Dick Dastardly

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Villain: Dick Dastardly

 

Pilot of the Mean Machine, Dick Dastardly was famous for always getting into the lead during the Wacky Races, then instead of asserting his clearly substantial lead, he'd stop and spend an improbable amount of time setting some sort of ridiculous trap that, if he ever gave it a moments rational thought, would clearly never work.

 

Then, after the conclusion of his racing career,Dick Dastardly continued his villainous career in the Wacky Races spin-off Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. he lead a team of pilots whose sole job was to catch, one solitary carrier pigeon. A task they couldn't complete in 34 encounters.

 

The series was inspired by the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and Dastardly's appearance this time was based on the film's villain, Sir Percival Ware-Armitage, played by Terry-Thomas. Dastardly and Muttley, as flying aces, with two other pilots, Zilly a coward who used to hide in his clothes when he was asked to go in his plane, and Klunk, the plane builder, who was speaking a language composed of strange sounds {only Zilly could understand him!}, composed the "Vulture Squadron", which tried constantly to stop a messenger pigeon "Yankee Doodle pigeon" from delivering messages to an opposing army, often with the song "Stop the Pigeon" playing; one typical scene shows the "Vulture Squadron" planes all convenging from different directions on "Yankee Doodle Pigeon" but end up crashing into one another-while the bird is unharmed! As in Wacky Races, Dastardly continued to fail miserably at his mission, only coming near to success on a single occasion. The shows are commonly known as 'Catch the Pigeon' or 'Stop the Pigeon', based on the original working title and the shows theme song.