THE PERILS OF PENELOPE PITSTOP

'''The Perils of Penelope Pitstop''' is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera (now known as Cartoon Network Studios) that premiered on CBS on September 13, 1969. The show lasted for two seasons, with 17 half-hour episodes produced.

Background

The title was a reference to a silent movie era melodrama cliffhanger movie serial, ''The Perils of Pauline''. Although the show's predecessor, ''Wacky Races'', appeared to be set in the then-contemporary 1960s, the characters and settings of ''The Perils of Penelope Pitstop'' were strongly reminiscent of the 1920s.
The series was a spin-off from ''Wacky Races'' and featured race car driver Penelope Pitstop (voiced by Janet Waldo). She wore a bright pink auto-racing outfit, with red tights and white go-go boots. Pitstop was constantly chased by a villain called the "Hooded Claw", aka Sylvester Sneekly (voiced by an uncredited Paul Lynde), who wanted to get rid of her in order to get her inheritance.
Also from the ''Wacky Races'' was the Ant Hill Mob, a group of crooks who acted as heroes and were constantly rushing to Penelope's rescue. But their attempts to save her almost always ended in disaster for themselves, and Penelope was often left to her own devices.
The Hooded Claw, aided by his pair of identical henchmen, the Bully Brothers, concocted needlessly Goldbergian plots to kill Penelope (such as a device to drop her from an aircraft, cut her parachute, and then have her drop into a box of wildcats). While the Mob often rescued Penelope, as often as not she needed to rescue the Mob from the unintended effects of ''their'' attempts to rescue ''her''. While Penelope was curiously helpless whenever The Hooded Claw grabbed her, once he left her tied up for his fiendish plans to take effect, she was quite resourceful and ingenious, often coming up with spontaneous inventions to escape her peril.
Penelope was always in a different part of the globe for every peril. Mainly she was in America, but she did go to locations such as Egypt, the jungle, Baghdad and the North Pole.

The Hooded Claw

The Hooded Claw was the main villain and the alter ego of Sylvester Sneekly, Penelope Pitstop's guardian. In the event of her death Sneekly stood to inherit Pitstop's fortune. Aided by his henchmen, the Bully Brothers, he tried to kill Penelope so he could get her fortune for himself. She never suspected his intentions, however, because he performed his nefarious deeds only in his costumed persona, The Hooded Claw.

The Ant Hill Mob

Penelope was often rescued from peril by the Ant Hill Mob, a group of seven diminutive gangsters with exaggerated personality traits, clearly owing quite a bit to the characters of the Seven Dwarfs in the Walt Disney film ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs''. They were:

★ 'Clyde' - the leader, a caricature of Edward G. Robinson in ''Little Caesar''. He was voiced by Paul Winchell

★ 'Dum Dum' - played stupid. He was voiced by Don Messick

★ 'Pockets' - able to bring out useful objects to get the Mob out of trouble, even ones of ridiculous size. He was voiced by Don Messick

★ 'Snoozy' - the dozy one, sleeping through moments of emergency; but despite sleeping on the job, he's always aware of what's going on at the present time. He was voiced by Don Messick.

★ 'Softy' - cried at any possible emotional or stressful moment; whether those moments were happy or sad was irrelevant. He was voiced by Paul Winchell.

★ 'Yak Yak' - the talkative one, made a kind of 'yuk yuk' laugh, no matter how disastrous the news he was imparting. He was voiced by Mel Blanc.

★ 'Zippy' - a fast runner and a fast talker. He was voiced by Don Messick
The Ant Hill Mob had previously appeared in ''Wacky Races'' alongside Penelope Pitstop, although of all seven Mob members, only Clyde kept his ''Wacky Races'' name here. The Mob's original ''Wacky Races'' car, the Bulletproof Bomb was replaced by "Chugga-Boom" (voiced by Mel Blanc), which was articulate and seemed to have a mind of its own.

Episodes

Main articles: List of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop episodes

Voices

Other voice artists in the series included Don Messick as some of the Mob (except Clyde and Softy, who were voiced by Paul Winchell, and Yak-Yak, who was voiced by Mel Blanc) and assorted other voices, and Gary Owens as the narrator. Writers included Warner Brothers veteran Michael Maltese.

DVD release

On May 10, 2005, Warner Home Video released the complete series on DVD in R1.

Cover Art	DVD Name	Ep #	Release Date	Additional Information
	Perils of Penelope Pitstop- The Complete Series	17	May 10 2005	★ Commentary on various episodes ★ Featurette : The Players in "Perils" featurette on the great escapes of Penelope and other characters ★ Penelope Pitstop's Spin Outs retrospective

Trivia

★ In the first sketches of the series, Penelope was supposed to have a younger brother named Johnny Pitstop, who would help the Ant Hill Mob saving her from the clutches of the Hooded Claw. In those same sketches, Dick Dastardly and Muttley were supposed to be Johnny Pitstop's personal bodyguards, using once again their car, The Mean Machine.

★ The ''Wacky Races'' series is never mentioned in the series: not by Penelope, nor by the Ant Hill Mob.

★ The Compact Pussycat from ''Wacky Races'' is never seen in the series. Instead of that vehicle, Penelope usually drives a green sports car.

★ The 1984 Frankie Goes to Hollywood song "The Power of Love" contains the line ''"I'll protect you from the Hooded Claw..."''.