Wacky Races
1968 - 1970) is an animated cartoon series from Hanna-Barbera Productions, featuring a "daredevil troupe of daffy drivers competing for the title of the World's Wackiest Racer". The series was apparently inspired by the movies Monte Carlo or Bust (aka Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies) and The Great Race.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Attempting to foil the racers' efforts was the show's resident stereotyped villain Dick Dastardly and his sidekick, Muttley the dog. Like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, Dastardly would concoct all sorts of elaborate schemes to trap, divert, blow up or stop the other racers, only to see them backfire spectacularly. Whenever Dick Dastardly won, he'd get a rubbish prize. In fact many of Dastardly's plots look suspiciously similar to those used in Road Runner episodes, which might be explained by the fact that The Addams Family; their design was recycled for Captain Caveman) driving a wheeled boulder
- 2 - The Creepy Coupe - The Gruesome Twosome (Big Gruesome & Li'l Gruesome) - monsters (Big spoke like Boris Karloff and Little like Peter Lorre), driving a car with a belfry like the Addams Family's house, which housed a dragon and various ghosts and ghouls
- 3 - The Convert-a-Car - Professor Pat Pending - mad scientist in a car that can change into just about anything that moves
- 4 - The Crimson Haybailer - Red Max (an air ace) in a car/plane hybrid
- 5 - The Compact Pussycat - Penelope Pitstop driving a pink feminine car with personal grooming facilities
- 6 - The Army Surplus Special - Sergeant Blast & Private Meekly - racing an army tank/jeep hybrid
- 7 - The Bulletproof Bomb - The Ant Hill Mob (led by Clyde) - gangsters in a 1930s saloon car
- 8 - The Arkansas Chuggabug - Lazy Luke & Blubber Bear - hillbillies in a wooden buggy driven by a coal-fired range
- 9 - The Turbo Terrific - Peter Perfect (Had a crush on Penelope and often stopped to help) driving a drag racer that often falls to bits
- 10 - The Buzz Waggon - Rufus Ruffcut (a lumberjack) & Sawtooth the beaver in a wagon with buzzsaws for wheels
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 .
The Penelope Pitstop character was spun off into an other cartoon series, The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop, while at the same time Dick Dastardly and Muttley appeared in
