Wacky Races
| Wacky Races | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Genre |
Racing Comedy |
| Written by |
Larz Bourne Dalton Sandifer Tom Dagenais Michael Maltese |
| Directed by |
William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Voices of |
Daws Butler Don Messick John Stephenson Janet Waldo Dave Willock Paul Winchell |
| Narrated by | Dave Willock |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 17 (34 segments) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) |
William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Running time | 20 minutes |
| Production company(s) |
Hanna-Barbera Productions Heatter-Quigley Productions |
| Distributor |
Taft Broadcasting (original) Warner Bros. Television (current) |
| Release | |
| Original network | CBS |
| Picture format | 4:3 |
| Audio format | Mono |
| Original release | September 14, 1968 – January 4, 1969 |
| Chronology | |
| Followed by |
The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (1969–1970) Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines (1969–1970) |
| Related shows |
Yogi's Space Race (1978–1979) Yogi's Treasure Hunt (1985–1986) |
Wacky Races is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Heatter-Quigley Productions. The series was possibly inspired by the 1965 slapstick comedy The Great Race, with each driver hoping to win the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer". The cartoon had a large number of regular characters, with 23 people and animals spread among the 11 race cars. The show ran on CBS from September 14, 1968, to January 4, 1969. 17 episodes were produced, with each episode featuring two different races.
One of the unused plans for the series was that the races would 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 cross the finish line first. Although the game show concept was eventually scrapped, the series still retained a Hanna-Barbera/Heatter-Quigley dual production credit. Like Orion's back catalog from the 1978–1982 joint venture period and some post-1982 films, it is one of the few Heatter-Quigley series not currently owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's subsidiary Orion Pictures Corporation since September 11, 2014. In 1988, a made-for-television movie, Around the World with the Wacky Racers, was planned as part of the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 series of telefilms, but it never got past the concept stage.
The villains (and also the stars) of the series, in a purple, rocket-powered car with an abundance of concealed weapons and the ability to fly. Dastardly (voiced by Paul Winchell, in a manner that Winchell would use several years later to portray the Smurfs' nemesis Gargamel) is an archetypal mustache-twirling villain. Muttley (voiced by Don Messick) is his trademark wheezily snickering, anthropomorphic dog henchman. Messick had previously used the funny canine snicker for one shot Hanna-Barbera characters, notably a postman-chasing dog in a Huckleberry Hound segment, Mugger, a villainous mutt in the motion picture feature Hey There, It's Yogi Bear, and the slyly antagonistic Precious Pupp, who co-starred on The Atom Ant Show.
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