Wacky Races (1968 TV series)


 * This article is about the original 1968 TV series. For the 2017 reboot, see Wacky Races (2017 TV series).

Wacky Races is an American animated racing comedy television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Heatter-Quigley Inc. for CBS' Saturday morning children's programming. It ran from 1968 to 1969, airing 17 episodes that spanned one season. Despite only lasting one season, some of the characters continued to live on in different forms, with two equally as popular spin-offs, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines.

The series follows the titular Wacky Races, where a cast of oddball personalities compete each other in road rallies across North America, all for the sole purpose of winning the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer". It featured a number of characters, with 23 people and animals riding 11 individual vehicles. In addition to the show's narrator providing his commentary of the high-speed hijinks, it also focused on the exploits of Dick Dastardly and his snickering canine partner, Muttley, who attempt at anything to cheat and sabotage in every race, even though those attempts only backfire in the end and put them at last place. Apart from Dastardly and Muttley, racers such as the dashing Peter Perfect, and the ever-so-glamorous Penelope Pitstop get their own spotlight in the series.

The entire series has also been released on DVD.

Development
Wacky Races was the first in a change of format that deviated from the rise of the superheroes, the likes of which were not only failing in the ratings but had received a backlash from parent groups who opposed the violence.

The idea was somewhat based on two 1965 comedy films, The Great Race and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.

Music
The music was composed by Hoyt Curtin, who was credited as music director.

Cast

 * Paul Winchell as Dick Dastardly, Private Meekly and Clyde
 * Don Messick as Muttley, Professor Pat Pending, Gravel Slag, Little Gruesome, Ring-a-Ding and Sawtooth
 * Janet Waldo as Penelope Pitstop
 * Daws Butler as Rock Slag, Big Gruesome, the Red Max, Sergeant Blast, Peter Perfect and Rufus Ruffcut
 * John Stephenson as Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear
 * Dave Willock as the Announcer

Legacy
Another TV series Yogi's Treasure Hunt also starred Dick Dastardly and Muttley as villains with Penelope Pitstop making a cameo in the episodes "Snow White & the 7 Treasure Hunters" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chump," respectively, while Blubber Bear guest-starred on The New Yogi Bear Show.

When Cartoon Network tasked its Senior Vice President, Mike Lazzo, with creating its first cost-effective series in 1993, he originally envisioned a marathon-like version of Wacky Races, which had all the episodes edited together to make it look like one long race across America. This was quickly abandoned due to a greater desire to turn Space Ghost into a nighttime talk show host in Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

The series has been revived a couple of times by Warner Bros. Animation. In 2006, there was a five-minute pilot pitch called Wacky Races Forever, which acted as a sequel, but was not picked up. The second was a comparatively more successful reboot/quasi-sequel once again called Wacky Races, which lasted between 2017 to 2019 on the Boomerang SVOD service.

In 2016, DC Comics published their own take called Wacky Raceland, which is a somewhat more realistic and much darker turn in comparison to the original series.

Life-size replicas of the show's vehicles are a popular attraction at the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed; located in West Sussex, England. New additions have occurred each year, with 2008 seeing the last of the cars (the Bulletproof Bomb) added to the now-completed set.

In 2004, Vauxhall's unveiled its ads patterning its new Corsa line after Wacky Races. In 2013, Peugeot Brazil did the same for their Peugeot 208, with high production values and live actors playing them for the first time.

In 2018, Variety reported that Warner Animation Group was developing a theatrical film based on the series. Currently, there are no cast or crew members attached to the project.

On June 15, 2022, it was announced at the Annecy Film Festival that a stop motion series based on Wacky Races was in the works.

In popular culture

 * In the South Park episode "Handicar," the series was a subject to parody, including its intro sequence. Dastardly and Muttley also appear here as well, albeit aged.
 * Dastardly and Muttley made a cameo in the Uncle Grandpa episode "Uncle Grandpa Retires."
 * In the Lucifer episode "Yabba Dabba Do Me," a young Jimmy Baines watches Wacky Races.