"We Flush You a Merry Christmas" Kids WB ad

Remember when Kids' WB showed good cartoons? (Heck, remember when "The WB" existed)?

A lot of former fans cite commercials like this as the beginning of the end. Here's a crude, painful little bit from 10 years ago. Sylvester, Wakko (of "Animaniacs") and that cat thing from Pokemon ("Meowth", I believe) sing "We Flush You a Merry Christmas" around a toilet.

How they got Joe Alaskey to do this and keep a straight face, I will never know.

Click if you dare.

"I've Got Plenty of Mutton" (1944) model sheet on ebay

Here's something you don't see every day...a model sheet of Frank Tashlin's wolf from "I've Got Plenty of Mutton" (1944.) Looks like it's the real deal too...not some cheap copy. Take a look and/or go for it while you can!

Tashlin Wolf

Daffy and Speedy Present Heckle and Jeckle... in German!

That, of course, is the impossible-to-get-out-of-your-head theme song to Germany's Speedy Gonzales show (Die Schnellste Maus Von Mexiko). A YouTube user by the name "puttra" has uploaded many German-dubbed cartoons as they appeared on this show, complete with show bumpers. In addition to the many Daffy/Speedy and Rudy Larriva Road Runner cartoons, the German Speedy show apparently also included Heckle & Jeckle cartoons (how did that happen??). Below is a German-dubbed Terrytoon with an intro by German-dubbed Speedy and Daffy introducing the talking magpies.

No, I have no idea what they are saying... is there a translator in the house?

Yosemite Sam's Good Day

I picked up the new Looney Tunes DC comic issue today, as I do every month despite its steady decline. I figured it'd be just as lousy as the last few issues, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Instead of yet another collection of model sheet cut-and-paste "all star" stories and tiresome obsession with Daffy Duck, this month's issue features three Bugs Bunny stories, and they're actually pretty good! In the first, written by Sam Agro and drawn by Walter Carzon and Ruben Torreiro, Bugs battles pirate Yosemite Sam. In the second, written by Matthew K. Manning and again drawn by Carzon and Torreiro, Elmer Fudd tries to sell Bugs Bunny an apartment as a thinly-veiled plot to cook him, and in the third, written by Robbie Busch and drawn by Pablo Zamboni and Horacio Ottoloni, Elmer Fudd joins a "Hare" club for men, and actually shows some personality for once...I won't give it away, but the outcome of Elmer Fudd vs. the Crusher is not what you'd expect.

Since the last bunch of issues has been SO lousy, I think it is worthy of mention when they get it right. If you see it, give it a look!

Yosemite Sam's Bad Day

Here's a short cartoon produced by a company called Base Camp Studios and animated by Primal Screen for Cartoon Network. I never saw it, so it must've wound up on the European Cartoon Network.

Yosemite Sam runs into every cartoon cliche in the book...all in a day's work.

Back in Action Alternate Opening

I really wanted to like 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action more than I did. I remember buying into the hype of how this was finally going to be the modern-day LT project that brought the characters back to their roots and would finally wipe away the stench of the likes of Space Jam, Baby Looney Tunes, et al. Well, the release day finally came and it still stands out in my mind as one of the most depressing movie going experiences I have had in recent memory. Sure, Space Jam has aged terribly and I will probably never own the DVD, but I remember seeing it in a packed house with an audience who was really in to it. On the other hand, I saw BIA in a nearly-empty theater (maybe five or six others, including some rather uninterested kiddies). I think you could have heard the crickets chirping (a la "Show Biz Bugs"). What went wrong?

The movie had some super talent on board, folks who cared about the Looney Tunes characters like director Joe Dante and animator Eric Goldberg... but the plot of the movie is where it crashed and burned. Despite the dozens of rewrites, the whole thing felt half-baked and overloaded with too many smug, Hollywood in-jokes for its own good (see also - The Rocky & Bullwinkle Movie, many Animaniacs cartoons). It's no wonder it didn't catch on with mainstream audiences. Don't get me wrong, there are some bright spots in the finished film... but for every bright spot, there are also embarrassingly unfunny scenes like the one with Brendan Fraser prancing around with midgets in Yosemite Sam masks. Another problem was how the LT characters took a backseat to the uninteresting live-action lead characters. The finished film feels like a Brendan Fraser/Jenna Elfman movie that just happens to have some cartoon characters in it. Perhaps a mostly animated "buddy" comedy starring Bugs and Daffy (minus the hammy human co-stars) would have made a more satisfying final product.

Anyway, I bring up the movie since I discovered someone posted the complete original opening (Daffy envisioning himself as the star of a Batman-like action movie) to YouTube. It was released as an excerpt (with Daffy's "commentary") on the official DVD, but here it is in its entirety. I actually think it's funnier than the rehash of "Rabbit Fire" that ended up kicking off the finished film.

Bugs Bunny in Storyland

Someone has posted the 1949 Capitol Record Bugs Bunny in Storyland on YouTube in two parts complete with the fantastic original storybook illustrations by Robert McKimson and Richard Thomas. It features the voices of Mel Blanc, Arthur Q. Bryan, and June Foray and appearances by Beaky Buzzard (as Simple Simon), Daffy Duck (as Duck Twacy) and even a rare non-comic book appearance by Porky's nephew, Cicero Pig. Story by Warren Foster and Tedd Pierce and music by Billy May.