The Ant Hill Mob was always riding in just a nick of time to her rescue. There was a strange undercurrent to the show too: since Penelope spent large proportions of each episode either tied up or otherwise in bondage. Not to mention some of the kinkiest S&M ever devised for a children's show. The series remained in repeated episodes until mid-1971,where CBS finally got rid of Wacky Races once and for all.

I love this show! It was so hilarious, and brilliant. Dick Dastardly, and Muttley (with his hilarious snickering when Dasterdly had a foul up) were HILARIOUS!! I loved it how Dastardly cheated all the time (and this was when he was winning too!!) when he was in the lead. It was too funny!! The Ant Hill Mob were cool too. This show also had 2 surprisingly good spinoff shows as well ("Dastardly, and Muttley in Their Flying Machines", and "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop). THIS SHOW RULED!!!