Topical Tens: 14 September: Wacky Races

Monday 3 September 2018

14 September: Wacky Races

50 years ago, in 1968, The Wacky Races first appeared on TV. It's an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions.

There were only 17 episodes produced, each featuring two races.
The characters in the show were competing to win the title, the "World's Wackiest Racer."
The contestants are as follows: The Slag Brothers, Rock and Gravel, in the Boulder Mobile, basically a hollowed out rock on wheels. If ever their car was destroyed, they'd simply find another rock and make a new one. The Gruesome Twosome, monsters Big Gruesome and Little Gruesome, in The Creepy Coupe, a belfry on wheels which could fly with Dragon wings. Professor Pat Pending, a mad scientist, in The Convert-a-Car, a vehicle which could turn into just about anything. Red Max, a Bavarian daredevil pilot, in a car/plane hybrid called The Crimson Haybailer. Penelope Pitstop, the token female in The Compact Pussycat. Sergeant Blast and Private Meekly in The Army Surplus Special. The Ant Hill Mob, seven dwarf gangsters, in The Bulletproof Bomb. Lazy Luke, a hillbilly, who spent most of the race asleep, and his nervous passenger, Blubber Bear, in The Arkansas Chugabug, which was powered by a squirrel who was fed nuts to make the car go faster. Peter Perfect, a chivalrous racer and Penelope's love interest, in The Turbo Terrific, the car which fell apart the most often. Rufus Ruffcut, a lumberjack, and his companion Sawtooth, a Beaver, in The Buzz Wagon.
Finally, of course, there's the famous villain, Dick Dastardly, and his sidekick Muttley, in the Mean Machine. The Mean Machine is by far the fastest of the cars – Dastardly always takes an early, commanding lead, but never wins because he always stops to set dastardly traps for the other racers, and because of that, usually comes last. The one time he did win, he was disqualified for extending the nose of his car. His catchphrases are "Drat, drat and double drat!" or "Triple drat!" and even "Curses, foiled again!" His other main catchphrase was, "Muttley, do something!" Muttley is a mixed breed Dog, a mix of bloodhound, pointer, Airedale, and hunting dog. His birthday is April 16.
Penelope was a bit of an afterthought, added when Joseph Barbera requested that a woman be included in the line up. Iwao Takamoto and Jerry Eisenberg invented Penelope and her car in two hours. On the one hand, she's a typical blonde damsel in distress clad in Pink, whose vehicle is more of a beauty salon than a car. Other characters are always having to rescue her from either Dick Dastardly or her arch enemy, the Hooded Claw. Penelope never works out that the Hooded Claw is her guardian Sylvester Sneekly. Her catchphrase is “Hay-ulp! Hay-ulp!” On the other hand, when nobody is around to help her she displays amazing intelligence and ingenuity in order to get out of sticky situations, and is said to have been a champion of just about every known sport in college.
All the cars are mentioned in the opening titles, apart from the Crimson Haybaler, and the Compact Pussycat, and all the characters, apart from Blast and Meekley.
The series has been translated into a number of languages. The titles aren't usually direct translations of “Wacky Races”, however. In other languages the show has been known as The Fools of the Wheel (French), Chiki Chiki Racing Machines (Japanese), The Craziest Race of the World (Portuguese), The bumpy cars (Catalan), Cool races (Polish), The crazy people of the steering wheel (Galacian), SPEED Freaks (Swedish) and Rally of hot knees (Galacian).
The series was originally intended to be part of a live-action quiz show made by Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley Productions in which contestants would bet on which Wacky Racer would win. This idea was never used.
DC Comics produced a version of the show called Wacky Raceland, a post-apocalyptic tale in which the characters race across a Mad Max style desert wasteland filled with perils, to Utopia. In this version, Muttley is a mutated and robotically-enhanced dog whose intelligence and aggressiveness were slightly enhanced by exposure to a serum created by Professor Pat Pending.
There's also a re-boot of the series, produced in 2017, created by Rebecca Himot and Tramm Wigzell. It features all the old favourites, with some plotlines added about their lives outside of Wacky Races. There are some new characters as well, including I.Q. Ickly, Brick Crashman, P.T. Barnstorm, and Pandora Pitstop, Penelope's twin sister.