21 Wacky Races

First  watched  : Uncertain

The  first  Hanna-Barbera  production  to  feature  here   is  my  favourite  cartoon  programme  bar  none  and  would  still  feature  in  my  Top  10  TV  programmes   of  all  time. I  had  Wacky  Races  wallpaper  for  my  bedroom  for  a  time.

I  liked  the  huge  cast  of  eleven  vehicles  and  the  uncertainty  of  the  outcome  ( except  for  who  would  come  last  of  course ! ) My  favourite  character  was  Professor  Pat  Pending  and  I  was  always  thrilled  when  he  won   the  race.

The  series  was  inspired  by  the  Tony  Curtis-Jack  Lemmon  1965 comedy  The  Great  Race  which  is  actually  pretty  awful. The  show's  star  character  Dick  Dastardly  is  fairly  closely  modelled  on  Lemmon's  pantomime  villain  Professor  Fate. Dastardly's  most  obvious  character  trait  is  insecurity. He  never  trusts  his  impressive  vehicle  to  deliver  a  clean  victory  and  will  always  sacrifice  a  commanding  lead  to  stop  and  set  traps  for  the  other  racers. While  the  traps  often  do  damage  the  other  vehicles  they  always  ultimately  rebound  on  Dastardly  to  the  poorly  disguised  glee  of  his  canine  sidekick  Muttley. Dastardly  was  not  the  only  character  to  take  illegal  action  to  undermine  the  competition   but  none  of  the  others  did  so  on  the  same  scale  and  would  occasionally  help  each  other  especially  if  the  distressed  party  was  blonde  bombshell  Penelope  Pitstop.

In  some  ways  the  interactions  between  the  characters  when  Dastardly  wasn't  around  were  the  most  interesting  parts  of  the  show. There  was  a  blossoming  romance  between  Penelope  Pitstop  and  Peter  Perfect  whose  ego  was  nonetheless  punctured  by  frequent  mechanical  failure. Red  Max  in  his  car/plane  hybrid  was  a  bit  of  a  chump  whose  efforts  to  get  ahead  usually  came  to  grief  without  any  assistance  from  Dastardly  

Seventeen  episodes  each  containing  two  seperate  races  were  made  between  1968  and  1969  and  over  the  34  races  the  first  place  honours  were  fairly  even  shared  with  every  car  bar  Dastardly's  wining  either  three  or  four  times.  If  second  and  third  places  are  counted  there  is  more  of  a  disparity  with  the  Slag  Brothers  notching  8  runners  up  slots  and  the  Army  Surplus  Special  only  one  and  no  thirds.

Some  of  these  characters  we'll  meet  again  in  spin-off  shows  but  the  original  remains  the  best.