Let's Get Wacky And Have A Couple Of Spinoffs.

Actually,I kind of liked the pairing of Penelope with the Ant Hill Mob,Peter Perfect seemed way too obvious.Plus,it sorta reminded me of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (with the Hooded Claw as the''wicked queen'').I also liked that "Dastardly and Muttley'' was one of the few cartoons that gave star billing to the villains ,as opposed to, say,the "Road Runner'',where we all know the star of that cartoon was the Coyote.

"Wacky Races" was a co-production of Hanna-Barbera and game show producers Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley. Heatter-Quigley had produced game shows such as "The Hollywood Squares", "Gambit", "High Rollers", "The Magnificent Marble Machine", "All Star Blitz", and "Baffle"/"PDQ". There was a proposed game show segment within the "Wacky Races" program with child contestants predicting the winner of the race in each episode for a prize. The game show segment was dropped before the series premiered and "Wacky Races" was presented as a half hour cartoon series in its CBS network run.

The spinoffs were the idea of then-CBS programming chief Fred Silverman. With superhero cartoons falling out of favor with the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Marin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968, Silverman liked the "Wacky Races" concept and ratings and requested Hanna-Barbera to spin off some of the characters into separate new shows.

"Dastardly and Muttley" was a rarity in which the main characters were all "bad guys"...with The Vulture Squadron (Dastardly, Muttley, Klunk, and Zilly) as the enemy and Yankee Doodle Pigeon being the good guy. Michael Maltese, who wrote many Warner Brothers cartoons including the back-firing gadgets used by Wile E. Coyote in his unsuccessful attempts in capturing the Road Runner, wrote the "Dastardly and Muttley" cartoons with the zany airplanes/weapons and its back-firing on Dastardly and company. The cartoon show was also rare in which only two voice actors, Don Messick and Paul Winchell, were used for every one of the half hour series in the season.

"The Perils of Penelope Pitstop" had the best voice cast ever for a cartoon series with Janet Waldo, Paul Winchell, Don Messick, Mel Blanc, Gary Owens, and Paul Lynde lending their distinctive talents.

Muttley later inspired the 1977 "Mumbly" cartoons on ABC (where Fred Silverman was ABC's chief of programming at that time) . Mumbly was revealed to be Muttley's brother in "Laff-A-Lympics" with the Dread Baron being the brother of Dick Dastardly. Mumbly was a snickering police dog detective who usually drove bad guys crazy by following and harassing them in confessing to the crimes they committed. Like Lt. Columbo, Mumbly wore a raincoat and drove a broken down car. Mumbly reported to Lt. Shnooker who resembled the bald tv detective Kojak. Mumbly was a "good guy" in his police duties and was sympathetic compared to crooks he encountered or to Lt. Shnooker who took credit for Mumbly's police work... but the snickering dog in blue turned villain as the leader of the cheating "Really Rottens" team in "Laff-A-Lympics".

And now here i go, about to give recollections on the Wacky Racers. I do love the Wacky Races. Such a fun and wild show. I enjoyed watching the events of the race unfold even if racing in real life does little for me. I always wanted to know if Dick Dastardly was ever going to actually pick up the win. But i often was mostly rooting for the Creepy Coupe and Peter Perfect. The Wacky Races themselves were often shown on both weekday mornings and weekends in my youth. So by the time the DVD came along, i indeed had vague memories of all the episodes. It also ran in the early 200s at the tail end of the second incarnation of Boomerang in that time. It seemed a bit lost though coming after like four hours of funny animals.

One thing i really like is that so many gags happen in the Wacky Races that both make each episode fun yet at the same time really doesn't make any of them stand out to me as big time favorite. However Peter Perfect's car coming undone was one of my favorite gags of the show.

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The Perils of Penelope Pitstop is another one of my all time favorites. Paul Lynde is one of my favorite actors and him as the Hooded Claw is nothing short of amazing. I'm also a sucker for the old time productions with the damsel in distress theme. So this show really hits all the right bits to work for me. The Claw's laugh is also just brilliant. His interaction with the narrator voiced by another of my favorite voice actors Gary Owens. The show has a lot of good gags that get me all the time.

This show was often on the Cartoon-A-Doodle-Doo block at 6-7am weekdays. And when it was on i used to stay up all night in hopes of catching it. Sometimes yes even on school nights, i was a little claw being devious myself haha. Seeing all the episodes on DVD was also a cool moment. This was another one that had me jumping for joy.

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Stop the pigeon! Stop the pigeon! Stop the pigeon! Oh right i have to talk about the show. Well yes it's great as well. I loved rooting for Dastardly and Muttley but i doubt they ever stopped the pigeon. This show similar to the RR/WEC shorts it was simple in it's basic form. But had so many different gags to put to use, it never once got old, and still isn't old no matter how many times i watch it. And that theme! Stop the piegon! Stop the pigeon...ohh i did it again.

Like Penelope, Flying Machines was a regular on Cartoon-a-Doodle-Doo. Which is where i mostly saw it except when the regular cartoons aired in between other shows. But what i saw gave me more than enough to want to try and do you know what. A truly simple yet amazing show for sure.

It was a teddy bear.