Talk:Wacky Races (1968 TV series)

Anime homages to Wacky Races

I'm aware of at least three Japanese animated shows that produced a Wacky Races-style special. During the '80s, AIC produced Scramble Wars, starring the super deformed versions of characters from Bubblegum Crisis, Gall Force and other shows that AIC created. Sunrise did the same, as part of the SD Gundam OVA series of self-parodies of Sunrise's Gundam series. This is perhaps the most direct homage to Wacky Races, as the episode transforms one of the characters, the mad ace Yazan Gable, into a Muttley-esque character, complete with dog-like snout and hushed laugh. Recently, in 1993, Tatsunoko released a Wacky Races-styled OVA special featuring the characters from the popular and long running Time Bokan franchise and it's spinoffs, Yattaman, Zendaman, and Otasukeman.--YoungFreud 16:37, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

another homage to this series (or at least to a character) in anime is in Asobi ni iku yo. the main antagonist has a robotic dog as a helper named muttley who often snickers just like his namesake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.173.150.2 (talk) 22:37, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

a stove?

I think lazy luke has a moonshine still in the back, not a stove. makes more sense too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.250.166.171 (talk) 00:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Race results

Are these race results accurate? They could probably do with being sourced. I'm not convinced that they're correct. MLA 16:17, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not put together a table equal to F1 article? Thirty eighy columns: name of the racer, car, number, the 34 races and total. Eleven lines to the racers, cars, number of the car, points and total of points. The pontuation criteria is a choice of the editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:431:F7A7:5106:9490:CE4C:E698:C77A (talk) 20:01, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Wow....

...I've often thought some wikipedians had too much time on their hands. Now I'm sure of it. I applaud the someone somewhere who watched every series and noted down who won.

Still, going with number of firsts, resolving ties with number of seconds and then thirds, a final win-list reads thusly:

1) The Bulletproof Bomb 2) The Compact Pussycat 3) The Turbo Terrific 4) The Arkansas Chugabug 5) The Bouldermobile 6) The Buzzwagon 7) The Crimson Haybailer 8) The Creepy Coupe 9) The Convertacar 10)The Army Surplus Special 11)The Mean Machine

Phew, poor Dick Dastardly... at least he won a few... Annihilatenow 16:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Didn't ReBoot have a Wacky Races-type game in one of episodes (where Enzo had to prove he's about as good as Bob?), with the 'Player' having a Penelope Pitstop sprite and one of Enzo's critcs and Enzo's dog taking on the Dick Dastardly and Muttley role?

---

Actually, Dastardly and Muttley never finished in the top three. The same results appear on the Wacky Races DVD set in one of the special features. As for ranking the cars, different rankings are possible by assigning points for each 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finish. I'll illustrate three point systems below:

Car #	00	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1st Pl	0	3	3	3	3	4	3	4	4	4	3
2nd Pl	0	8	3	2	4	2	1	5	1	2	6
3rd Pl	0	3	6	5	3	5	0	2	4	2	4
7-4-1	0	56	39	34	40	41	25	50	36	38	49
Rank	11	1	6	9	5	4	10	2	8	7	3
5-4-3	0	56	45	38	40	43	19	46	36	34	51
Rank	11	1	4	7	6	5	10	3	8	9	2
9-6-4	0	87	69	59	63	68	33	74	58	56	79
Rank	11	1	4	7	6	5	10	3	8	9	2

While the rankings differ, In each case the Bouldermobile comes out the big winner, with the Army Surplus Special finishing a disappointing 10th and the Mean Machine dead last ("Drat and double drat").

Glenn L (talk) 00:35, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Updated as wikitable by Glenn L (talk) 09:07, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

FIA's 9-6-4 scoring added by Glenn L (talk) 06:29, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Seperate articles for the racers?

Articles already exist for some drivers such as The Slag Brothers, The Gruesome Twosome, Professor Pat Pending, Luke and Blubber Bear.

And some articles appear to have been started, but were changed to redirects to this article (Red Max, Sergeant Blast & Private Meekly, Ant Hill Mob, etc).

