May The Best Car Win: ‘Wacky Races’ Blu-ray Reviewed

Warner Archive provided me with a free copy of the Blu-Ray I reviewed in this article. The opinions I share are my own.

Maybe this speaks to not being a sports fan or preferring to make draft picks based on arbitrary reasons rather than statistics, but competitions would be a lot more fun if there weren’t always favorites. Sure, every once in a while a longshot wins but, more times than not, it feels like the same teams are always at the top – that the likely winners have already been decided. The beauty of Wacky Races is that all of the cars start out fresh everytime. The same drivers aren’t always winning, so any kid watching can pick any car (except Dick Dastardly’s) and stand a chance of seeing them cross the finish line first in one of the two races that occur each episode.

It’s so simple but how many cartoons can say they’re actually suspenseful? It’s a lot more fun when anyone could win and instead of a collective fan favorite, which car you like gets to be based on the design of the vehicle or the drivers rather than who’s the frontrunner.

There is a car that has main character energy: Peter Perfect’s, and he looks exactly like you’d think someone named “Peter Perfect” would look, down to the superhero chin, but instead of fawning over him the show treats him like just another contestant. If anything his car falls apart the most (though, thanks to the magic of animation, the damage never lasts long).

A lot of Dick Dastardly’s dastardly tricks are straight out of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. Also, why his cheating is dastardly and the tricks the other cars play are fair game isn’t always obvious. Fans of his should definitely check out Blake Edwards’ The Great Race (1965) [also available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive], where Jack Lemmon essentially plays live action Dick Dastardly.

More cool things about Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races:

• Instead of having the drivers race on a track, Wacky Races is like cross country for cars. That means different episodes take place in different states and with different backgrounds for different terrains, to create new obstacles for the drivers to fend against. It’s also an excuse to show off the various upgrades the drivers have given their cars because these are not your ordinary racing vehicles. Pat Pending’s can literally turn into anything (and yes, his name is a pun on “patent pending”), while the Gruesome Twosome’s Creepy Coupe has a belfry that houses a dragon and various other creatures. Pretty much all of the cars have a gear shift that does neat things (and I don’t mean your usual “park/drive” functions).
• The locations may change but the racers never do. Rather than change the lineup or insist on adding new drivers as a way to spice things up, Wacky Races restricted itself to always featuring the same 11 teams. As a result you really get the chance to know them all over the course of the series’ 17 episodes.
• Favorite scene: in episode 12, Dastardly yells at his canine companion, Muttley, “Muttley! Do something! Anything!” Muttley’s response? Start tap dancing.

Warner Archive’s Blu-ray carries over the same bonus features from the 2004 DVD release. These include a 20-minute retrospective on the show (which includes talking heads from production designer Iwao Takamoto, character designer Jerry Eisenberg, and Penelope Pitstop voice actress Janet Waldo) and a featurette on the two spin-offs – The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (which also featured the Ant Hill Mob from Wacky Races and introduced a villain voiced by Bewitched‘s Paul Lynde) and Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines. The Wacky Races Trivia Track is just a subtitle track for the first episode with trivia (but the trivia isn’t very deep and it would’ve made more sense if it had been included on disc one instead of disc two). There are also two commentaries with Takamato, Eisenberg, and animation historians Earl Kress and Scott Shaw but the featurettes are more informative.

Wacky Races: The Complete Series is available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive and to purchase from Movie Zyng.