Review of Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines

As even the most shameless of us old-cartoon freaks will readily or reluctantly admit, most of Hanna-Barberra's made-for-TV output from around 1966 onward was, to put it plainly, *c*r*a*p*!. Severely limited, almost minimalist animation; lame premises; imbecilic storytelling and humor, and those uber-repetitive characterizations and chase sequences and whole entire series....BUT every now and then even the humdrum HB hive knocked one out of the ballpark. "Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines" aka "Stop That Pigeon!" was a rarity in its hilarity -- it couuld make you laugh until your head almost fell off. There was a lopt of funny there -- the flabbergastacious flying machines! those two maladroit minions! (especially KLUNK with his psychotic genius-jargon babble-gab)! The heroic pigeon who was just so freaking OBNOXIOUS with his little tootly-tootly bugle that you wanted the bad guys to shoot him right out of the sky! And of course that greatest of all bad meany cartoon canines, the masterful MUTTLEY! Oh, how I loves me some Muttley. He's one of the funniest two-legged dogs who ever walked the cartoon Earth on two legs, especially when he gets pissed off or disgruntled. I can still do a passable Muttley Mumble myself: "Saggafrassinbaggamakkinsuggasuumbtcgmuttafubbarickrassrdly!" Not his sneaky wheezy dirty-old-dawg laugh, though; that's actually inimitable.