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Wacky Races

Schuffinruffingrruffinmrruffindruffin...NO FURTHER explanation needed, surely? The most daredevil group of daffy drivers ever to whirl their wheels in the Wacky Races, competing for the title of the world’s wackiest racer. The cars are approaching the starting line. And awaaaay they go…

The Turbo Terrific – Peter Perfect

The Buzz Waggon – Rufus Roughcut and Sawtooth

The Army Surplus Special – General, Sergeant and Private Pinkley

The Bulletproof Bomb – The Anthill Mob (who presumably later traded it in for Chugga Boom)

The Ring-a-Ding Convert-a-Car – “Ingenious inventor” Pat Pending

The Compact Pussycat – The lovely Penelope Pitstop, “the glamour gal of the gas pedal”

The Boulder Mobile – The proto-Cavey Slag Brothers, Rock and Gravel

The Creepy Coupe – The Gruesome Twosome

The Crimson Haybailer – Red Max

The Arkansas Chuggabug – Luke and Blubber Bear

The Mean Machine – Those double-dealing do-badders Dick Dastardly and his sidekick, Muttley

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Applemask

    May 23, 2013 at 12:20 pm

    Attempted revival as Fender Bender 5000 in the nineties failed due to lack of Anthill Mob and Penelope Pitstop, addition of the likes of Yogi Bear, Magilla Gorilla and Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, fact that Don Messick was the only voice actor left alive, cynicism in bringing it back in the first place, positioning as five-minute animated segment in perfunctory token Saturday morning Disney competition, and shit name.

  2. Des E

    May 24, 2013 at 2:37 am

    Did Will and Joe intend to make more than 17 episodes (and hence more than 34 races), or is it possible that they *deliberately* left it to the viewers to work out who the World’s Wackiest Racer was?

    Regardless, the systems for awarding this title have of course been numerous. There’s the simple sort-by-wins-then-seconds-then-thirds, which gives it to the Ant Hill Mob with four wins and five seconds, ahead of Miss Pitstop and Mr Perfect with four wins and two seconds each. Then there are the points systems (including the highly appropriate Formula 1 system of the time with nine points for a win), just about all of which give it to the Slag Brothers thanks to their eight seconds.

    And Dastardly and Muttley actually did win a race – it’s just that the judges didn’t like the prospect and thus changed the footage. Bastards.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZv8HdAS8Vk

  3. Scott McPhee

    December 21, 2015 at 7:10 am

    Dick Dastardly looks like he was based on Professor Fate from the classic film, The Great Race.

  4. Patrick Lewis

    August 19, 2019 at 2:11 pm

    What’s the name of this film?

    Can someone please help me (pardon the pun. I’ll come to that in a second).

    Back around 1985 or 86 I watched a film in Primary School, the title of which has alluded me and this is what I want your help with.

    I haven’t seen the film in a long time so forgive my recollection. It’s about a boy who is in a big office tower. Something sinister happens, he might have possibly overheard a criminal’s plot and he ends up being locked up on the roof. To assist his escape he takes down the giant letter ‘P’ at the start of the word (and possibly the letter ‘S’ at the end of the word) which is either the name of the tower or of the company. This then allows the remaining letters to read ‘HELP’ whereupon he is rescued.

    I’d be very appreciative if you forward this query to someone who might know. Cheers!

  5. Richardpd

    September 23, 2021 at 10:33 pm

    I was reading up about this recently,I hadn’t realised there were so many epsiodes, as the CBBC 1980s-90s repeats seemed to show them randomly. It’s a bit like when I got the Thunderbirds DVD set & found they were loads of episodes I somehow never seen!

    In the spin-off comic strip Dastardly and Muttley once won a big purse race without cheating, only to find the prize was a handbag, in the American sense of the word!

  6. Tom Ronson

    October 25, 2022 at 6:08 pm

    I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that it was a conscious decision on the part of the animators that each race was run from camera right to camera left, because it was psychologically comforting and suggested a homecoming – presumably opposed to the propaganda films of Hitler’s armies marching from camera left to camera right, suggesting progress and dominance (and not in a positive way).

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