Home > Wacky Races

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 Mike Maltese was a scriptwriter on both series.

1 Characters/Racers

The eleven racers and their numbers were:

• Number 00 - "The Mean Machine" - Dick Dastardly & Muttley - the villains in a rocket-powered car with lots of concealed weapons
• Number 1 - "The Bouldermobile" - Slag Brothers (Rock Slag & Gravel Slag) - cave men (covered with hair like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family; their design was recycled for Captain Caveman) driving a wheeled boulder
• Number 2 - "The Creepy Coupe" - The Gruesome Twosome (Big Gruesome & Li'l Gruesome) - monsters (Big spoke like Boris KarloffBoris Karloff ( November 23, 1887 February 2, 1969), born William Henry Pratt was a famous actor in horror films. Born in London and educated at the University of London, Karloff's first goal in life was to become a diplomat, but instead he fell into acti and Little like Peter LorreYousuf Karsh Peter Lorre ( June 26, 1904 March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian- American actor known largely for playing criminals. He was born Ladislav (Laszlo) Lowenstein in Rozsahegy/Rosenberg, Austria-Hungary, which is now Ruzomberok, Slovakia. His parents), driving a car with a belfry like the Addams Family's house, which housed a dragonSaint George versus the dragon Gustave Moreau, c. This small one has the look of a griffin or a wyvern. In European mythology, a dragon is a serpent-like legendary creature. The Latin word draco as in the constellation Draco, comes directly from Greek dra and various ghosts and ghouls
• Number 3 - "The Convert-a-Car" - Professor Pat Pending - mad scientistA mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, either villainous, or benignly unconscious and scatter-brained. Whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, the mad scientists are usually working with some utterly fictional technology in order in a car that can change into just about anything that moves
• Number 4 - "The Crimson Haybailer" - Red Max (an air ace) in a car/plane hybrid
• Number 5 - "The Compact Pussycat" - Penelope PitstopPenelope Pitstop is a fictional character who has appeared in various animated cartoons. Penelope Pitstop originated in the Wacky Races cartoon series, produced by the Hanna-Barbera Productions animation studio. In many ways a traditional " damsel in dist driving a pink feminine car with personal grooming facilities
• Number 6 - "The Army Surplus Special" - Sergeant Blast & Private Meekly - racing an army tankM1A1 Abrams tank is a typical modern main battle tank. The turret is low-profile, well-integrated into the overall shape of the vehicle. A tank is a tracked and armoured combat vehicle ( armoured fighting vehicle), designed primarily to destroy enemy grou/ jeepJeep is an automobile marque of DaimlerChrysler. The term derives from, and is often associated with, an automobile, originally a military vehicle built for the United States Army during World War II, and later produced in a line of consumer models. Altho hybrid
• Number 7 - "The Bulletproof Bomb" (aka the "Roaring Twenty") - The Ant Hill Mob (led by Clyde) - gangsters in a 1930s saloon car
• Number 8 - "The Arkansas Chuggabug" - Lazy Luke & Blubber Bear - hillbillies in a wooden buggy driven by a coal-fired range
• Number 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
• Number 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 cover of the video cassette.

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 Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines .