Bugs Bunny Show Part 3

Thanks for all the great comments, and Jerry over at Cartoon Brew for featuring the last Bugs episode!

Here's another good one. Sylvester is the host, but can't get a word in edgewise...between Sylvester Jr. and Hippety Hopper!

Bugs Bunny Show-Sylvester and Junior
Uploaded by MatthewHunter

Bugs Bunny Show Part 2

Here's an episode that appears to have been the pilot, or at least a very early entry in "The Bugs Bunny Show". It's a crying shame that Warner Bros. and TV affiliates treated these shows so badly. These few black and white tapes, and a few snippets in color, are all that's known to be left of the series. The original negatives were cut up for reruns, and much of the color footage is presumed lost forever. I applaud Jerry Beck and Warner Bros. Home Video for restoring what they've been able to find. This one is a rare glimpse at what it must have been like to watch the show on ABC in 1961...when many viewers still had black and white televisions.

This episode further solidifies the Bugs/Daffy relationship, and has different characters interacting for the first time. There's a great bit with Sylvester chasing Tweety, only to get scared into the rafters by Speedy and land on Daffy. We also get a rare encounter between Foghorn Leghorn and Pepe Le Pew, some re-used animation from "Duck Amuck", and Daffy meeting Speedy for the first time ever (It doesn't go well!) Enjoy this all-star Looney Tunes treasure!

Bugs Bunny Show- Early Intro episode
Uploaded by MatthewHunter

The Bugs Bunny Show: Pepe and Sam

Here's a rare treasure that I'll guarantee most of you have never seen before. It has never been restored for a Golden Collection. Here is a complete episode of "The Bugs Bunny Show" from 1961. It's in black and white (they were made in color) and I've removed the cartoon shorts to save time...but all the link footage is here. Pepe Le Pew decides to host the show in place of Yosemite Sam, who doesn't appreciate being upstaged! There is also a hilarious segment with Taz!

Enjoy this rare gem! Maybe I'll post more of these...

Bugs Bunny Show- Pepe Le Pew Meets Yosemite Sam
Uploaded by MatthewHunter

Daffy Saves the Wetlands

Here's a public service announcement from the early 1990s with Daffy urging us to save America's wetlands.

Right on Target

Well, it's now or never to post this one. In 1996, as part of the huge marketing campaign for Space Jam, the Looney Tunes appeared in a series of commercials for Target stores. This one features country singer LeAnn Rimes performing at an LT Christmas party. Even though its pretty tough to spot them in a YouTube-quality video, there are a bunch of split-second cameos by many minor LT players such as Sam Sheepdog, Miss Prissy, Witch Hazel, the Three Bears, and others.

1989 Christmas tin

This fun Christmas item from 1989 features the whole Looney Tunes gang carolling. Brach's candies, the company who produced this item, did a follow-up for Bugs' 50th birthday in 1990...both were some of the last items Warner licensed before standardizing their models of the characters and creating the clipart we see today.

Tweety on Twial!

A recent story as reported on CNN's website:

ROME, Italy (AP) -- Tweety may get a chance to take the witness stand and sing like a canary.

An Italian court ordered the animated bird, along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy, to testify in a counterfeiting case.

In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said.

The court summons cites Titti, Paperino, Paperina, Topolino -- the Italian names for the characters -- as damaged parties in the criminal trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros.

Instead of naming only the companies and their legal representatives, clerks also wrote in the witness list the names of the cartoons that decorated the toys and gadgets the man had reproduced, said Fiorenza Sorotto, vice president of Disney Company Italia.

"Unfortunately they cannot show up, as they are residents of Disneyland," Sorotto joked in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It certainly pleased us that the characters were considered real, because that's what we try to do."

The Naples court will have to rewrite the summons, although this will probably delay the trial, said Disney lawyer Cristina Ravelli.

"Let's hope the characters will not be prosecuted for failing to appear," Ravelli quipped.

Calls seeking comment from Warner Bros. in Milan were not immediately returned. Phones at the Naples court were not answered Tuesday.

Bob Bergen sent along this funny MP3 of what it may have been like if Tweety actually DID take the stand. Click here to listen!

(Thanks, Bob!)

"Bugs and Friends Sing the Beatles"

The 90's were a great time for cartoon-inspired novelty albums. Kids and adults alike enjoyed listening to the many compilations of Disney movie tunes, music from the likes of Animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy and other then-current TV hits. Warner Bros. decided that maybe they should try something with Looney Tunes. In 1995, they released "Bugs and Friends Sing the Beatles".

The absence of Mel Blanc hurt this album tremendously, but the four voice actors who played Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Taz did a pretty decent job. Bugs was played by an actor nemed Mendi Segal (sp?) Daffy was Joe Alaskey, Taz was Jim Cummings, and Fudd was Jim Meskimen, who later wound up doing George W. Bush for the jibjab.com political cartoons.

Here's a sampling of the results...not bad, really! A real highlight is Joe Alaskey doing Yosemite Sam as a pirate in "Help!"...

