Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Toon Sports: Speed Buggy (1973)

His guest appearance on The New Scooby-Doo Movies may have had fans classifying his show as a purveyor of the "Scooby Formula", sans rock music, but Speed Buggy falls into a different classification simply because he & his human owners competed in races, although it would seem a wee bit out of place for a talking dune buggy to be competing against race cars.

Here's the intro & close:



Speedy's voice & sound effects were done, of course, by the legendary Mel Blanc, who used the same sound effects for Jack Benny's Maxwell on Benny's radio show in the Golden Age. You might recognize Debbie's voice as that of Arlene Golonka (ex-Mayberry RFD), in what would be Ms. Golonka's only cartoon credit of major significance.

After a couple of years on CBS, Speed Buggy moved over to ABC as a mid-season replacement in 1976, and I believe completed the then-trifecta by turning up on NBC later on. While at ABC, Speedy, along with owner-driver-mechanic Tinker, competed in the Laff-a-Lympics on Scooby-Doo's team. Unfortunately, that would also be the last we'd see of Speedy, as after Laff-a-Lympics was cancelled in 1979, Speedy was consigned to toon limbo.

The format was similar moreso to Josie & the Pussycats in that Team Speed Buggy was mixed up in battling various small time thugs and the occasional supervillain.

Rating: B-.

2 comments:

AH3RD said...

CBS brought back Speed Buggy for one last sojourn on network TV during the first half of 1982-3.

hobbyfan said...

As a mid-season replacement, no doubt.