Beep Business - The Many Commercials of the Road Runner, Part 2

Here are a couple more Road Runner inspired television commercials.

First, here's another Plymouth ad from 1968. This commercial is presented as a one-minute cartoon titled "Safe Drivers Always Win". Road Runner once again takes the wheel, while the Coyote tries to catch him in an Ajax Rocket Car.

After the success of the Bugs Bunny/Michael Jordan Nike commercial during the 1993 Super Bowl, the Looney Tunes started appearing in other Super Bowl ads. The LT characters were usually teamed up with various popular sports stars. Below is an ad from the 1996 Super Bowl featuring the Dallas Cowboys' Deion Sanders. His notorious speed prompted this commercial involving Wile E. Coyote and a booby trapped Pepsi machine!

That's all for now, folks!

Three Little Bops

It's kind of a diversion from what we usually talk about on this blog, but I thought this might be fun. Classic Looney Tunes are all but absent from TV these days, aside from a rotation of about 1/3 of the pre-1948 library shown once or twice a day on Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies' blink-and-you'll-miss-it show "Cartoon Alley".

It's more important than ever, amid the new controversy over computer animation and Motion Capture and lowest-common-denominator "adult" series, to remind people what an art form classic 2-d animation was and is. All of the above media have their moments and a place in our culture, but it seems to me that animation producers in general are losing sight of what makes a cartoon appealing. Everyone wants to do way-out, bizarre designs. They want weird stories and characters. They want fantasy and fart jokes to co-exist. Everyone wants to make their show either safe for kids or "cool enough" for adults.

It seems to me that what they should really do is this:

1. keep it simple
2. make it EASY on the eyes
3. make the characters appealing
4. Make it funny
5. Make it fun to listen to

I was surfing through video sites on the internet trying to find something "weird" or "rare" or "interesting" to do a post about. I decided to stop the search for a minute and watch a fan's posting of Friz Freleng's 1957 classic "The Three Little Bops". It made me think of those 5 things I listed above, a mental list I keep of why modern cartoons suck so bad. "Misce-Looney-Ous" is not here to preach. We let the other blogs do that, because they do it better! But I'll ask you this, readers: Have you seen a cartoon in the last, say, 5 years, that was a good as this one?

The Three Little Bops

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This cartoon is Friz Freleng's "Three Little Bops", one of the few cartoons to not credit Mel Blanc at all, or feature him. The music was composed by Shorty Rogers, the song and character voices were performed by Stan Freberg. The timing and characters? Freleng and his animation crew. It's a one-shot musical cartoon from 1957, and I DARE you to show me anything kids are subjected to now that comes CLOSE to the appeal of this. As Daffy Duck might say, "I DAAARE you!"

Beep Business - The Many Commercials of the Road Runner, Part 1

The never ending chase between the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote has been used in commercials over the years by a number of different companies. Matthew posted one of the ads for Plymouth last month. Here is a showcase of some other Road Runner related advertisements.

From 1981, Wile E. tries to catch the Road Runner, who is driving a Volkswagen Beetle:



From 1986, the duo play a major role in a bizarre advertisement for Hershey's chocolate... (How '80s can you get??):



Finally (for now, anyway), a priceless promo made for Cartoon Network (back when they were actually worth watching):

C is for Cookie

Here is a product I have fond memories of from my youth, Nabisco's Bugs Bunny and Friends Graham Cookies. First introduced in 1979, the cookies and were available on grocery store shelves for a surprisingly long time. For years they were packaged in small rectangular boxes similar to Nabisco's Barnum's Animal Crackers. The front and back of the box had Bugs and pals building their own clubhouse. As you can see, the characters were drawn in the style of the 1970s Western comic books.





Pretty much every major Warner cartoon star had their own cookie shape inside the box (along with some supporting players like Petunia Pig and Henery Hawk). I remember enjoying some boxes of these as a tot in the 1980s and having no clue who "Cool Cat" and "Merlin Mouse" were or why they were important enough to get their own cookie shapes.

When the cookies first came out, Nabisco gave kids a chance to mail-away for a free Bugs Bunny Cookie Clubhouse kit with some proofs-of-purchases. Check out the hilariously off-model drawings of the Warner cartoon stars. I especially like midget Elmer.



The cookies survived through the 1980s and even into the 1990s untouched. They had same artwork on the box and same selection of cookie shapes (yes, even Cool Cat and Merlin were still in there). In 1993, Nabisco offered up a line of Bugs Bunny Graham cookies in larger boxes and in a few different flavors including cinnamon (seen below) and chocolate. The 1993 boxes had some updated artwork and a more limited selection of characters.



I don't have an exact date when these were discontinued, but I have heard reports of folks still finding these and the smaller boxes (with the 1979 artwork) in some areas being produced into the late 1990s.

Thanks to Tim Hollis for the pictures.

Die schnellste Maus von Mexiko

Speedy Gonzales was apparently popular enough to have his own TV show in Germany starting in 1972 --- complete with a theme song that I guarantee will be stuck in your head all day (even if you don't understand German). Don't miss the cameo at the end by a German speaking Road Runner (!!?).

Looney Tunes references in other cartoons: Part 1

One topic I think is pertinent to "Misce-Looney-Ous" is "References to Looney Tunes in cartoons that aren't Looney Tunes". Bugs and the gang have been appearing officially and unofficially in series besides their own almost since the beginning. One of the earliest cameo appearances I know of is a 1940's George Pal Puppetoon entitled "Jasper Goes Hunting", in which Bugs pops out of a rabbit hole, realizing he's in the "Wrong Picture". We'll show you that clip later.

What we're about to show you is one of those "We'd better talk about this before the lawyers take it offline" subjects. We all know what a large part the Warner cartoons played in World War II, in everything from Army training films to government sales pitches to good ol' morale-boosters. When America entered World War II, Hollywood cartoons did too, and the characters wanted to win just as much as America did. On September 11, 2001, we entered a much different war. We're still in it. While most of the entertainment industry decided to be "sensitive" or ignore the attacks on New York and Washington, DC altogether, one cartoon dared to take on the subject in a different way. Their inspiration? The havoc Bugs Bunny and others, especially Daffy Duck, wreaked on the Axis dictators in World War II.

That cartoon was "South Park". This episode, which originally aired on November 7, 2001, is entitled "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants", features one of the South Park kids, the smart-aleck Eric Cartman, taking on Bin Laden himself...and in the style of the masters. Regardless of your political views or your opinion of South Park, you'll enjoy this!

509 Osama Bin Laden has Farty Pants
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...and now it's time for the show

Since I posted the Nick at Nite Looney Tunes intro the other day, I thought it would make sense to follow-up by posting the Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon intro. Looney Tunes first aired on Nickelodeon on Sept. 12, 1988 and ran for 11 years (the final broadcast was on Sept. 11, 1999). This was the original opening... which even includes an appearance by Bosko. The show was revamped around 1992. The network started airing the cartoons with their full opening & closing titles and began to phase out the black & white cartoons which were a staple of the show's earlier years. I am sure we'll get around to posting the second intro someday, but right now enjoy the original.