Wacky Races

What's good about this? The Mean Machine and the Turbo Terrific are faithful to their original models, and it's really fun to see them animated in this style and driving around. The episodes that follow the original format in which there is a race and Dick Dastardly and Muttley cheat and end up losing because of it are often enjoyable, and sometimes they even win, although it tends to be a pyrrhic victory. The design of the original characters in most respects is OK and they're recognisable.

What's bad about it is that most of the characters from the original have been left out (in the case of the redneck driving a car made from his kitchen furniture and the German WW1 pilot in a Fokker, that might be understandable, but not for the others). New characters that don't match the style of the originals and are either irrelevant or annoying have been added, such as an irritating self-proclaimed 'genius' child/midget riding around in a flying robot nanny car that gets far too much air time, a man and woman who stand around talking at the start of the programme wasting time that could have been used to show Dastardly plotting something, and pirates in a novelty car that are drawn in such a simplistic and bland style they look to have been borrowed from a preschool cartoon. The main three characters of Dastardly/Muttley, Pitstop, and Perfect have been changed from what they originally represented and it's not an improvement, and the Gruesome Twosome (the only other team from the original to make it in) aren't that interesting and their vehicle doesn't resemble and has none of the charm of the original. The episodes that aren't about racing are frequently so bad as to be completely unwatchable.

Dick Dastardly in the original Wacky Races worked really well as a classy camp villain protagonist because the joke was that he was reasonably competent, drove a great car, and would probably have won had he not spent every episode generating a huge headstart and then squandering it by trying to cheat. Although he and Muttley did not treat each other well, they were shown as having a real camaraderie, and even though they were sympathetic and you wanted them to win, when Dick lost or humiliated himself, it was always because of his own actions. You didn't resent the other well-meaning competitors who also occasionally cheated but for the most part helped out each other and often the villains too. Penelope Pitstop was ditzy and in some ways a bit of a sexist stereotype, but she was shown to be competent as a driver and mechanically, and a strong autonomous character. Peter Perfect was a kindhearted and chivalrous competitor who never cheated, but he wasn't very competent and the running joke was that his car would fall to pieces.

Unfortunately in this series, Dastardly gets recast as either an antihero who is sort-of friends with the other racers or an Arnold Rimmer-type psychological trainwreck (the flanderised version from the later series and not the more three-dimensional Rimmer from the earlier and better-written series). Often bad stuff happens to him that isn't his fault, or he tries to do something good and bad stuff happens anyway, and the other characters don't care and ridicule or ignore him, or even deliberately cause the bad things happening to him. At best this comes across as him being an underdog excluded for his lack of competence or just who he is, and at worst it comes across as the other characters bullying him, and it actually makes his bad behaviour seem justifiable. Dick Dastardly in this incarnation is too sympathetic and you feel really sorry for him and end up disliking the other characters because of how they treat him. Pitstop and Perfect have been recast as an obnoxious Mary Sue heroine and a dim jock hero respectively and come across more as antagonists to Dastardly. Some of the design choices are questionable -- making Dastardly's costume purple instead of its original colours and replacing his functional white goggles enormous misshapen pink ones with sequins.

When Dastardly unintentionally causes an accident and begrudgingly helps the others while resolving it, they decide to 'work together as a team' while leaving him and Muttley behind to sort themselves out, and then at the end, Penelope Pitstop says something about teamwork being great and then in his earshot says something unkind about him having BO, which is a really terrible moral. In probably the worst episode (because I found it so disturbing I couldn't watch any more after this point) Dastardly is dressed as a clown and is hosting a children's television programme, and it's explained he's being forced to do this for no other reason than he is unpopular with the audience. He then gets strung up on a rope and beaten with sticks until he's visibly badly injured. This was vile and undeserved, and suggests whoever came up with it had some sort of disturbing perversion. It's particularly bad because a complaint frequently levelled at classic cartoons and given as the reason why they have to remake them is against violence that was generally karmic and benign, such as Dastardly being run over because he stood in the road and getting up unharmed with a tyre track on him, or putting a bomb in his pocket that explodes leaving him merely looking dazed and dirty with dishevelled clothing. This version is considerably more violent and in more inappropriate ways than the original, and it's a spiteful and nasty sort of violence that doesn't respect the meaning of the original.

