Wacky Races: The Complete Series

October 19 brings a promising release of Wacky Races, the series where many different characters compete in races in their custom cars. Sadly I dont think Cartoon Network plays these shows anymore so many kids may not know what this is. Adults will remember it though and it certainly is a show the entire family can enjoy. The characters:

Luke and Blubber Bear in the Arkansas Chugabug

The Slag Brothers, Rock and Gravel, in the Boulder Mobile

The Gruesome Twosome in the Creepy Coupe

Professor Pat Pending in the Ring-A-Ding Covert-A-Car

The Red Max in the Crimson Haybailer

The Sarge and Private Meekly in the Army Surplus Special

The Ant Hill Mob in the Bulletproof Bomb

Peter Perfect in the Turbo Terrific

Penelope Pitstop in the Compact Pussycat

Rufus Ruffcut and Sawtooth in the Buzzwagon

Dick Dastardly and Muttley in the Mean Machine

The show follows a similar pattern: Dick Dastardly and Mutley cheat every way they can to win but never do, and Muttley always laughs about it. Different riders would win on each episode, often with dilemmas within the race (mostly caused by Dick Dastardly/Muttley). It is a simple but fun show that I loved watching and I am glad we are getting the complete series of 34 episodes on dvd. There look to be good extras included on here, and each episode has been remastered to look better than ever before. Amazon's price of $[...] is a steal for what you get so I encourage fans of 60s/70s animation as well as first-time fans to pick this bargain up. It is fun for the whole family, old or young. Episodes listing of the show:

1 See Saw To Arkansas

2 Creepy Trip to Lemon Twist

3 Why Oh Why Wyoming

4 Beat the Clock To Yellow Rock

5 Mish Mash Missouri Dash

6 Idaho A Go-Go

7 Scout Scatter

8 Free Wheeling to Wheeling

9 The Baja-Ha-Ha Race

10 Real Gone Ape

11 By Rollercoaster To Upsans Downs

12 The Speedy Arkansas Traveller

13 Rhode Island Road Race

14 The Great Cold Rush Race

15 Eeny Miny Missouri Go

16 The Super Silly Swamp Sprint

17 The Zippy Mississippi Race

18 Traffic Jambalaya

19 Hot Race At Chillicothe

20 The Wrong Lumber Race

21 Wacky Race To Ripsaw

22 Oils Well That Ends Well

23 Whizzin' To Washington

24 The Dipsy Doodle Desert Derby

25 Speeding for Smogland

26 Race Rally to Raleigh

27 The Dopey Dakota Derby

28 Dash to Delaware

29 Ballpoint Penn. Or Bust

30 Fast Track to Hackensack

31 Race to Racine

32 The Carlsbad or Bust Bash

33 The Ski Resort Road Race

34 Overseas Hi-Way Race

Hope this convinces you to buy this set, it looks to be a great release of some classic animation from the 60's and 70's.

The Wacky Racers ride again on this 3-disc set, the first in a classic Hanna-Barbera triptych consisting of WACKY RACES, DASTARDLY AND MUTTLEY IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES and THE PERILS OF PENELOPE PITSTOP.

At the time of this show's release upon the airwaves, Hanna-Barbera had come under fire from worried parents for the violence present in their adventure programs such as SPACE GHOST, BIRDMAN AND THE GALAXY TRIO, FRANKENSTEIN JR. AND THE IMPOSSIBLES, and THE HERCULOIDS. (Incidentally, we're still waiting for proper releases of these on DVD, Warner Brothers. Ahem.) HB responded with this series, which not only returned them to wild slapstick comedy as featured in YOGI BEAR and HUCKLEBERRY HOUND, but gave them their first recurring cartoon villains: the ignoble, treacherous, completely inefficient Dick Dastardly and his wheezing, snickering canine sidekick Muttley.

The plot of each episode is simple: eleven cars, each one a distinctly and fantastically customized vehicle (see other reviews for the complete lineup) compete in car races throughout North America for the title of The World's Wackiest Racer. The rules seem to be highly flexible: each car has certain attributes that allow its owner(s) to gain the advantage from time to time, often in ways that would be considered unsporting in a real-life car race. Despite this, Dick Dastardly and Muttley (voiced by Paul Winchell and Don Messick) still spend most of each race trying to win through extremely elaborate and badly-planned booby-traps (sometimes contributing heartily to their own demise: in the very first episode, D.D. has the race in the bag until the narrator (Dave Willock) mentions "photo finish" at which point Dastardly stops at mere INCHES from the finish line to pose for a photo).

