THURSDAY THEME SONG: PENELOPE PITSTOP

Not only will this week's theme song be a tribute to the Late Joe Barbera, but it will also be a tribut to Iwao Takamoto who passed away earlier this week. Iwao was a lead character designer for Hanna-Barbera and is most known for designing Scooby-Doo. But I want to share with you a character that Iwao almost didn't create.

The Perils of Penelope Pitstop

When Hanna-Barbera created Wacky Races, a show about a bunch of race car drivers and a villain bent on sabotaging every race, they didn't realize that they had made a all-male cast out of the drivers. At the last second Iwao was given the task of designing Penelope Pitstop and her car, the Compact Pussycat. He completed his task in about two hours.

Penelope was known as 'the Glamour Gal of the Gas Pedal' and quickly rose to be one of the most popular characters on the show. Janet Waldo provided her southern drawl and continues to voice the character to this very day in video games and online web cartoons.

Wacky Races had two spin-offs. Dasterdly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines focused on the villain, Dick Dasterdly and his pursuit to stop a carrier pigeon from delivering its messages. The other spin-off was The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Here, Peneolpe must escape and evade the traps set out by the Hooded Claw, who is after her wealth. To save the day, Wacky Races co-stars the Ant Hill Mob Gang also joined the cast of this show to help Penelope out.