Comments on: TV Urban Legends Revealed #26

By: Anthony Durrant

Anthony Durrant — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 01:19:30 +0000

Now that IS interesting. Could the Blue Falcon and Dynamutt have been replacement characters as well? Also, could the Great Fondu – the Rottens’ magician – have been intended as their archfoe?

By: TV Legends History

TV Legends History — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:16:38 +0000

[...] #26 – Wacky Races was originally going to be a game show. [...]

By: Squashua

Squashua — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:11:30 +0000

On the “Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits” album, Reverend Horton Heat does a mash-up of the Johnny Quest theme with Stop that Pigeon.

I love the Johnny Quest part, and would have loved a few minutes more of it rather than the awkward transition to the Stop that Pigeon song.

I wonder why they had to do both.

By: R David Francis

R David Francis — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:25:22 +0000

I remember Wacky Races (barely), and don’t remember the Pigeon one at all.

However, from TV theme songs CDs and covers, it’s obvious that the theme song for the show would indeed leave most people with the idea the name was “Stop that Pigeon” – especially as that’s much shorter than the actual name.

By: mary warner

mary warner — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:37:10 +0000

So ‘Stop That Pigeon’ was the original intended title? When I was a kid I thought it was the title. It was only a few years ago that I heard it was officially called ‘Dastardly and Muttley and their Flying Machines’. I wasn’t old enough to read credits back then, but my older brother could read and he called it ‘Stop That Pigeon’ too.

I have no memory of ‘Wacky Races’ or ‘Penelope Pitstop’. I can barely remember ‘Stop That Pigeon’.

By: Mike Blake

Mike Blake — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:25:11 +0000

The Wiki article on Dick Dastardly reveals Marvel came up with a typical retcon to explain the similarity:

“in issue #12 of the Laff-A-Lympics comic book by Marvel Comics, Dread Baron and Dastardly are brothers”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Dastardly

By: Comic Book Legends Revealed #235 | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:54:12 +0000

[...] which you can check out here, at legendsrevealed.com. I’d especially recommend you check out this installment of TV Legends Revealed for a whole Wacky Races edition of TV Legends [...]

By: Christopher Stansfield

Christopher Stansfield — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:02:34 +0000

@Basara- I think the answer re: the Flintstones neighbors is “both”- because there were actually TWO sets of “monster neighbors” in the Flintstones “canon” (keeping in mind that continuity from Flintstones show to Flintstones show is conspicuously lacking). The first monster family, “The Gruesomes,” who showed up towards the end of the original primetime series, definitely seem like an Addams Family pastiche- father, mother, son, and uncle. About ten years later, in one of the Saturday morning versions of the Flintstones (maybe “The Fred and Barney Show?”) new “scary neighbors” moved in called the Frankenstones. Considering the dad looked like Frankenstein’s monster, there was definitely something more Munsters-ish about them. To add more confusion, the Creeplies (in Laff-a-Lympics) looked an awful lot like the Gruesomes (who also looked an awful lot like the “Evil Scientist” family from “Snagglepuss”) but were “new” characters- and bad guys. Meanwhile, the Frankenstone family underwent numerous name changes and variations, and even a major voice change- Mr. Frankenstone went from sounding like Boris Karloff to sounding like Charles Nelson Reilly.

Which all proves that HB really liked to recycle character designs and ideas from show to show.

@ctc: They weren’t “from” anywhere, with the exception of Mumbly. In the same way that the Dread Baron was a ripoff of Dick Dastardly, most of them were ripoffs of other character designs. The Creeplies looked like the Gruesomes, the evil octopus thing looked like Squiddly Diddly, the Daltons shared their name with several villains from the Huckleberry Hound show, etc.

By: ctc

ctc — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:51:48 +0000

Hmmmm…. The Yogi Yahooies were all “funny animal” charcters. Typical toons. Whereas the Scooby Doobies were more action oriented and “serious” (for HB anyhoo) characters.

The Really Rottens always kida threw me, ‘cos I don’t know where half of ‘em are from….

By: Christopher Stansfield

Christopher Stansfield — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:35:38 +0000

@Kamino- Good point. I’ve personally wondered whether the division into human-friendly and human-deficient groups was an intentional one, or just a reflection of the major change in creative output from HB over the years. If you look at the main characters in each group, there’s a pretty clear chronological distinction between “classic” 1950s-early 60s HB characters like Yogi Bear, and the seventies-era characters as exemplified by Scooby Doo. What becomes obvious is that, while the earlier HB cartoons were often imitative of well-known live action sitcoms (Flinstone=Honeymooners, Top Cat=Phil Silvers, etc), the post-Scooby output was mainly imitative of, well, itself (pretty much all the shows represented in the Scooby team were mystery/adventure comedies).

Of course, my theory isn’t perfect, either, since Grape Ape was definitely a latter-era character- maybe he was intended to fill in for Magilla Gorilla, who was for some reason absent?

One slight correction: The Really Rottens consisted of “bad guys from cartoons,” yes, in the sense that they were bad guys, and they were all in a cartoon- the Laff-a-Lympics. However, with the exception of Mubmbly (who was, as Brian pointed out, not really a bad guy), none of them had ever appeared elsewhere, and most never appeared again.