62 The Road Runner Show

First  watched  : Uncertain

Road  Runner  seemed  like  ITV's  answer  to  Tom  and  Jerry   and  in  fact  started  out  in  1948  as  a  conscious  parody  of  the  latter. The  format  never  changed  , the  road-running  bird of  the  title  was  being  pursued  by  a  hungry  coyote  who  would  devise  elaborate  traps   to  catch  the  bird  which  would  invariably  blow  up  in  his  face . In  this  he  was  a  clear  ancestor  of  Dick  Dastardly.

The  first  run  of  cartoons  ran  from  1948  to  1963. Later  ones  were  made, the  last  in  2010  but  never  quite  captured  the  magic. Wile E  Coyote  crossed  over  and  became  an  antagonist  of  Bugs  Bunny  for  a  while  in  1963.