Wacky Races (franchise)
- This article is about the franchise as a whole. For other uses, see Wacky Races.
Wacky Races is an animated franchise centered around a cast of oddball personalities competing with each other in road rallies for the sole purpose of winning the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer." It is based on the 1968 Saturday morning animated Wacky Races television series, which started out with twenty-three characters spread among eleven vehicles racing across North America.
Following the success of the original series, Fred Silverman, the head of children's programming for CBS, suggested the idea of creating spinoffs for the characters, with the two spinoffs premiering only a year later in 1969. The first spinoff, Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines, features the series' antagonists, Dick Dastardly and Muttley, who lead the Vulture Squadron and fly in different types of World War I-style aero planes, trying to stop Yankee Doodle Pigeon from delivering top-secret messages to an opposing army. The second spinoff, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, features Penelope Pitstop, in the style of melodrama silent movie era cliffhangers, evading demise from her arch nemesis, Hooded Claw, while the Ant Hill Mob try and stop the Claw's assassination attempts.
Origins of Wacky Races
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Related media
Television series
- Wacky Races (1968-1969)
- Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines (1969-1970)
- The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (1969-1970)
- Wacky Races (2017-2019)
Video games
- Wacky Races (1991; Nintendo Entertainment System)
- Chiki Chiki Mashin Mō Race: Kenken to Burakku Maō no Ijiwaru Daisakusen (1994, PC)
- Wacky Races (2000; Game Boy Color, PC and PlayStation)
- Wacky Races: Starring Dastardly and Muttley (2000; Dreamcast and PlayStation 2)
- Wacky Races: Mad Motors (2007)
- Wacky Races: Crash & Dash (2008; Nintendo Wii)
- Wacky Races: Crash & Dash (2008; Nintendo DS)
