(Almost) all of Dread Baron's scenes from Laff-A-Lympics

Who did you expect, Dick Dastardly? No, its just his brother/cousin/copy, the Dread Baron from the 1977 Hanna-Barbera crossover show, Laff-A-Lympics (or just laffalympics).
Seeing Dread and Mumbly on the show as a kid was confusing, as I'm sure it was for other people who also watched the show for the first time. Who is this guy, what show is he from, who is Mumbly, and why do they look like Dastardly and Muttley?
Well, according to various sources, apparently Hanna-Barbera had some copyright issues for their show Wacky Races with Heatter-Quigley, the game show production company (which owned Hollywood Squares) that also owned some of the rights to the show. HB didn't seem to have any problem with making two spinoffs from Wacky Races, so I don't know if the rumors are entirely true, but it's the best explanation I've seen.
At any rate, Dread Baron and Mumbly were made as copies from Dick Dastardly and Muttley, and they were used for a good number of years for both Laffalympics and the 1987 TV movie Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose. They were used so that the studio could avoid any lawsuits at the time.
In 1987, long after Dastardly and Muttley returned to the small screen for Yogi's Treasure Hunt, Dread Baron and Mumbly returned for the last time for the Spruce Goose movie, voiced interestingly enough by Dastardly's own voice actor, Paul Winchell. The movie feels like an extended episode of Yogi's Treasure Hunt, including the fact that both Dread and Mumbly were looking for treasure, and that they had somehow stole Dastardly's plane to get to it. I have a feeling that they were supposed to be Dastardly and Muttley, but they were changed for copyright reasons. I guess making a show with them is ok, but making a TV movie with them is a no-no.
The whole copyright thing was eventually rectified, I believe, and the Dread Baron and Mumbly characters have been in retirement for over 30 years, but who knows? Maybe someone will resurrect them for some sort of metajoke in a future show.


I do not own anything in this video, all rights and ownership belong to Warner Bros. Entertainment, and Hanna-Barbera.