Wacky Packages

Wacky Races is an animated television series from Hanna-Barbera, about a group of 11 different cars racing against each other in various road rallies, with each driver hoping to win the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer. more...

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" The cartoon was unusual in the large number of regular characters, twenty-three in total.

Background

The series ran on CBS from September 14, 1968 to September 5, 1970. Seventeen episodes were produced with each episode featuring two different races for a total of 34 races in all.

Attempting to foil the racers' efforts were the show's resident villains Dick Dastardly and his canine sidekick, Muttley. Dastardly would usually gain a large lead then, execute all sorts of elaborate schemes to trap, divert, blow up or stop the other racers, only to see them backfire spectacularly. The intended object lesson may have been that Dastardly might have easily won several races had he only kept his mind on the race and off dirty tricks. Dastardly's rocket car was arguably the fastest car in the series, as evinced by Dastardly's repeatedly zooming to a stunning lead from far behind. Like Wile E Coyote, Dastardly never saw victory. Many of Dastardly's plots look similar to those used in Road Runner cartoons, which may be because Mike Maltese was a scriptwriter on both series.

Wacky Races was inspired by the 1965 film The Great Race, and the main characters in the cartoon were based on those in the film. Penelope Pitstop took on the appearance of Maggie DuBois, played by Natalie Wood, including her pink outfit and the parasol. Dastardly has much in common with Jack Lemmon's portrayal of Professor Fate. Fate and his sidekick Max Meen (Peter Falk) 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.

One of the original plans for the series was that the races themselves would be part of a live-action quiz show with Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley Productions, the team behind the television series Hollywood Squares. Heatter-Quigley's plan was that contestants would actually bet on which Wacky Racer would cross the finish line first. Although the game show concept was eventually scrubbed, the series still retained a Hanna-Barbera Heatter-Quigley dual production credit.

In 1988, a made-for-TV movie, "Around The World With The Wacky Racers" was planned as part of Hanna-Barbera's Superstars 10 series of TV movies but it never got past the concept stage.

Drivers and cars

The eleven racers and their numbers are:

Dick Dastardly and Muttley in the Mean Machine 00

The villains of the series, in a purple, rocket-powered car with an abundance of concealed weapons. Dastardly would concoct a plan or set a trap once he got into the lead of the race to make sure no other car would catch up to him. Every plan of his backfired, however. Ironically, many tricks Dastardly uses are not unlike the ones the other racers use, though only his are referred to as "cheating". Most of his traps always fail with Dastardly being the one who gets hurt in the end and Muttley, his canine sidekick, sniggering at his misfortune. Dastardly dresses in purple, and wears a red-and-purple striped puffy hat. He also has a long, black moustache. Waluigi, a Mario Series character, has a slight resemblance to him.

Read more at Wikipedia.org