The other thing that I really don't feel is appropriate for a programme for kids made in 2017 is that Dastardly or sometimes Perfect are frequently depicted wearing drag badly or ridiculous costumes in a demeaning way. The Two Ronnies was a long time ago and it just isn't funny or right to do this when a lot of young people, boys especially, feel under pressure to be macho and are insecure about being perceived as flamboyant. I don't think it would be a bad idea to reimagine Dick Dastardly as being a flamboyant Liberace-like antihero, or to have a modern drag artist in a cartoon, but if they're going to do that he needs to have allies who are more accepting and supportive of him. Or they need to just stick to the original idea of him being the sole cause of his own misfortune.

All this is a shame because there is potential that might have been better met if they'd just included a couple of characters like Rufus Ruffcut to be a macho hero and Prof. Pat Pending as a woman character to even out the ratio (benefits of a unisex name) that would have allowed the characters to have kept more of their nuance and fun, and stuck to the original ideas of the characters. Unfortunately this means it'll probably be another 50 years before anyone will think of making another Wacky Races that might do the original justice.

This is one of the worst shows from Boomerang ever created, it also ruined the original Wacky Races just like The PowerPuff Girls (2016) which ruined the 1998 version, to be honest I used to like this show back in 2017 but after all the negative reviews I started to hate it because it doesn't stay true to the original series just like Thomas And Friends All Engines Go which also ruined Thomas And Friends, a better example of a reboot in my opinion would be the Ducktales from Disney Channel and Disney XD because i find the Ducktales reboot more enjoyable, entertaining and cool but this show got cancelled back in November 24th 2019 because of the low ratings.

As a child I enjoyed the wacky races, so when I found out they were making a reboot for the hannah-barbera classic, I was excited, but after a single episode I realised it turned out to be one of "Those" reboots where the series has nothing to do with the original product, the graphics, although good randomly introduced several new characters that are basically clones of other characters, such as "I.Q. Ickly" and Penelope Pitstop's apparently twin sister (like that has not been beat to death yet) she is the female incarnation of Dick Dastardly who went from his recognisable purple and red outfit to a full purple outfit also equipped with a English accent that does not do the character any justice.

All the characters are more focused on bad side-plots rather than a race, almost all the cars are given a redesign, and I am yet to see more than 5 different characters in a single episode. I may get over this if it wasn't for not even half the original cast of characters make returns, I am yet to see the presence of: the boulder mobile, the convert-a-car, crimson haybaler, army surplus special, roaring plenty, arknsas chugga-bug or the buzz wagon, which generally seems like laziness on their part, Do not get me wrong, some reboots can be brilliant, scooby-doo mystery incorporated was an amazing spin- off showing that scooby-doo can perform well in a darker, more story driven show, with this it is essentially "be cool scooby doo" all over again (or even shaggy & scooby-doo get a clue)they try too hard to fit it in with today's society but forget why the original series was so good, the gadgets and animation was solid, and even warranted a just as good spin-off "dastardly and muttley and their flying machines".

Finally the only thing I can still give the series praise for is too show me how bad they can make a reboot and getting it shown on a lesser known programming network surprises me.

Where is everyone else?

We only see 4 of the original. One of those is actually a stretch (crimson haybaler looks disgraceful)

Who is this IQ kid?

Sorry, cool animation and all, but we can't commend you for your achievements without actually fulfilling the base minimum requirements,

Give back all of the original characters.

Wacky Races isn't the most Popular of the Hanna Barbera line up but Wacky Races is A good Reboot if Boomerang Decides to do more with other's like Yogi bear or Wally Gator. The Art is pretty sleek and well done, the racing id fun and creative, humor and slap stick isn't bad either as well as the voice work it's well done. The Wacky Races formula is one anyone can sit down for an have a good laugh when they just want to unwind with a funny show. You can watch clips of it on Boomerangs UK YouTube Channel before starting your Free trial on Their Website.