Globetrotting Commercial Break

Bugs and friends in this 1998 French paint commercial, where they visit (and immediately trash) a random woman's house. Why is Sylvester Junior licking the walls?



Bugs sure loved selling Kool-Aid and not just here in the USA. Here are two 1980s era commercials from Mexico.

The Death of Bosko

We've been looking for this Nickelodeon promo for years. Back in 1992, Nickelodeon got the rights to a number of Looney Tunes shorts they had never shown before. Most were popular, well-known cartoons with major characters, or as they put it, "More of the Looney Tunes YOU want!" Of course, it was an upgrade to have more Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other favorites, but it came at the expense of the black and white "Bosko" shorts. If it weren't for Nickelodeon, it's quite possible nobody would remember Bosko at all, and those of us who enjoyed the characters' primitive cartoons never quite got over the unexplained slap in the face this commercial gave us. Here, in all its cruel and unusual glory, is the official death of Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid.

Speedy Goes Broadband

Here in the United States the Road Runner is used as the mascot for Time Warner Cable's high-speed internet service of the same name. Now in the UK, Virgin Media has just started using Speedy Gonzales in their new ad campaign for their super-fast broadband internet service. The first commercial is below and Virgin has posted an "interview" with Speedy here.



UPDATE: Two more Speedy commercials have surfaced for the Virgin Broadband UK campaign. One features Sylvester, the other features Slowpoke Rodriguez.

The Canyon Kiddies

I had always known that the 1940 cartoon "The Mighty Hunters" featuring James Swinnerton's Canyon Kiddies characters was intended to be the first in a possible series. However, it wasn't until recently that I realized just how ambitious the original plans for this series were. Here is a brief write-up from Louella Parsons' Tells About Hollywood newspaper column from December 26, 1938:

Jimmy Swinnerton, cartoonist for 47 years and the creator of the famous "Canyon Kiddies," is headed for the movies. Leon Schlesinger, producer of the "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes," has signed Jimmie to a long-term contract which calls for 13 one-reel technicolor "Canyon Kiddies" annually.

Interesting that it was Marion Davies, who loves the funnies and reads every one of them, should first have suggested the possibilities of the Swinnerton cartoons to Leon. Jimmie and Mrs. Schlesinger leave Tuesday for New York for the remainder of the holidays.

In Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic, director Chuck Jones warmly recalls of traveling to the Grand Canyon with Swinnerton, on their own dime, for inspiration for the cartoon. Swinnerton himself provided fifty oil paintings of the desert landscapes for use as backgrounds (a departure from the traditional watercolor backgrounds used in the normal cartoons of the time). This trip is confirmed in Martha Sigall's book, Living Life Inside the Lines, which includes an excerpt from the Schlesinger studio's in-house newspaper, The Exposure Sheet:

Due to the unusual backgrounds and customs in the new series of Canyon Kiddies Cartoons, James Swinnerton, Chuck Jones, and his story unit, left yesterday morning for the old Indian ruins of Arizona.

Mr. Schlesinger felt it was quite necessary for the department to be familiar with the general atmosphere of the country.

They took a 16 mm camera with which to capture, in color, the Indian dances, settings, and characters. They expect to gather enough material on the old Indian legends for the entire series of cartoons. (Have you ever heard of a cartoon studio going out on location?)

P.S. --- Tex Avery's story unit swear their next picture will have a Hawaiian background!!!

The one and only Canyon Kiddies cartoon was released in 1940. Why the plans for the ongoing series were abandoned, I can not say. Perhaps it was budget reasons or perhaps the Schlesinger crew were naturally moving away from this type of charming, yet Disney-esque, style of cartoon. After all, 1940 would also mark the birth of a superstar named Bugs Bunny. Enjoy the full cartoon below.



For more information, check out the following links:

The Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery has some background on Swinnerton's career and cartoons based on his work.

Larry T's blog has a post showing off some of the original Canyon Kiddies artwork done for Good Housekeeping magazine.

Franklin Mint Plates (1993)

Just returned with this flea market find: two collector plates that the Franklin Mint put out in 1993 based on "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" and "Rabbit Seasoning". They put me back $15 each, with all the proceeds going to the local cat shelter (which made me feel less foolish for spending $30 on plates that will kill me if I ate food off of them).



The "Pumpernickel" one still had its Certificate of Authenticity:



Does anyone know how many others were in this set? A quick Google search revealed there was also one based on "For Scent-imental Reasons".