I'm not bothered either way, but it seems that either they should all have seperate articles, or none of them. (Dick Dastardly, Muttley, and Penelope Pitstop being the obvious exceptons though). Psychonaut3000 16:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

• I thought the same thing when I looked at Category:Wacky Races, most of those articles are only one line. I'll set up a merge proposal because the minor characters should really redirect to this page. Pufnstuf 03:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

bad guy won

I'm pretty sure the Mean Machine won at least one race where they did not cheat for some reason that I cannot recall.

i remember the bad guy winning in one episode

Get the 2004 DVD set. Play disc 1 and view the 2nd race with the Special Feature selected. In the final minutes the bottom of the screen scrolls the number of times each contestant finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the 34-race series. The totals match what is posted in the Wikipedia article. And no, "the bad guy" never officially finished 1st, 2nd or 3rd in any of the 34 races.

Glenn L 7:06 5 May 2007 (UTC)

If memory serves, Dick Dastardly and Muttley crossed the finish line first in only one race. Dastardly got tired of getting blown up by his own dirty tricks, so he spent the rest of the episode racing "clean". He edged out either Prof. Pat Pending or Penelope Pitstop by a nose...but later, when a photo of the finish was reviewed, DD was found to have extended the front grill of the Mean Machine using an illegal mechanical device, and so was disqualified. Dpiranha 20:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I Think the table for that race should be verified as Mean Machine's win, as you can see on the real replay, he was first without any cheating. When we are counting points the way it was true for the real races, it should be taken into consideraton that no motorsport organisation would let such a fraud exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.70.91.70 (talk) 00:02, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I mean, that's a reasonable point. It's highly probably that Hanna-Barbera was in the bag on this, that they were determined for publicity purposes that that Dastardly would not be allowed to win any races under any circumstances, even if his "cheating" in that case you point out was much less than other contestants got away with. They were probably afraid of an outcry from parents if the "villain" was ever allowed to win.

But that's politics, and we aren't required -- or even allowed! -- to report things falsely to fit someone's political advantage. The whole thing is rank corruption on Hanna-Barbera's part and I don't know if we have to along with any "official results" that are obviously and egregiously corrupt and wrong. Herostratus (talk) 04:14, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Merge proposal

The above minor characters should be merged back here, most of the articles are small, and none of these characters are particularly notable outside of Wacky Races. I have omitted the 3 major characters as they starred in other series and are far more notable. Also WP:N states Minor characters (and places, concepts, etc.) in a work of fiction should be merged with short descriptions into a "List of characters." This list should reside in the article relating to the work itself, so this merge is in line with that policy. Pufnstuf 04:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The other good reasons for merging are that having seperate, tiny articles for each minor character forces Wikipedia users to visit another 5 pages just to see the same information that is already detailed in this article. The only additional thing the character stubs have are a some images of the cars, so I've merged those images into the driver list here. It's been 11 days and no one's contested this proposal, so I'm going to merge them now. Pufnstuf 23:19, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Fender Bender 500 in the UK

I have no source for this but I am sure that when the programme Fender Bender 500 (see : here and here) was shown in the UK it used the title Wacky Races. For years I went on about how I'd seen episodes of Wacky Races in which the competitors were the big name Hanna-Barbera characters (Yogi, Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, etc.) but could never find any proof. Also (like the user above) I knew that I'd seen episodes where the bad guys won. Of course, whenever I watched repeats of Wacky Races quite obviously I saw the proper programme. For a while I suspected that they'd maybe changed the format in a later series but eventually I discovered that what I had seen was actually this Fender Bender 500, in which the big names compete and the Dastardly and Muttley won races. As far as I can tell Wake, Rattle, and Roll was never shown in the UK, leaving me to believe that they shown just this cartoon segment and recycled the Wacky Races title. Certainly I have no recollection of the name Fender Bender 500 ever being used. Can anyone confirm this? I've searched the internet but can't find anything to back up my claim. The programme was shown in the morning (possibly before The Big Breakfast) in the early 90s if this helps. --Thetriangleguy 16:06, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes - when it ran on early morning TV in the UK it was called Fender Bender 500 - it ran on ITV not Channel 4. Certainly on ITV (GMTV) it was called Fender Bender 500 anyway - so maybe it ran on The Big Breakfast on Channel 4 too and was called Wacky Races then - I can't confirm that though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.99.210.174 (talk) 16:29, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Utter lack of quality should be mentioned?

I think that some sort of mention should be made about the mediocrity and banality of this cartoon series - it has a lot in common with a porno movie. There's essentially no plot, just a series of unfunny, boring one-off jokes one after the other. This is important because I believe that in the pantheon of Saturday morning cartoons, this very series may mark a nadar. T.V. Guide at the time agreed, and when I get my sources together I will update the article. george 12:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It's been many years, but I remember TWR as being clever, original, and entertaining. It was a pure slapstick cartoon inspired by old-school, two-reel slapstick shorts from the likes of the Keystone Cops and the Three Stooges, not to mention The Great Race. So calling it plotless or repetitive kind of begs the response: "Um, yeah, your point being?" :) Moreover, it spawned two sequels and appears on a couple of notable Best Cartoons Ever lists, most recently in a comprehensive U.K. poll in 2005. Having said all this, I can't imagine how adding a Critical Reception section, pro and con, to this simple little article about a quirky 40-year-old cartoon would serve any encyclopedic purpose whatsoever. Please let it be. Dpiranha 20:28, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The only thing "porno"-like about Wacky Races is the fact that the Turbo Terrific looks like a giant cock and balls, which is even more terrible when you consider the 'stretching' power it had in the early episodes. -- TripcodeMel (talk) 22:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Lukeandblubberbear.gif

Image:Lukeandblubberbear.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 21:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Category:Fictional racecar drivers

Dick Dastardly and Penelope Pitstop are in Category:Fictional racecar drivers. What do people think of the idea of adding the other Wacky Racers (e.g. Ant Hill Mob, Red Max, Professor Pat Pending etc) into the category as well? DH85868993 (talk) 12:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Dick muttley.jpg

Image:Dick muttley.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 21:01, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Photos

No Photos of the cars? --Cooly123 23:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cooly123 (talk • contribs)

Japanese cast?

I noticed there's the Japanese voice cast in this article. I don't it's really necessary. Should it be removed? 86.28.171.246 (talk) 21:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed it. Indeed, such information is obsolete here and belong in the Japanese Wikipedia. Maimai009 16:22, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

F1-style points system is OR and flawed.

The F1-style points system discussed (that places the Slag Brothers 1st) strikes me as original research; only the number of different placed finishes are found in the citation. It's also flawed on two counts. Firstly, points for 4th, 5th and 6th are not taken into account. Secondly, in 1968, a drivers worst finish from the first 6 races, and worst finish from the 2nd 6 races, were not counted for points scoring. The second aspect cannot so easily be applied to the much longer wacky races "season". M0ffx (talk) 03:08, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

If you go to the section Talk:Wacky Races#Wow.... you'll find that several points systems have been discussed. I added F1, which unlike the other systems was in actual use when this show aired, only a few months ago after a tip from another poster. While the overall rankings differ, all of them place the Slags first because they take note of the fact that the Bouldermobile finished in second place nearly 24% of the time. It's true that F1 applied here is somewhat flawed, partly because only the top three were consistently mentioned in all 34 races and therefore only those points could be counted. But even without F1, the other systems - chosen by me several years ago because they eliminate ties in the overall rankings - support the conclusion that the Slags clearly won the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer" [or at least North America's - see the Lede]. — Glenn L (talk) 16:27, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

"The show never indicated a particular scoring system or way to determine who won the Wacky Races as a whole." But we need closure! We absolutely must figure out who won the cartoon race competition! So hey, let's just make one up! Problem solved! --Jtalledo (talk) 13:36, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Another problem is that this is an American TV show depicting (fictional) American races. The FIA points system would not have been used if these were real events -- the series would have been sanctioned by USAC or some other domestic authority (USAC was running Championship Car, what is now the IndyCar series, at the time). I don't know how USAC's points were tabulated. Also, User:M0ffx's notes about 4th-6th finishes and low-/high-finish exclusions are well taken, and yes, this is all original research. _``` t b w i l l i e _{`</sub> $1.25 <sub>`} 16:41, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

It's a bit of fun, you miserable killjoy. What's the harm in it? Ubertoaster (talk) 00:42, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

No mention of the GBC video game

And yet all the others are mentioned --86.157.125.183 (talk) 16:54, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

Is it definite that The Great Race was the inspiration for Wacky (sic) Races? Seems like Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines is also a contender - they're both from 1965 but TMMITFM was released first, and was a more successful movie. Also the Terry Thomas character with his moustache and much-abused sidekick seems more of an inspiration for Dick Dastardly.Gymnophoria (talk) 15:49, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Yeah could be. Ref seems to be just offhand opinion of a person not necessarily in a position to know. Tagged. Herostratus (talk) 17:35, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I think Monte Carlo or Bust is also a valid source - Major Dawlish suggests Pat Pending... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.144.197.195 (talk) 21:34, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

There also was a character named Pat Pending long before Wacky Races. There were some short stories. Pending and his sidekick Mark Trade were some kind of sleuths tracking down patent violators or something. Mid TwenCen, very obscure, don't recall the author. If there's anything about them on the web it'd be hard to track down because of the commonness of the terms. Herostratus (talk) 01:23, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

re April 6 2015 edits

An editor made a really major change to this article, resulting in a net loss of 24,000 characters. I guess the descriptions of each racer (except Dick Dastardly and Muttly) were removed. Other stuff was moved around and its hard to figure what if anything was added or removed. The edit summary were "Trivia", None of this is notable enough", "Trimming this fancruft section", and "Not really related". Here is the before-and-after comparison.

I've reverted the edit and invited the editor (Harizotoh9) to engage. I'm not saying that this is necessarily not an improvement but its a big change so let's talk about this first. Herostratus (talk) 10:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll cite the following

• WP:NOTPLOT

Wikipedia is not about writing giant articles detailing the plot of series in excessive detail. "Character" sections are just repeats of "plot" sections, except they're much worse. They lead themselves to going into insane detail about often times obscure characters. Plot sections should be small, concise, and written in an encyclopedic manner. The focus should be on the real world (the production, the reception, home releases, etc) and not the plot/character. And therehere needs to citations for these.

• WP:Fancruft
• WP:Trivia

"Popular culture" or "Cultural references" are ways to sneak in often times uncited bits of pure trivia. It's unencyclopedic. There's no end to it. Trivia is bad, because it's trivial and only of interest to a niche.

I question whether the life size replicas are of value to the article. I question whether the article should reference every single parody or reference to the series in pop culture. At most a "See also" can be used to link to other forms of media or episodes of other series that reference it.

This article is very low quality. Typically articles of interest to "nerds" (anime, video games, cartoons, etc) are excessively detailed, because they are written by those who are a deeply interested with the subjects. You can go into any random one and find them being excessively detailed in terms of plot/characters.

Ask the question: Who is this article aimed at? The general public or small niche fans? It should be aimed at the general public, and contain relevant, encyclopedic, cited, and concise information about the series. On Fan Wikis, they can go into as much detail as they wish, but on Wikipedia there should be some kind of proportion.

Also ask: Why is an article about a children's cartoon series that has a simplistic formulaic plot need so much excessive detail? Especcially when there are next to no actual citations.

This is a cleanup. This is good. It brings to make it much more encyclopedic. The article is still not great. But the leaner, better version allows it for a basis for improving the article with cited information. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 11:21, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Crickets. I'm not seeing a lot of enthusiasm for a reduction on this scale. Herostratus (talk) 18:17, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I support it! This article needs lots of cleaning up and Harizotoh9 was being bold. Lots of these details belong on Wikia, not here. Just because no one commented doesn't mean people do or don't agree with the edits. Would recommend looking for feedback from a related WikiProject (see top of this talk page). --Jtalledo (talk) 09:59, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Erm, I dunno. The original redacting editor cited * WP:NOTPLOT, WP:Fancruft, and WP:Trivia, but then, WP:NOTPAPER on the other hand. I guess my question is, who are we trying to help by removing information? It's not a matter of "This level if detail caters to people I find personally disagreeable" or "I personally, for my own part, don't require or like this level of detail" or "I personally, for my own part, think this belongs on Wikia or something", but of serving the reader. We have lots of readers with assorted needs. People come to this page for various reasons. Maybe they're interested in reviewing a TV shoe they remember from their youth. Maybe they're researching mid 20th century American children's television or popular culture in general. Maybe they came to the page at random, or following some link, or are just browsing. Maybe they are researching the career of Janet Waldo or Charles Nichols or the history of Heatter-Quigley Productions, for some reason. Maybe they are writing a biographical article on Daws Butler. Maybe they are casting about for ideas for their own Flash animation hobby. Or any number of other reasons. Who knows? I don't and neither do you.

What I'd want to see, but haven't, is an argument along the lines of "All things considered, it would be a net benefit to this article's readership to remove a lot of the material in this article because __________". What goes in the blank? I'm not saying that something cogent and convincing couldn't go in the blank, I'm just saying that I haven't see it and can't think what it would be. --Herostratus (talk) 05:37, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

re Original Research

An editor removed a list of who number of 1st-2nd-3rd place finishes for each contestant, along with total total points (using the Formula 1 points system in place when the show first aired (9 points for 1st place, 6 for 2nd and 4 for 3rd)).

I reverted this with an edit summary of "Liked it better before. Debatable whether statements of fact WITH NO AGENDA generally fall under OR; take it talk and make your case if you like".

The other editor accepted the restoration of the results, but not the point system, and messaged me on my talk page (which I copy here, hoping that that will be OK):

"Liked it better before." Well, that's a new rationale for keeping blatant WP:OR in place! And anyway, as you can see there's a fair amount of "Debatle" and a few users did indeed "take it talk", but you seem to be against any pruning whatsoever in this article. Seriously though, this kind of minutiae is what stuff like Wikia is supposed to be for. We could all go on and cite guidelines (e.g. WP:MOSTV) and policy and such, but I think any sense of reason would be wasted since you'll just revert any changes anyhow. I have instead removed just the point system, as using that point system is not a "statement of fact." I do hope you consider actually keeping that one little change. And I will make a mental note not to attempt to improve this article to Wikipedia standards nor touch a single byte of it in the future, lest I get run over by the Mean Machine (*shudders*). Cheers.

I just wanted to point out a couple of things: "liked it better before" is just another way of saying "Reverted per WP:BRD" means exactly the same thing (and of course, reverting per WP:BRD is common and legit).

As to Original Research, if you read WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH and the examples, it seems to me that the main reason to avoid OR is to avoid cherry-picking facts to make a point. Read the page. For instance, this is OK:

Smith was described by many notable sportswriters as one of the best coaches of all time.[ref][ref][ref]

but then if you go and add to it like this:

Smith was described by many notable sportswriters as one of the best coaches of all time.[ref][ref][ref] His teams never won a championship, though.[incontrovertible ref]

that's not OK and that's original research with the implication "maybe he wasn't so great". It wouldn't be original research if you found a notable write to say it for you:

Smith was described by many notable sportswriters as one of the best coaches of all time.[ref][ref][ref] Dick D. Famouswriter, though, noted "If he was so great, how come he never won a championship?"[ref]

Anyway, that's not in play here. No one is making the claim, for instance, that Slag Brothers partisans are deliberately setting the cutoff at third place to make the Slag Brothers look better than they were (maybe they usually finished last but when they didn't it was in the top three, while Penelope Pitstop finished in the top 3 fewer times but finished fourth many times). Right?

(Other reasons for not including original research is that it may be wrong, or it may just be your opinion; that's not in play here; nobody is contending that the Slag Brother's didn't finish 1st three times, and so forth.)

I think what the editor is trying to say is that the material is trivial. That's different. The material is trivial. Heck, the whole subject is trivial. It's kind of... IDK, weird to be talking about Wacky Races and arguing over what info is or is not trivial. It's all trivial. The list of episodes is super-trivial. Probably we could reduce the article to

Wacky Races was a cartoon TV show. It was... y'know what? That's all you need to know. It was just a bunch of nonsense. Now go read a real article.

with no real loss. Anyway, there is a guideline, WP:TRIVIA, which addresses this. IMO it doesn't really militate for the exclusion of this list, but others may differ.

Another way you could go is that the source for this sketchy. It's just some guy's webpage. He says he had a fact-checker but maybe he's lying. IMO, though, this source is pretty good for such an obscure bit of info (He's got an actual second person checking the facts! Unless he's lying. But then, maybe everyone is lying. Maybe everyone else is robots. He has no apparent pecuniary interest in lying so let's assume he's not.)

WP:MOSTV (just a guideline anyway) -- that doesn't militate against the list. There's a whole section (""List of ..." structure") about lists. Heck, not only are lists of episodes common, but there are entire articles about individual episodes of TV shows. Man, you want to go after something, go after that.

I just don't get the mentality of "Well, we could include this material. In fact we have it now -- and all sourced and formatted and stuff. But that's not good. What we want is, when readers want to know this stuff, is for them to have to Google it and flounder around for five minutes and maybe never find it." I just don't see the win-win there.

I could be wrong about all this. Maybe I'm too close to it. Other opinions welcome. Herostratus (talk) 02:58, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

It is indeed perfectly okay that you put my TPM to you on this page, Hero! You note WP:MOSTV as a guideline, but WP:BRD is merely an essay. Plus, considering BRD one could argue that the revert to my "Race results" edit was much the same type of revert used to undo previous pruning to the article. The guidelines are there for a reason to provide some sense standards and quality, regardless of all of our biases. Suffice to say Wikipedia is not the be all, end all source for everything. But getting to the point!!