UPDATE (12/18/07): Bob Bergen sends along some more information about the LT Beatles album:

Regarding your Looney Tunes Beatles blog, I myself participated in this project, but sadly the songs I sang were cut. Originally Porky sang Mother Nature's Son, and Tweety sang Yellow Submarine. But for reasons I don't know they decided to cut Porky and Tweety. I think the feeling was they wanted to have a Looney Tunes fab 4. With the inclusion of Porky and Tweety, that would make 6. Too many toons. Those tracks exist somewhere. Not sure where, though.

I did participate (and thankfully didn't get cut) on Bugs and Friends Sing Elvis. Porky was fat Elvis. It came in a blue suede CD box.

Misce-looney-ous Bookshelf - Bugs Bunny Calling!

Welcome back to another installment of the Misce-Looney-ous Bookshelf. Today we take a look at a charming and timeless storybook with some wonderful illustrations. Just kidding... we are actually taking a look at Bugs Bunny Calling! a hilariously outdated Little Golden Book from 1988.



The following page speaks for itself:



Yes, Bugs is thrilled that he got his new cordless phone. "Now I can call my friends and go skateboarding at the same time!"
Bugs skateboards around town calling his friends Porky, Elmer and Petunia and find out they are planning to go to a party.



You can tell cordless phones were just coming into style here. The characters are all baffled and confused at the thought of Bugs skateboarding past their houses when they just talked with him on the phone. Anyway, it turns out they are heading to Daffy's house for a pool party.



Everyone realizes Bugs was really talking to them on a newfangled tele-o-phone, Bugs hops in the pool and gets the food soaked. Bugs then calls out for pizza for the gang ("And please don't forget the grated carrots!") The End.

The Penguin Parade

Here's a fun Tex Avery cartoon from 1938. There's a great music score from Carl Stalling in this one (especially the finale where the penguins play "When My Dream Boat Comes Home") and some very funny gags like the impossible-to-understand host of the show (was this someone's radio schtick at the time? Hanna and Barbera also used it in "The Goose Goes South" at MGM in 1941).

Misce-Looney-ous Bookshelf - Alert All Martians

Welcome to what I hope will be a recurring feature here on the blog - The Misce-Looney-ous Bookshelf. Without really trying very hard, I have somehow managed to amass a fairly large library of children's books featuring the Looney Tunes characters. The earliest book I own dates back to 1948 while others are as recent as a few years ago. I plan on showcasing examples of these here. I won't be scanning entire books. Mostly because I am lazy, but also most of the books I will be showcasing can be tracked down with very little effort and little money (you can find most of these storybooks fairly easy for some pocket change at the local thift shop or for cheap on eBay). I hope you enjoy these trips down memory lane.



First up is a fairly recent book - Alert All Martians. I don't know much about these books, but a company called "DS-MAX" put out a series of small, thick boardback books in 2000. Each book contained a comic book-style story, some of which appeared to be reprints from the Bugs Bunny daily comic strip from the late 1990s while others seemed to be stories reprinted from DC's modern LT comic book. This book appears to be a series of gags from the daily strip. Obviously inspired by the cartoon "Jumpin' Jupiter", Porky and scaredy-cat Sylvester have watched a sci-fi movie on TV called The Attack of the 60-Foot Slime Monster From the Planet Sludge... and, well, you can see what happens next...

NOTE - the layout of these books were a little awkward. The panels weren't set up the way you'd expect (I know I was a bit confused when I first read one of these DS-MAX books). On the first scan below I added numbers for the panels that should give you an idea how to read the remaining pages.

Blue Ribbons: What if...

What if Warner Bros. got the notion to restore the credits to the Merrie Melodies cartoons that have no original titles available? Judging by the Golden Collection DVDs, they've found plenty of the original titles, but some are still missing. Would it be too much to ask if they created new title cards to give credit to the people known to have been credited? They did something like that for the music cue for "Bashful Buzzard" on the latest collection. Here's an idea, using an animation drawing of Sniffles, Photoshop, and a couple crappy Youtube files, of how they might go about recreating titles for "Bedtime for Sniffles".

The bullseye/tunnel titles are from "Confederate Honey", made the same year, 1940. The title card is my own creation, using an animation drawing of Sniffles.

Bedtime for Sniffles- Imagined Restored Credits
Uploaded by MatthewHunter

Have Yourself an Ugly Little Christmas

I am not sure why, but I am actually kind of fond of these little ceramic Christmas ornaments released by "Dave Grossman Designs" from 1977-1979. They are so ugly, they're cute. I actually owned the creepy little Porky in the first picture at one point. I also like how they even made little hideously deformed versions of Foghorn and Beaky Buzzard.







Images from - http://www.geocities.com/televisioncity/set/8681/grossman.html

"The Mouse on 57th Street" Commentary

Here's a 1961 Chuck Jones cartoon that gets zero notice or appreciation. It should.

Mouse on 57th Street Commentary
Uploaded by MatthewHunter