Thursday, May 22, 2014

Speed Buggy:

This is an old article pending revision.

If you are a fan of Scooby-Doo, you will probably like "Speed Buggy". Speed Buggy is of course not about a talking dog and a team of mystery solvers, and it is not about a group of music performers like many cartoons that aired originally in the 1970s era were about. It is about a living and talking car that likes to go very fast. Tinker was his driver. Tinker wears similarly colored clothing as Shaggy of "Scooby-Doo" does. He is friends with Speed Buggy just like how Shaggy is friends with Scooby-Doo. Tinker is voiced by Phil Luther, Jr. and Frank Welker. Shaggy is voiced by people such as Casey Kasem, Billy West, and Scott Innes. Debbie looks very similar to Daphne (and even more so when Daphne appears in the 1980s Scooby Doo series, particularly "The 13 Ghosts Of Scooby-Doo"). They could be related to each other. Debbie is voiced by Arlene Golonka while Daphne is voiced by people such as Heather North, Mary Kay Bergman, and Grey Delisle. Mark is similar to Fred, who is voiced by Michael Bell. Fred is voiced by people such as Frank Welker. Perhaps the similarities exist is because Iwao Takamoto was a design consultant for Speed Buggy.


Like many animated series that were produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that only lasted one season, only sixteen episodes were made of "Speed Buggy". The names for the episodes were "Speed Buggy Went That-A-Way", "Speed Buggy's Daring Escapade", "Taggert's Trophy",

"Speed Buggy Falls in Love", "Kingzilla", "Professor Snow and Madam Ice", "Out of Sight", "Gold Fever", "Island of the Giant Plants", "Soundmaster", "The Ringmaster", "The Incredible Changing Man", "Secret Safari", "Oils Well That Ends Well", "The Hidden Valley of Amazonia", & "Captain Schemo and the Underwater City". These episodes aired in 1973. The Speed Buggy team also made other appearances in cartoons such as guest stars in an episode of "The Scooby Doo Movies". They also appeared on Scooby's team on Scooby's All Star Laff-A-Lympics. In an episode of Johnny Bravo called "Bravo-Dooby-Doo", Speed Buggy appeared by himself at the end of the episode.


The setting for the "Speed Buggy" episodes was usually in the middle of bright and sunny days compared to the earlier episodes of Scooby-Doo which almost always took place whenever it was very dark. It was even very dark inside most of the buildings of the earlier Scooby-Doo episodes! The stories on Speed Buggy was about the adventures that they had together and having to prevent the bad people everywhere from bringing him down. Speed Buggy often uses the fact that he is a car as a superpower to prevent any enemies from getting away with whatever they are doing.


Guest stars on Speed Buggy included Chris Allen, Ron Feinberg, Virginia Gregg, Jim MacGeorge, Sid Miller, Alan Oppenheimer, Michael Road, Charles Martin Smith, John Stephenson, Hal Smith, and Janet Waldo. Those last three people mentioned all were voice actors for a Hanna-Barbera Austraila series called "Famous Classic Tales". John Stevenson is also known as Mr. Rockhead/Slate for "The Flintstones" and Janet Waldo is known for "Josie And The Pussycats" and Judy Jetson. There is yet to be any animated or live action motion pictures to be released of "Speed Buggy", or any crossover movies involving Mystery, Inc.

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