The sources provided in that "Race results" section state the stats/results, this was WP:OR in that it used those sources to imply a conclusion not stated in the sources using a point system that was neither in the source nor the subject itself. Nothing in the sources supports using a point system or implies a winner to the cartoon race competition. --Jtalledo (talk) 03:55, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

WP:BRD is just an essay but very highly respected, and it's treated like policy because without it WP:CONSENSUS (a policy, and a very important one) doesn't really work.

Yes OK I take your point about the point system. I mean, I don't see the harm in including it -- it is the one the Formula One used at the time, and isn't being used to make any kind of WP:POINT, and reader is free to ignore it -- but it's reasonable to remove it so I won't contest that, provided we keep the rest of the chart.

Er, that is, I hope it wasn't being used to make a point... if there are editors out there who still mad that Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear had more wins than Rufus Ruffcut and are cherry-picking data to try to obfuscate that, that would be... sad... but I hope and trust that's not what happened here... Herostratus (talk) 20:46, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

"Gritty reboot"

Just to point out, in case there was any doubt, that American culture has officially achieved its apothesis: Wacky Raceland #1 "The world has ended, but the race has just begun! Penelope Pitstop, Peter Perfect and the rest of the Wacky Racers vie for the finish line in a contest where the winner takes all and second place is death. Today’s trial: the shattered maze of freeways known as the Überpass, where they’re beset by giant sand beasts, mutated insects, and worst of all, Dick Dastardly’s murderously poor sportsmanship. The last thing they need after surviving the race is a brutal bar fight in a local dive, but that’s just what they get!" (emphasis added). Herostratus (talk) 13:15, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

This stuff again

An editor had advocated deleting some material, and is quite persistant; his latest edit summary was "Race results poorly sourced and trivial information". Rather than edit war any more, I've reverted per WP:BLP and I'm suggesting that we discuss this. Some of the removed material was unsource, and fine; that should stay out. The sourced material that the editor would like us to consider deleting follows. Based on his edit summary, there are two issues:

1. Race results -- poorly sourced.
2. Other material -- trivial information.

These are two separate issues and let's consider them separately. Let's look at the race results first. The editor has a point about the sourcing, so let's consider it. Here's the material:

Race results

Table from the article

The show gave the results of each race at the end of each episode, (the first, second, and third placings are given by the narrator, and we sometimes saw some or all of the other cars cross the finish line). The show never indicated a particular scoring system or way to determine who won the Wacky Races as a whole. The cumulative totals for first, second, and third-place finishes for each contestant are presented below: Contestants Car Name Car # 1st 2nd 3rd Top 3 The Slag Brothers The Boulder Mobile 1 3 8 3 14 Rufus Ruffcut and Sawtooth The Buzzwagon 10 3 6 4 13 The Ant Hill Mob The Bulletproof Bomb 7 4 5 2 11 The Gruesome Twosome The Creepy Coupe 2 3 3 6 12 Penelope Pitstop The Compact Pussycat 5 4 2 5 11 The Red Max The Crimson Haybaler 4 3 4 3 10 Professor Pat Pending The Convert-A-Car 3 3 2 5 10 Luke and Blubber Bear The Arkansas Chuggabug 8 4 1 4 9 Peter Perfect The Turbo Terrific 9 4 2 2 8 Sergeant Blast and Private Meekly The Army Surplus Special 6 3 1 0 4 Dick Dastardly and Muttley The Mean Machine 00 0 0 0 0 Grand Totals 34 34 34 102

There's only one reference for this, it is:

• Peter J. Inns. "Complete List of Wacky Races Cars and Drivers". Retrieved 2008-02-25..

We don't know much about Peter J. Inns (the author) is. here's his home page. He's a British IT guy, and an enthusiast and collector of Dan Dare stuff. He's an amateur (that's not a deal-killer in my book; so was Schliemann. So was Don Markstein and we ref to him all the time). For Dan Dare material, I'd consider him probably an expert. But for Wacky Races, I haven't seen evidence of that. Anyway, the site is an amateur hobby site, and usually we don't use sites like this because they're neither peer-reviewed nor independently fact-checked fact-checked. But this one is, because Inns writes "My thanks to Glenn Leider for his help with the above results table - we both independently viewed all 34 races on DVD and we are in complete agreement that the information in the table is correct.)". So

First of, on the question of bias: I don't see any evidence that Inns has any motive to lie about this, or even spin the facts. There's no financial gain, or any ideological advantage to making the Ant Hill Mob come out better than the Gruesome Twosome, for instance.

