The Dick Tracy Show is an American animated television series based on Chester Gould's comic strip crime fighter.
[1] In the show, policeman Dick Tracy employed a series of cartoony subordinate flatfoots to fight crime each week, contacting them on his two-way wristwatch radio.
[3] The opening was designed so that local TV hosts dressed as policemen could introduce the cartoon by barking orders into a prop intercom, with Tracy answering "Okay, chief, I'll get on it right away.
Villains taken from Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould's popular comic strip usually had names that served as descriptions of their physical appearance or some other peculiarity.
Of all the villains in the animated series, Stooge had made his first appearance in the comic strip earliest (1933) and Oodles latest (1955), six years before the show was aired.
Tracy, as Chief of Detectives, presented an image of calm professionalism in contrast to the comedic roles that the funny subordinates played.
In this episode, "Dick Tracy and the Mob", Tracy persuades Magoo (a well-known actor in the context of the Famous Adventures series) to impersonate an international hit man whom he resembles named Squinty Eyes, and infiltrate a gang of criminals made up of Pruneface (their leader in this case), Itchy, Flattop, Mumbles, The Mole, The Brow and Oodles.
The Dick Tracy Show was pulled from syndication in the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, and was not seen for years afterward because of what some perceived as racist undertones and use of ethnic stereotypes and accents.
In 1990, the complete series was released by Paramount Home Video in thirteen volumes, each containing ten episodes and Crimestopper tips by Tracy (voiced by Everette Sloane).
All episodes were released by Classic Media on a 4-disc DVD "Collector's Edition" set in 2006 to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the premiere of the Dick Tracy comics.