Muttley is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon dog character famous for his wheezy laugh, voiced by Don Messick (who also voiced Scooby Doo). He first appeared in Wacky Races in 1968, as the sidekick of a nasty but dim-witted and horribly accident-prone cheater named Dick Dastardly. While Dick was created as the equivalent as Professor Fate from The Great Race, Muttley mirrored Max Meen. Dick and Muttley appeared in at least two later Hanna-Barbera series as the bumbling villains.
Muttley does not really talk; his sole examples of speech are his trademark snicker, a wheezing, asthmatic laugh (generally at Dick's expense) and a mushy, low-in-the mouth grumble against an unsympathetic or harsh Dick that sounds something like "Rassum brassum msblsssl Rick Rastardly!". Messick used that distinctive laugh for another H-B canine, Precious Pupp , a few years later.
Muttley wears only a collar in Wacky Races, but in Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines he dons a World War I style aviator's uniform. He also sports many medals, of which he is particularly fond, and demands new ones from Dastardly for following his commands. Similarly, Dastardly frequently rips medals off Muttley's chest as a punishment for incompetence. When he gets a new medal, Muttley hugs himself happily, jumps into the air and floats back down like a feather. This effect is almost identical to the behavior of Snuggles , a dog who appeared on Quick Draw McGraw 10 years before, when he received a doggy snack. In this series, Muttley features the ability to fly for a short while by means of spinning his tail like a helicopter. This trait often proved useful when he was about to crashland.
Muttley is sometimes confused with Mumbly, a crime-fighting dog who tracked down bad guys with his dog senses and drove around in an old, beat-up car. Mumbly looked exactly like Muttley in a trenchcoat.