Second of all, he could be lying about the fact-checking. Maybe there's no such person as Glenn Leider. Or maybe there is, but instead of watching the tapes they both just made up the results. All that is true, but then maybe everyone is lying. Maybe the New York Times is lying about having fact-checkers. Or maybe the New York Times doesn't exist, and it's all a big lie and conspiracy. Maybe you are a Boltzmann baby and everyone else is just a construct of your imagination, and thus there are no reliable sources. That's all possible, but how far down the rabbit hole do we want to go? Inns uses his real name and since he's a person with a professional reputation to protect it seems unlikely he would do stuff like make up fact-checkers. He appears to be a reasonably methodical and careful person. He's an IT professional and not a hobo. Reading his stuff, he seems like an earnest pop-culture geek who cares about this stuff and is able to get it right. I have no basis to believe that he's lying about having a fact-checker.

Since (or if) he does have a fact-checker, he's a pretty good source for this level of detail on this level of obscurity of topic. Our first choice would be a study in a peer-reviewed academic journal, but that's not likely for this topic. Don Markstein doesn't have fact-checkers AFAIK. We use him because he's an expert, and it appears that Inns has made himself an expert on the precise topic of Wacky Races finishes, by viewing the source material, taking notes, having it fact-checked, and publishing it. It's an OK ref in my opinion. If editors don't agree, fine.

Other material

Moving on, the editors objection was not to the sourcing, but to triviality. Triviality is somewhat subjective, but the editor appears to have a low tolerance for triviality. Why, if this is so, he is interested in working on this article isn't a question I can answer. Anyway, the material the editor wants to remove -- some non-deleted material was mixed in with this, but just showing the deleted material here -- is (numbered for convenience of reference):

One

In 2016, DC Comics launched a comic series called Wacky Raceland. It is a dark and gritty re-imagining of the series set after the apocalypse in a similar vein to the Mad Max franchise. The comic ran for six issues from May to December 2016.

Two

Later in 2007, another game called Wacky Races: Mad Motors for the PlayStation 2 was released by Blast Entertainment on June 12. A new video game for the Wii and Nintendo DS consoles titled Wacky Races: Crash and Dash was released on June 27, 2008. This game was developed by Eidos.

Three

On February 14, 2017, Warner Archive re-released Wacky Races: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna–Barbera Classics Collection as a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release.

Four

Life-size working replicas of the vehicles have been built in the UK and appear annually at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, with new additions each year. 2008 saw the last of the cars (the Ant Hill Mob in the Bulletproof Bomb 07) added to the collection, making a complete set.

• Goodwood Festival of Speed Wacky Races Replicas
• 
  Mean Machine #00
• 
  Boulder Mobile #1
• 
  Creepy Coupe #2
• 
  Convert-a-Car #3
• 
  Crimson Haybailer #4
• 
  Compact Pussycat #5
• 
  Army Surplus Special #6
• 
  Turbo Terrific #9

Five

In 2006, the car manufacturer Vauxhall launched a TV commercial for the British market, parodying Wacky Races with a similar setup featuring Corsa cars. The commercial made several references to the cartoon as well as utilizing the show's theme music and Muttley's iconic laugh.

Six

The English adult comic Viz had a one-off parody strip called "Wacky Racists" with David Irving as Dick Dastardly, Unity Mitford as Penelope Pitstop and comedian Bernard Manning as Muttley.

Seven

In 2013, the car manufacturer Peugeot launched a TV commercial for the Brazilian market, featuring the cartoon characters in a real-life universe.

