Speed Buggy

Set in an assortment of locations around the world, the series follows three teenagers (Mark, Debbie, and Tinker) and a talking dune buggy as they partake in various adventures. Several episodes in the series feature reworked versions of storylines from Hanna-Barbera's Josie and the Pussycats. ==Characters==

The series features the following four main characters throughout its run: • Speed Buggy (voiced by Mel Blanc) – An orange anthropomorphic dune buggy nicknamed "Speedy" who has the ability to talk and solve mysteries. His headlights and front grille serve as his eyes and mouth, respectively. He served as the "wacky hero" of the series with St. Bernard-like qualities. His voice was similar to the Maxwell automobile he portrayed on the radio series The Jack Benny Program. Mark was one of Bell's first voice roles, with his only other credits at the time being for The Houndcats and The New Scooby-Doo Movies, as well as the Artful Dodger in Oliver and the Artful Dodger, the only two-part episode of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie. • Debbie (voiced by Arlene Golonka) – The beautiful teenage girl and leader of the group. • Tinker (voiced by Phil Luther Jr.) – A Southern-drawling teenage mechanic who is Speed Buggy's designated driver and best friend. ==Production and creation==

Speed Buggy was developed with the working titles Speed Bug and Speed Buggs. The show's concept was partly inspired by the 1968 Walt Disney Pictures film The Love Bug and the Japanese Speed Racer franchise. It was hinted by author David Hofstede that the "Chugga-Boom" vehicle in Hanna-Barbera's The Perils of Penelope Pitstop served as a prototype for the vehicle in Speed Buggy. Executive produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's Hanna-Barbera Productions, Charles A. Nichols served as the director and Art Scott was the associate producer. Iwao Takamoto, the main producer, expressed in his posthumous 2009 autobiography that the creation of Speed Buggy occurred due to the success of his other productions Josie & the Pussycats and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. He wrote that his participation in the series was partly because he enjoyed getting "[his] hands on a show whenever [he] felt it was necessary"; however, he was ultimately less involved with the show due to his trust with Bob Singer, an animation artist for Hanna-Barbera productions at the time. Jack Mendelshon and Chuck Menville were the two head writers for the episodes. Besides the leading roles, other voice actors involved with the series include Mike Road, Hal Smith, John Stephenson, and Janet Waldo. ==Episodes==

Broadcast history Speed Buggy was broadcast on CBS as part of their Saturday morning children's lineup between September 8 and December 22, 1973. ABC aired it at noon (EST) from September 6, 1975, to September 4, 1976. When NBC abruptly canceled McDuff, the Talking Dog on November 20, 1976, Speed Buggy aired in reruns from November 27, 1976, to September 1977. According to The A.V. Clubs Will Harris, the series was successful and had a large fan base because it aired on all three major television networks in the 1970s. As part of a Valentine's Day event in February 2007, sister channel Boomerang aired the program alongside other cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, The Jetsons, and ''Dexter's Laboratory. The episode "Speed Buggy Went That-a-Way" was featured on the Warner Bros. Presents DVD compilation Saturday Morning Cartoons – 1970's Volume 1'' and released on May 26, 2009. As part of the Warner Bros. Home Entertainment's Archive Collection, the complete Speed Buggy series was made available on DVD as a four-disc set. Critical response In retrospective reviews, critics saw the series as similar to the Scooby-Doo franchise. Aubrey Sitterson of Geek.com included Speed Buggy on their unranked list of "favorite Scooby-Doo knockoffs". He noted similarities between Speedy and Scooby-Doo's "Mystery Machine", and joked that Tinker is "basically just Shaggy in a jumpsuit". However, he hinted that Speed Buggys success could have been derived from its shared storylines as seen on Josie & the Pussycats. Similarly, Harris from The A.V. Club agreed and wrote that the main difference between the two shows was that Speed Buggy "substitut[ed] racing for rock 'n' roll". He also claimed that the main character "confirm[ed] that sidekicks don't always have to be animals". Several comparisons were made between the show and other works created by Hanna-Barbera. David Mansour, author of From Abba to Zoom: A Pop Culture Encyclopedia of the Late 20th Century, wrote in his book that Speed Buggy shared several characteristics with Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. He speculated that Mark was the "Freddy-esque handsome brain", Debbie was the "Daphne-esque pretty girlfriend", and Tinker was the "Shaggy-esque mechanic and driver". Furthermore, he considered Speed Buggy to be one of the most "famous dune buggies of pop culture" alongside the buggies in The Funky Phantom, The Banana Splits, and the Big Jim toy line. On a more negative note, author David Perlmutter found Hanna-Barbera's use of "humanized automobiles" to be too predictable and repetitive. Perlmutter grouped the three shows together, calling them a "trilogy". Wonderbug, an occasional live-action segment on ABC's The Krofft Supershow (1976-1978), featured three teenagers and a talking dune buggy and often drew comparisons to Speed Buggy and The Love Bug. Also compared to the show was Adult Swim's Mike Tyson Mysteries, with Rolling Stones James Montgomery calling it an ode to classic cartoons like Speed Buggy, Scooby-Doo, and Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels. The characters in Speed Buggy would also be featured in a 1973 Milton Bradley board game, where players would race Speed Buggy and other buggies in a fictionalized version of Baja California. The characters make a brief cameo at the end of the second episode of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, which also is a crossover with The Funky Phantom. Speed Buggy and Tinker both appear in the HBO Max original series Jellystone! with Tinker voiced by Dana Snyder. The characters appeared in the 2021 CW special Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now! ==References==