YMMV / Mickey and the Roadster Racers

• Character Rerailment: While still made with a younger audience in mind, the show returns Mickey and his friends to their slapstick-comedy roots, and thus the characters regain their signature quirks.
• Fanfic Fuel: Since many of the characters' established family members (such as Mickey's nephews, Goofy's son, Pete’s wife and kids, Donald's Uncle Scrooge, nephews, and sister, and Daisy's nieces) don’t seem to exist in this continuity, one has to wonder what it’d be like if they did and if so, what would their roadster racers look like?
• Funny Moments: All of Cuckoo-Loca's remarks to the Happy Helpers' song.
• He Really Can Act: Let's just say that having Gordon Ramsay in a preschool show would be very strange, yet his character is actually quite compassionate, in stark contrast to his TV persona.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Believe it or not, yes— Goofy's line "That's the biggest meatball I ever saw!" has caught on with baseball fans on Reddit as a reaction to easy-to-hit pitches (colloquially "meatballs") being smacked for home runs.
  • Another one started with an infamous scene from "Goofy's Hot Dog Harvest" due to how it resembles a certain experiment as Goofy and Pete are making something. This led to a lot of jokes of him making meth, especially those people comparing it to Breaking Bad, even as going so far as to edit it with the theme.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The idea for this series comes from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse "Road Rally" special, which had the gang racing with customized cars.
  • The idea of having Mickey and the gang participating in races dates back much further in video games like Mickey's Racing Adventure and Mickey's Speedway USA.
• Salvaged Story: The show may not be a direct sequel to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, but since this is also a Mickey show aimed at preschoolers, it improves on the former's flaws in a few ways.
  • First off, we have Mickey's personality. Some people thought he was too much of a nice guy in the former series to the point of being bland, with him seemingly making himself an egotist due to everything being named after him. While he's still a nice guy here, it's to a much more reasonable degree, and he's given some fairly realistic character flaws that help to humanize him. Plus, a lot of the major places are named after his catchphrase "Hot dog!", which is not directly about him. Supporting this theory is that he doesn't win every single competition.
  • Pete's Adaptational Heroism was a bit of a headscratcher, with people thinking that he was made into a wimp. There were also some people questioning why he hangs with the gang when he antagonizes them frequently in the specials. In this series, he only antagonizes the gang during competitions or when he lets his good intentions cloud his judgement, and is otherwise a decent guy to hang around. He doesn't even use too many extreme measures during a competition. Plus, the show establishes that there are apparently multiple versions of Pete that act as antagonists, more or less using the same tactic with Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny on Pokémon, where there's are multiple versions of the same character that feel unique yet also the same.
  • In regards to the more child-friendly tone, some people thought it made the show feel too safe while others who were open to the idea thought it wasn't handled well due to fake interactivity and feeling much slower paced. This show does away with the fake interactivity and has a much faster, but still well-developed pace, allowing the characters to express themselves more freely. The educational material is also woven in more organically.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: It's not a direct sequel per se, but for those who thought this would be too similar to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, the show improves on that show's flaws by having a better sense of humor, characters with more energy, and no fake interactivity, which helps giving it its own identity.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Disney comics fanbase took a keen interest when Grandpa Beagle was announced as a character… only to turn away in disgust when the character turned out to be essentially In Name Only, being a honest, likable man (if a bit of a daredevil), not to mention eschewing his iconic mask.
  • In a minor example, Donald is voiced here by Daniel Ross instead of Tony Anselmo, who has been consistently voicing the duck since 1985. Some personally think that Ross's Donald voice doesn't sound close enough to the character, but he is generally agreed to be good, if a bit rough around the edges. Plus, many fans know that Anselmo didn't exactly have Donald down pat when he first voiced him, and that Anselmo being busy voicing Donald in other projects (mostly DuckTales (2017), Legend of the Three Caballeros, Mickey Mouse (2013) and the Kingdom Hearts series) necessitated Ross taking over the role in this show.
  • Some people had this reaction when the show was announced to be rebranding to Mickey Mouse Mixed-Up Adventures. Many felt that the rebrand was way too similar to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The whole reason why Roadster Racers was praised in the first place was specifically because it tried to stand out from Clubhouse. This may be a result of the unexpected retroactive popularity of Clubhouse, to the point where videos of it get millions of views on YouTube, and it's one of the most watched shows on Disney+. Besides, Roadster Racers had gradually shifted the focus away from the racing aspect. Once the show was actually retooled, the reception was mostly the same. Aside from changing up the theme song and adding a new version of the Hot Dog Dance between the two segments and before the credits, the actual formula for the episodes is still relatively unchanged.
• Unexpected Character: If someone mentioned that Gordon Ramsay was going to star in an episode of this show, there would be many people scratching their heads at how this would work.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Given the numerous advancements made in CGI animation since Mickey Mouse Clubhouse first premiered, it shouldn't be a surprise that the animation for Roadster Racers is a massive upgrade, being more fluid, lively and better suited for cartoony slapstick gags.

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