"Tale of Two Mice" Original Titles Sighted

A recent ebay auction offered a film print of Frank Tashlin's 1945 Merrie Melodie, "A Tale Of Two Mice". Sadly, nobody we know snagged it, and there were no images of the credits. There WAS an image of the title card, though!

The only version of this cartoon available on TV and video in the past has been the Blue Ribbon reissue print, which shows the incorrect opening rings and omits the original title art and credits. Below are the images of the original title card, and a link to the Blue Ribbon version of the film itself.







UPDATE (9/30/10): Here is another original title card that surfaced in a recent eBay auction. Coincidentally, it was from the second (and final) cartoon to star the mouse version of Abbott and Costello: Robert McKimson's "The Mouse-Merized Cat" (1946). The auction was for a 16mm copy of the cartoon in black-and-white (the original cartoon was in color, of course), but it still gives us a rare glimpse of the original title. - JHC

What's Cookin', Doc?

Taking a page from one of my favorite blogs, Yowp: Stuff About Early Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, I thought I would start presenting various odds and ends I have dug up while combing through various online newspaper archives. I have come across a few odd, interesting (to me, at least) and forgotten footnotes in Looney Tunes history. For instance, did you know of Bugs Bunny's failed attempt to break into the themed-restaurant business in the early 1980's (a la Chuck E. Cheese)? Neither did I.

From December 4, 1983:

Restaurants serve up Mel Blanc characters
By Vernon Scott
United Press International

HOLLYWOOD --- If your town doesn't have a Gadgets restaurant, chances are it will within the next year or two, offering an entirely new entertainment program along with steaks, hamburgers and pizzas.
Gadgets is a newly designed national franchise outfit involving Warner Bros. and other corporations with plans for a string of 150 eateries around the country.
So far only Springfield, Ohio and Baltimore have Gadgets in full operation.
What distinguishes Gadgets from other chain restaurants, Howard Johnson for instance, is the entertainment factor.
Diners at Gadgets will see a completely automated 20-minute show every half hour or so featuring 8-foot robots with pre-recorded dialogue and songs.
But the robots are very special and familiar characters indeed: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Porky Pig, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety Bird and Sylvester, Henery Hawk, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil and other wackos from the Warner Bros. cartoon factory.
Those who have visited Disneyland are familiar with the autoanimatronics shows featured in the "America Sings" attractions at both theme parks. Gadgets' figures and shows might be compared to them.
The dialogue and music, including close harmony, were recorded by Mel Blanc, who has given voice to movie and TV animated cartoons for more than 45 years.
"Every restaurant will have 50 different entertainment programs, so there won't be a lot of repetition," Blanc said the other day.

What happened? I won't post the full text here (you can find it via this link), but an article the following July in Nation's Restaurant News painted a much less rosy picture about the Gadgets chain. There was behind-the-scene turmoil and high costs were rapidly killing the few existing locations.

Because of high development costs and demographics, Gadgets has altered its original concept of combining the ambience of an eating places and lounge for young adults with a family restaurant that features robotic cartoon characters on a stage. The new concept, Gadgets Cafe, is smaller and does not have the Looney Tunes show. Executives say the original concept will be used primarily as a growth vehicle overseas.

[...]

The cafe concept was rolled out because of space limitations, investment costs and demographics. Some locations were just not large enough to contain the separate dining rooms that feature the stage shows. And in some markets the demographic base was not families with young children--the prime market for the dinner with Looney Tunes--but young adults who preferred a bar atmosphere with current music.

Even in the full-sized Gadgets units, the stage shows have been reduced in frequency to just two to three hours a day. This indicates the trend away from robotics in Gadgets as well as in other restaurant chains.

Gadgets began growing at a time when the interest in computerized animated shows in restaurants was going strong. Most of the companies that were doing well were pizza chains like Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater and Showbiz Pizza Place, which have suffered great financial difficulties since then.

A search of the web didn't turn up anything else on Gadgets. No blurry photos of the giant robotic Looney Tunes characters, no fuzzy childhood memories posted on nostalgia-themed blogs. It sounds like they really put Mel to work on this idea, and it's a shame that a treasure-trove of audio of Blanc as the LT characters is now probably lost to the ages. If anyone has any more information, photos, etc of this short-lived venture leave us a comment or shoot us an e-mail at looneyblog ---at--- yahoo [dot] com.