Mumbly is a cartoon dog character famous for his wheezy laugh, shown in The Mumbly Cartoon Show, and voiced by Don Messick.
About Mumbly[]
Mumbly bears a strong resemblance to his cousin Muttley from the animated series Wacky Races and Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines, except Mumbly has bluish-grey fur and wears an orange trenchcoat. Like Muttley, Mumbly does not really talk; he mumbles and grumbles unintelligibly, and often uses his trademark snicker. Detective Lieutenant Mumbly's boss is Schnooker (voiced by John Stephenson), an aptly named egotistical police chief who tries to take credit for nearly all of Mumbly's heroic deeds. Mumbly often drives around in a tiny, dilapidated pink car that was always on the verge of falling apart, typically doing so once he had reached his destination.
Mumbly was known for his incredibly tenacity when chasing down criminals, able to follow through through impossible odds. Typically, Mumbly was able to achieve victory by simply wearing down his target's patience and options, leading them to give up simply to avoid being followed by him any further.
Inspiration[]
Mumbly may have been inspired by Peter Falk's TV character Columbo, as the two share sartorial style and speech patterns. A further link is that Muttley was based on a similar premise to Peter Falk's character Max Meen in The Great Race (see the Wacky Races article).
Mumbly's incredible ability to chase his targets down through any and all odds strongly resemble the cartoons of MGM's Droopy Dog, most specifically Dumb-Hounded and Northwest Hounded Police, both of which involve Droopy ceaselessly hounding a criminal across the entire world.
Appearances[]
Mumbly during his police duties.
Mumbly appeared on the animated series The Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show (1976) and The Tom & Jerry/Mumbly Show (1976–77).
Ironically, Mumbly later appeared on the opposite side of the fence as the captain of the villainous Really Rottens on Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics / Scooby's All-Stars (1977–79), alongside Dread Baron, who bore a great resemblance to Dick Dastardly. Mumbly was the only member of the Really Rottens that wasn't created for Laff-a-Lympics. The good-guy teams, the Scooby Doobies and the Yogi Yahooeys, were composed of characters from previous cartoons. Mumbly would return as a villain alongside the Dread Baron (resembling the team of Muttley and Dick Dastardly) in 1987's TV movie Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose.
In an authorized comic book published by Marvel Comics, it was explained that the Baron and Dastardly were in fact brothers.
Muttley and Mumbly were inspired by Mugger, a dog that appears in the film Hey There, It's Yogi Bear!.
In his villainous appearances, Mumbly's former occupation as a police detective is never referenced and there is no in-universe explanation for his retcon as a villain, nor is Mumbly simply Muttley by a different name, although one episode of Laff-a-Lympics accidentally refers to Mumbly as Muttley in a script blooper. Whereas Muttley was consistently depicted as Dick Dastardly's sidekick and comic foil, Mumbly was depicted as independently clever and cunning in both his heroic and villainous appearances. Additionally, on Laff-a-Lympics, Mumbly was the leader of the Rottens team, with Dread Baron as his right-hand man.
The reason for the use of Dread Baron and Mumbly as substitutes for Dastardly and Muttley is not certain. The most commonly suggested reason is that the Wacky Races characters (including Dastardly and Muttley) were created as a co-production with Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley Productions, meaning that they were not fully owned by Hanna-Barbera, and thus could only be used with permission (which lead to many characters not returning in the 2017 reboot of Wacky Races.). This however does not explain their reappearance in Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose, which was produced two years after Dastardly and Muttley had been firmly established as Yogi's recurring nemesis in Yogi's Treasure Hunt, let along the fact Dread Baron and Mumbly's appearances in that movie were Dastardly and Muttley in all but name.
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