Wacky Races is an animated cartoon series from Hanna-Barbera Productions, about a group of 11 different cars racing against each other in various road rallies, with each driver hoping to win the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer."

The series was apparently inspired by the movies Monte Carlo or Bust (aka Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies) and The Great Race.

The series debuted on CBS in 1968 and ran until 1970. Seventeen episodes were produced, with each episode featuring two different races, for a total of 34 races in all.

Attempting to foil the racers' efforts was the show's resident stereotyped villain Dick Dastardly and his sidekick, Muttley the dog. Like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, Dastardly would concoct all sorts of elaborate schemes to trap, divert, blow up or stop the other racers, only to see them backfire spectacularly.

In fact many of Dastardly's plots look suspiciously similar to those used in Road Runner episodes, which might be explained by the fact that Mike Maltese was a scriptwriter on both series.