Was Mumbly Invented to Replace Muttley in the Laff-A-lympics?

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Mumbly was created as a stand-in for Muttley in the Laff-A-lympics.

In a similar vein to the Wacky Races, in the late 1970s, Hanna-Barbera released another short-lived television series called Laff-A-Lympics.

In it, three teams of Hanna-Barbera characters competed against each other in a series of Olympic-style events from all over the world.

There were the Yogi Yahooeys (consisting of talking animal characters), the Scooby Doobies (consisting mostly of cartoon shows that starred human characters) and the Really Rottens (consisting of the bad guys from cartoons)…

The Really Rottens were led by Mumbly, a dog with a distinctive laugh/snicker and his co-hort the Dread Baron.

Here they are with their team…

and by themselves…

So, quite naturally, it was thought that the two characters were meant to be stand-ins for Dick Dastardly and Muttley…

And that almost certainly IS true.

The reason is most likely the fact that, as mentioned in the previous legend, Hanna-Barbera did not own the two characters outright, so they substituted look-alike characters.

However, people think that Mumbly and the Dread Baron are just re-named Muttley and Dick Dastardly, and that is not so, at least not in the case of Mumbly (Dread Baron was created just for the Laff-a-lympics).

Mumbly might have BECOME a stand-in for Muttley, but that was not how it always was!

You see, Mumbly was, at a time, his own distinct character!

Mumbly starred in his own show a year or so before the Laff-a-lympics began.

The Mumbly Show was basically a take-off of Peter Falk’s Columbo, with Mumbly being a mumbling detective…

So Mumbly was actually retroactively turned into a villain (without an explanation) for the sake of Laff-a-lympics!!

Since the show, Muttley has tended to be the longer lasting character between the two.

Do note that besides their slightly different appearances, they also had slightly different characterizations – Muttley was the sidekick to Dick Dastardly, while Mumbly was in charge of the Really Rottens.

The legend is…

STATUS: False Enough for a False

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com.

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5 Responses to “Was Mumbly Invented to Replace Muttley in the Laff-A-lympics?”

  1. Dread Baron was first in a yogi bear tv movie yogi bear and the magical flight of the space goose. Fun fact. Dick Dastardly and muttley was in an isuue of marvel laff-a-lympic comic and we find out mumbly is muttleys twin!

  2. Oops i think the yogi film came after laff-a-lympics not before.

  3. AverageJoeEverytman on December 6th, 2013 at 9:27 am

    I remember how I would always freak out and be incredibly happy when Laff A Lympics would come up on the Cartoon Express on USA. Loved the concept and seeing all the different HB characters interact.

  4. i remember dick dastardly and Mutley. i couldn’t figure out how a bad guy would have a great big heart having a dog as a pal. and Mutley would laugh at him too when everytime he gets hurt. LOL! i miss these characters. i wish they would come back and be created in DVD or Bluray. and of course who would forget Herculoids.

  5. Wasn’t Dread Baron also a character in The Mumbly Cartoon Show? Namely, the painter villain

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