Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines

Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines
Premiere	September 13, 1969
Finale	January 3, 1970
Creator	Alex Lovy
Network/Provider	CBS
Style	30-minute animated ccomedy
Company	Hanna-Barbera Productions
Distributor	Taft H-B Program Sales (1976-1979) Worldvision Enterprises (1979-1991) Turner Program Services (1991-1996) Telepictures Distribution (1996-2003) Warner Bros. Television (2003- )
Seasons	1
Episodes	17 (List of episodes)
Origin	USA

Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines is an animated comedy that aired on CBS. This show, along with The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, was a spinoff of Wacky Races.

Dastardly & Muttley In Their Flying Machines had a ragtag WWI aerial platoon, the Vulture Squadron, under orders to bring down the American carrier pigeon Yankee Doodle Pigeon and intercept his secret messages. With a squadron like this, it's easier said than done.

Dick Dastardly, who drove the Mean Machine the season prior on Wacky Races, leads the squadron along with his snickering, unfaithful canine sidekick Muttley, who on this show is depicted as an opportunistic medal moocher. The other members are Klunk, a mechanic who can build anything--he just can't get them to work right--and card-carrying coward Zilly. Dastardly receives orders via telephone from the unseen General, and the phone that calls Dastardly up can appear anytime, anywhere.

Two Dastardly & Muttley cartoons are featured along with a blackout segment, "Wing Dings," and a feature called "Magnificent Muttley," in which Muttley indulges in flights of Walter Mitty-style fantasy.

Cartoon pros Dalton Sandifer, Larz Bourne and Michael Maltese did the stories, and the voices were furnished by Paul Winchell and Don Messick. The original title was Stop That Pigeon (the show's theme song) and was to have featured a heavy-jowled Red Baron-type character and a dachshund in pilot's goggles. It appeared that they weren't going anywhere insofar as development, so Dick Dastardly and Muttley were drafted into the series which was renamed. The two were originally intended to be the protectors of the brother of Penelope Pitstop on her show. But the concept never was worked out, so Dastardly and Muttley got this show instead.

Dastardly & Muttley was the most prolific feature of Western Publishing Company's Hanna-Barbera Fun-In comic (first series), published under their Gold Key arm. Mike Arens, an H-B layout artist (and creator of the CARtoons magazine feature "Unk And Them Varmints"), drew most of the stories. Curiously, many stories not distilled from TV episodes featured gunfire used profusely. They also appeared in two issues of Golden Comics Digest.

Hanna-Barbera produced the series, with current distribution by Warner Bros. Television.

Seasons

Season	Premiere	Finale				#
CBS
Season One	September 13, 1969	January 3, 1970				17

In-Depth

At a Glance: Additional information about the series

DVD Releases

Title			Release			Discs
Complete Series  (Region 1)
The Complete Series			May 10, 2005			3
The Complete Series (Diamond Collection)			June 6, 2017	purchase		3
Episode Collections - Various Series  (Region 1)
Four Kid Favorites: Dog Pound Pack			February 14, 2017	purchase		4

External Links

• Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines on IMDb

• opening creditson YouTube