TAKE 5

VILLAINS

Villains have long played a role in our everyday life. There has always been a good versus evil feud and it made us stronger as individuals and made for a better society. Villains showed us that there is a first place and second place and while everyone should get a trophy for participating there should always be a difference in size and numbers on the actual award. For this issue of Take 5 we look at some of the best Villains of all time.

ALOUETTE VILLAIN SNOWMOBILE

Way back when Alouette is business and manufacturing snowmobiles, they featured three different Villain models in their line-up. A 440cc twin, a 440cc triple and a 650cc triple with three shiny chrome pipes hanging out the side. The Villain (especially the 650) were all limited race sleds and had some very interesting features. Instead of having a leaf spring suspension up front on the skis, they came with a coil over the shock which was a head of its time. Alouette knew the power of having star powered talent behind the bars and in the 1970s they had both Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve. The Villeneuve brothers could make anything go fast, which was exactly what the Alouette Villain needed. These stunning snowmobiles were not as competitive as the manufacturer would have liked as they were heavy and were still being made of steel while many manufacturers had already made the move using more and more aluminum.

SKELETOR

It takes a certain type of Villain to go against the mighty He-Man for 130 episodes over the course of two seasons and lose every time. If the name Skeletor isn’t scary enough this villain’s full name is, Skeletor the Lord of Destruction and Overlord of Evil. Skeletor was a hulking muscular beast with a training in kick ass and if that wasn’t enough, he was also powerful sorcerer. But he could never beat the boy toy known as He-Man. More often than not, Skeletor was defeated because of his blundering evil henchmen. We think Skeletor coined the phrase, “don’t blame the player, blame the game”.

SEGWAY VILLAIN

“Segway” is not just the transportation dream for “Mall Cops” anymore. Segway Off-Road entered into the ultra-competitive Side-by-Side and ATV Market recently and they immediately made waves with the introduction of their Villain SX10 which is a 1000cc 4-stroke producing 105 horsepower and the Hybrid model the Villain SX10 H W. The Hybrid is attracting a lot of interest as it is producing an unheard of 196 horsepower. While the Hybrid Villain hasn’t landed in dealerships yet, the demand is there for a Hybrid with this type of performance. When the Villain SX10 H W does hit showrooms and ultimately into consumers hands, it will sure to be seen hunting down a lot of the competition.

DICK DASTARDLY

His name says it all and Dick is one of the oldest active and underrated villains of all time. He first appeared in 1968 as the main character in Hanna-Barbara’s Wacky Races cartoon where he never won a race but was always competitive and also appeared as the lead character in Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. More times than not, one of his “dastardly” deeds was foiled by his gang eliminating him from winning the race. He best evil doer in his gang was his dog, Muttley. Dastardly’s biggest catch phrases were “Muttley, do something” and “curses, foiled again”. Dick also made reoccurring bad guy appearances in other Hanna-Barbara cartoons such as Yogi Bear and his latest appearance was in the 2020 movie “Scoob”. Being a bad guy for 52 years isn’t easy it’s legendary.

DR. EVIL

Perhaps the most devious villains to ever hit the small or large screen. Dr. Evil featured many notorious henchman to conduct his evil deeds in order to take over the world. He was most notably accompanied by his best henchman, “Number Two”. Number Two was the brains behind Dr. Evil’s company Virtucon Industries which funded all of his evil doings. It was obvious from a young age that he was going to be as evil as he was due to his distinct upbringing. His father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium and his mother was a French prostitute named Chloé with webbed feet. When asked about his father he said, “My father would womanize; he would drink; he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possesses”. Though Dr. Evil was content with focusing his efforts trying to take over the world his biggest accomplishment was actually having sharks with laser beams.

SNOWCROSS RACERS FROM THE 90S

Believe it or not, there once was a time on the snow-covered racetrack where everyone was not exactly friends. You often heard the term used “arch nemesis”. Now this was typical 1990s style of Snowcross racing. In that time period, many Pro Snowcross racers were brash, cavalier and all around had extremely aggressive driving habits. The result of this type of behaviour resulted no friendly fist bumps on the starting line, and no words of encouragement such as, “good luck” ever being heard. More times than not there would be a pileup in turn 1, racers using others as berms or brakes and causing all around “mayhem”. Racers that were on different brands of snowmobiles were natural born enemies and rarely ever gave quarter to another brand in any situation. Depending on who you were cheering for, you could easily say that Snowcross racing was a good vs. evil event. This is what made these riders great, fan favourites, wealthy and popular with the trophy girls. Back in the 1990s there were monster payouts for the top winners and loads of contingency cash from sponsors which made winning all that more important. “If you ain’t first than your last,” was a statement that came out of the 1990s.