Where the plot thickens is in the diverse range of cars and racers: though Dastardly, Muttley and Penelope Pitstop were the obvious breakout stars, this is Hanna-Barbera's largest ensemble cast (23 characters!), scoping a wide range of personalities; nutty inventor Pat Pending; hyperenthusiastic Rufus Ruffcut and his pet beaver Sawtooth; the incoherent cavemen Slag Brothers (Rock and Gravel); laid-back hillbilly Lazy Luke and his fretful pet Blubber Bear, and the ubitiquous Ant-Hill Mob, to name but a few. The cars, all tailor-made to their racers, are excellently designed and the source of numerous gags: the Gruesome Twosome and their Creepy Coupe's "dragon power" with real dragon; the Compact Pussycat, which dispenses full salon conveniences to its owner Penelope Pitstop; and the Red Max's Crimson Haybailer, both car AND aeroplane in one. There's even a bit of irony: bumbling Peter Perfect's Turbo Terrific falls apart constantly, while Dick Dastardly, whose Mean Machine is perhaps the fastest car of the lot, could have won a race if he just didn't stop to cheat.

The three-disc set is colorfully packaged with nice artwork featuring a group shot of all the Wacky Racers in the foldouts. The discs themselves contain commentary on four episodes from noted personnel at HB and two featurettes detailing the history of WACKY RACES and a look at its spinoffs DASTARDLY AND MUTTLEY IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES and THE PERILS OF PENELOPE PITSTOP.

This package is a nicely conceived set, and showcases one of Hanna-Barbera's most fondly remembered series; its release can only mean that more of HB's finest is soon to come. (Warner Brothers: please re-read the above. AHEM.)

Hanna-Barbera's cartoon show "Wacky Races" premiered on CBS at 9:30 AM EDT Saturday September 14, 1968 , and was subsequently blackballed by the TV watchdog group Action for Children's Television. Because the show was bankrolled by game show producers Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley (NBC's "Hollywood Squares"), ACT president Peggy Charren charged that the show enticed children to make monetary wagers on the outcome of each race. Hogwash. I took the over/under on how many times Dick Dastardly's machinations would backfire on him.

In actuality, the original premise of the show was to have children write in to predict who would win each of the thirty-four races, with prizes given to drawn winners, but CBS nixed the idea. "Wacky Races" was principally devised in response that that superhero cartoons that permeated Saturday mornings over the previous two seasons were too violent. For all the atypical Hanna-Barbera standards of limited animation for 1968, "Wacky Races" still stands as classic cartoon slapstick from a more innocent time before double-entendres and grossouts became cartoon standards. It would spin off two shows the following year--"Dastardly & Muttley In Their Flying Machines" (the first known cartoon where the villains are the stars) and "The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop."

Eleven cars with a veritable spectrum of offbeat drivers race cross-sountry from point A to point B, each race with a connecting story sandwiched. Sight gags and visual surrealism permeate, and with any Saturday morning, they're hit or miss. With Dastardly, many of them are hits (literally and figuratively). Warner Home Video has released the entire series on a three-disc set. And it's a hit-and-miss affair as well.

On the hit side, it looks as fine on disc as it did when the show first aired. It's got three bonus features, including a look back at the show by designer Iwao Takamoto, voice Janet Waldo, character designer Jerry Eisenberg (whose dad, Harvey Eisenberg, drew many H-B comics for Dell/Gold Key in the early 60s), and contemporary artist Scott Jeralds. On the miss side, instead of each half hour program as CBS aired it, the cartoons are broken down into 34 individual episodes. This means, no mid-point interstitial asking viewers to stay tuned for part two (featured once as an extra). Also, the episodes are as Cartoon Network aired them, which means the end title narration by Dave Willock (the announcer) and Paul Winchell (Dastardly) is gone save for the end of the episode "Ski Resort Road Race."

However, the hits outnumber the misses here, and it's a blast from the Saturday morning past.

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