Speed Buggy
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Speed Buggy was a Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, originally airing for 16 30-minute installments on CBS between September 8, 1973 and August 31, 1974; repeats have surfaced on all 3 networks for 9 years. Similar in style to Hanna-Barbera's successful Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Speed Buggy followed the adventures of an anthropomorphic dune buggy, Speed Buggy (voiced by Mel Blanc), his driver Tinker (voiced by Phil Luther, Jr.), and Tinker's friends Mark and Debbie (voiced by Michael Bell and Arlene Golonka, respectively). The three young adults and their car traveled from race to race, often encountering spy capers and mysteries along the way. Speed Buggy's trademark quotes were always "Roger-Dodger!" and "Vroom-a-zoom-zoom!"
Though "Speed" had a mind of his own and could act on free will, he was vulnerable to commands given through a communicator/remote control device made by Tinker when he first built Speed Buggy. Speed's friends rarely used the device to control his actions, using it mainly for its communication function, but criminals and other ne'er-do-wells would sometimes steal or duplicate the device and manipulate Speed for their own purposes.
"Speed Buggy" is also the name of an unrelated arcade racing game made by Tatsumi and licensed to Data East for the U.S. in 1986.
Speed Buggy and the gang guest starred in a September 29, 1973 episode of The New Scooby Doo Movies, "The Weird Winds Of Winona"; it was the only time that Mark, a full-blooded Indian, was shown in a darker skin color. Speed Buggy and Tinker also competed in the Laff-a-Lympics (where Tinker was voiced by Frank Welker).
Speed Buggy appeared on Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law where he was arrested for being involved in a high speed chase; upon further investigation, it was revealed that the true fault lay with Mark and Debbie, who were making out while Speed's remote was in Debbie's pants pocket. When the activating button was accidentally pressed in the course of the pair's intimate encounters, Speed misunderstood Debbie's sexual innuendo-laden comments to Mark as commands to act, resulting in Speed's chaotic behavior and subsequent arrest.
On cable, repeats of this show aired on The USA Network (on their Cartoon Express) in the 1980s and, from 1992 to the present day, Cartoon Network and its sister channel Boomerang.