Refs for above

The editor is invited to make his case as to why this material should be removed, and other editors are invited to comment on whether all, some, or none of this should be removed. Herostratus (talk) 05:16, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

This is regarding the “Second of all... fact-checking”. I AM Glenn Leider, the actual fact-checker in question. I have a 2004 DVD set of the series. In addition to noting the stats that appear in the annotations at the end of the second race of the series, I indeed DID watch all 34 races from start to finish to confirm the results. Some may view my statistical information as trivial. However, at the start of each of the original 17 two-race episodes, the narrator states that the competitors are “competing for the title of the World’s Wackiest Racer.” So trivial or not, such information proves conclusively that the Slag Brothers in Car #1 indeed won that title.—Glenn L (talk) 19:04, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

With respect, the only thing the information proves conclusively is ... the information itself. That is, who finished first, second and third in each race that was depicted in a televised episode. Unless the narrator specifically named a "world champion" at the end of the final episode, or stated (a) the scoring system to determine a champion, and (b) exactly which races would count toward the championship -- and assuming we have all the pertinent results from all those races -- then any declaration of an overall "winner" is WP:OR. We can say the Slag Brothers won the greatest number of races that were featured in televised episodes, but we can't know everything that happened in the fictional universe of Wacky Races. To bring back the analogy with Formula One: Were there fourth- through sixth-place championship points that might have affected the championship standings? Did some of these races not count in the standings? Were any teams disqualified from the championship? Etc. Listing the podium from each episode is all good fun, but let's not get carried away. _``` t b w i l l i e _{`</sub> $1.25 <sub>`} 04:08, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Sure, but I mean just because we can't know or write everything about a subject doesn't mean we shouldn't write anything about a subject. Veitch Memorial Medal... were some of these awardees sleeping with a judge? Were some just given to be kind to an old retired mentor? Did the committee just mess up sometimes? Were some given to help out a generally well-liked guy';s career? Was there any logrolling (this-for-that)? And so on. We don't say because we don't know and it's probably unknowable. Should we just delete the article then. It's data; the reader is free to think "Oh I know how these kind of awards work, its all political" or whatever at her discretion. Give the reader some credit for being able to process data or ignore it if she can't.

As to OR, you can take rules-lawyering a bit too far. WP:BURO advises us that we're not clerks at the DMV, WP:ENCYCLOPEDIA advises that that we are building an encyclopedia, and WP:IAR advises us that if we allow petty things to get in our way we're doing it wrong. WP:OR is a fine rule for many cases, and the main reasons to avoid OR are twofold: to prevent editors pushing an agenda, and to prevent editors (who are not formally fact-checked by any independent department after all) from putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5, simply by mistake.

Inns and Leider aren't being paid off by the Slag Brothers because the Slag Brothers aren't real. Inns and Leider aren't making up the race results or getting them wrong. They're providing a bare set of true numbers, arithmetically summing them, and saying so. Where is there possible spinning or error there? There isn't any.

The reader is free to think "The summing method is of little use to me, it's who finished first the most that matters, period." The reader is free to think "The summing method is of little use to me. I prefer Formula One rubric (9 points for 1st place, 6 for 2nd and 4 for 3rd)". And of course the reader is free to think "I do not care at all about who finished where, I'm here for other reasons."

Let's let the reader decide how she wants to approach the data given in the table. Let us not say to the reader "We had a table with data, but we've decided for you that you don't want it, or are too dumb to be able to figure that you can ignore if you like, so it's your unlucky day". Herostratus (talk) 16:05, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

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Penelope usually finishing top three vs. cumulative results table

There appears to be a discrepancy between the description (under Plot) which states that Penelope usually places top three and the actual results on the table. The latter seems to indicate almost evenly distributed wins among the racers (with the obvious exception of Dick Dastardly) and Penelope just above the median for top-three finishes. QuarterNotes (talk) 15:15, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I took that out, it was unref'd and I assume the table is right. Pitstop herself probably had one of her lackeys put that in, or maybe it was a stan. She's got lots of those, but underneath the pretty-damsel-in-distress act she's a ruthless bitch. She'll do anything for good publicity. Herostratus (talk) 01:10, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Video games to add

There are some WR video games that were not mentioned:

• Chiki Chiki Machine Mou Race: Kenken to Black Mao no Ijiwaru Daisakusen (3DO/Windows/Mac, 1994) [1][2][3]
• Chiki Chiki Machine Mou Race 2: In Space (3DO, 1995) [4][5][6]

Both were developed by Future Pirates and released in Japan only. Also, there's the unreleased WR for the Mega Drive by Virgin Games, which was completed but could not launched because the publisher had failed to obtain the license. --2804:D4B:79C1:9800:49BC:FF4B:5E9B:705F (talk) 20:52, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Scooby-Doo and guess who

In the 9th episode of Scooby-Doo and guess who it pays homage to wacky, with several cars having the numbers in circles and more characters. 2600:1700:53F4:6110:4076:C57A:41BE:357F (talk) 23:18, 11 January 2024 (UTC)