The Big Bike Race

The Big Bike Race
The bike race ends with Benjy and Ronald on top of Spike and his bike broken down into unicycle.
Premiere date	October 27, 1979
Run time	11:34
Music composed by	Hoyt Curtin
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"The Big Bike Race" is the eighth episode (part one) of The Thing season one, and came as a segment of Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. It aired on October 27, 1979 on NBC.

Benjy, Ronald, and Stretch each try to win their school's bike race to be the escort of the race queen, Betty, at prom.

Characters

Legend
Character debut	Speaking debut	Ep. debut	No lines	Mentioned

In order of appearance:

Character	Actor
Benjy Grimm	Wayne Morton
Kelly Harkness	Noelle North
Miss Twilly	Marilyn Schreffler
Betty Harkness	Marilyn Schreffler
Spike Hanrahan	Art Metrano
Turkey	Michael Sheehan
Stretch	Unavailable
The Thing	Joe Baker
Checkpoint kid	Unavailable
Testy	N/A
Dotty	N/A

Organizations

• Yancy Street Gang
• Pacific Express

Locations

• Earth
  • United States
    • Centerville
      • Centerville Park
      • Centerville High School
    • Alaska (mentioned)

Objects

• Bicycles
• Benjy's rings

Vehicles

• Express van
• Yancy Street Gang's motorcycles

Music

The score was composed by Hoyt Curtin.

Release

Dates are in order of release:

• United States: October 27, 1979 on NBC

Behind the scenes

• Testy and Dotty, who both appear right at the end of the episode, were first introduced as Stretch and Turkey's respective girlfriends in "The Thing and the Queen."

Errors

• Benjy wants to win the bike race so he can escort Betty to the dance, despite the fact he's not actually a teenager, but an adult trapped in a teenager's body due to a flaw of the rings he wears to be human.

In other languages

Language	Name	Meaning

Home availability

• Warner Bros. owns the show, while Disney owns the characters, making it difficult to release this episode onto DVD.