HOBO TOAD AND THE MOTORCYCLE GANG

Funny-punny or just a silly sally, depending on your sense of humor, or at least on how verbally precocious you are—and if you respond to a walking talking toad as gangbuster. The Inway Investigators (1969, 508, J-202) did what this does less anomalously since the people in question there were people; yet no less entertainingly, H.T. brings outlaws to justice, all beginning with his pickup while hitchhiking by Mac, 'Tennyson of Truckers.' After a companionable poetic ride during which H.T. clears up the wart mystique, they stop at Great Kate's pie place (27 flavors) and run into the Professor, who specializes in crime. Together with the Devil's Dozen, he appropriates the truck and imprisons the friends within it: then he barrels it down toward the First National Bank of Secundo, intending that its INFLAMMABLE contents start a fire from which all the money can be salvaged. Little does he know that INFLAMMABLE is just a hold-over, that Mac is really driving a cargo of marbles—"If you lose your marbles we will replace them"—speaking of which. . .