The DePatie/Frelang Collection: The Blue Racer

Unlike other high-velocity cartoon characters, nothing about DePatie-Freleng's supersonic Blue Racer could be described as "streamlined". While surely speedy, this lisping reptile is definitely not slick and ranks as more of an Everysnake who loses more battles than he wins, most of them to a philosophical Japanese Beetle. The DePatie-Freleng artists, while dubious ethnologists, still display their knack for extended physical comedy and squash-and-stretch action scenes in this surprisingly popular skein that bucked the contemporaneous trend toward limited animation. Never consigned to any indigenous natural habitat, the Blue Racer vacations in Tokyo, winters in Alaska, even emigrates to Ireland with a wanderlust echoed by the films' producers, who outsourced one of the entries to Sydney, Australia and another to Barcelona, Spain.