I thought I'd start a thread for random topics involving the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies that we may not feel needs its own thread, or topics that we might want to write about but don't really know what kind of title to give the thread, We can still start new threads on various Looney Tunes subjects (and I probably will in the future), but this thread can be good for thoughts that may or may not lend themselves too well to a discussion.

Anyway, is it just me, or did Friz Freling direct very few one-shots in the 1950s and early 1960s? I often think that Chuck Jones and Robert McKimson directed the best one-shots (Chuck Jones' seem to be more iconic/overrated, McKimson's seem to be more underrated), though most of those best ones came in the '50s and later. And during the 1950s, there weren't many other directors besides Jones, Freling, and McKimson... I know Friz Freling directed Three Little Bops, but off-hand can't think of any other one-shots he did in the post-1948 era. In fact,by then, it also seems like Freling focused more on major, long-running character shorts, while Jones and McKimson directed a lot more characters with small filmographies. During this time, the only recurring characters of his I can think of who were only in a small number of cartoons were Rocky and Mugsy. When it comes to characters who were more-or-less exclusive to him, there's Tweety and Yosemite Sam (and Granny), in addition to pretty much sharing Sylvester and Speedy Gonzales with McKimson, while Jones had Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Pepe le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Sam Sheepdog, Ralph Wolf, Hubie and Bertie, Claude Cat, Marc Anthony and Pussyfoot, Charlie Dog, and the Three Bears, while McKimson had Foghorn Leghorn (and his usual co-stars), Tasmanian Devil, Sylvester Jr., Hippety Hopper, and The Honeymousers.

Often when a Cecil Turtle cartoon is released on home video, there's usually at least two, if not all three. The Bugs! volume in the Cartoon Moviestars series had two, one of the videos in the Bugs Bunny video series had all three of them, all three were also in The Golden Age of Looney Tunes disc/volume "The Art of Bugs", the second volume had the two Cecil Turtle cartoons that were not on the first volume, and the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume 2 had all three (not too surprising, since disc 2 of the first two volumes focused on complete filmographies of characters with very few cartoons). Back in the VHS era, it seems most characters with limited filmographies tended to only appear once on each video, and it seems like Warner Home Video and MGM/UA didn't really want to include every cartoon with a character on one video (though an exception was made for Marvin the Martian and the Tasmanian Devil), so it's interesting how so many home video releases either completed or came close to completing the Cecil Turtle shorts.

Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century is generally disliked by fans. I watched it recently, and I really didn't think it was bad, but I also feel like it doesn't really go anywhere. When Duck Dodgers encounters Marvin, Marvin tells him he plans to blow up the earth, and Daffy doesn't really react to that news (unlike in Hare-Way to the Stars where once Bugs learns he's going to blow up the Earth, he walks off as if it's no big deal but then gets the sudden realization of what he's doing), Marvin sends Duck Dodgers to see Gossamer shortly afterwards (when Daffy had not tried to stop him from his goal), and after Porky gets rid of Gossammer, Daffy just chases him, no longer caring about their mission, and Marvin no longer being defeated. I know its original inclusion in Daffy Duck's Thanks-for-Giving Special included extra scenes cut everywhere else, and I've only seen that special once, so I don't know if the cut scenes had Marvin stopped or what. But despite it's flaws, there are some funny things, the animation is really beautiful (especially with the rocketship and space), and the music is really good.

For years I thought it was Duck Dodgers and the 24th 1/2 Century, as opposed to Duck Dodgers and the 24 1/2th Century.

I've recently realized that in some cartoons, Marvin is really more of a designated villain. In Duck Dodgers, he's claiming Planet X in the name of Mars, right after Duck Dodgers claimed it for the Earth (Marvin was unaware when he arrived), and they both fight for the planet. Both are really just doing their respective missions. It's not really different from, say, The Butter Battle Book, where the enemies are depicted as bad just because they butter their bread upside-down, but are seen as the bad guys because they're not the protagonists. And in Spaced-Out Bunny, he's really only a bad guy because he wants to give Bugs to the Abominable Snow Monster. He lures Bugs to space because Hugo needs a playmate, we don't really know why Marvin has Hugo around, but he doesn't try to destroy any planets, he doesn't use weapons to force Bugs to stay, Bugs just tricks Hugo into thinking he's a robot and later has him put Marvin into a watch.

One thing I've thought about is how Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising started both Warner Bros. animation and MGM animation, and yet their work for both companies is obscure, especially in comparison to what came after they left both companies. And it seems like Tex Avery was responsible for both WB and MGM animation being turned into what they are known for. Avery is often credited with putting the "Looney" in Looney Tunes, and it seems all of the best-known MGM cartoons that don't feature Tom and Jerry are directed by Avery (were there other directors besides Avery, Hannah, and Barberra in the 1940s and 1950s?).

I've also noticed a few things about the classic Road Runner shorts on home video (some of these were pointed out a little at The Bugs Bunny Video Guide, but I have a little more to say).

First, it seems like with the exception of VHS and Beta, every time the Looney Tunes shorts get introduced on a new video format, the Road Runner cartoons start out being presented in chronological order but then eventually later releases include random later shorts. I believe the first Road Runner cartoon released on video was Hook, Line, and Stinker, included in one of the A Night at the Movies releases, and then Zipping Along was included in The Looney Tunes Video Show #1 (with more included in the international volumes). The very first Road Runner spotlight video did start with the very first short, Fast and Furry-Ous, but otherwise the shorts and order were random (the second Road Runner short was also included, but not right after the first).

Then there's the Road Runner laserdisc, which included the first 13 Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote shorts (including Operation: Rabbit with Bugs Bunny)... and ends with Hopalong Casualty, which is much later than the 14th cartoon starring either character. I don't know off-hand if there were any other North American laserdisc releases of the Road Runner shorts (Japan had the Stars of Space Jam and Bugs and Friends laserdisc sets which devoted discs to the Road Runner, and those had random selections of the shorts, of course one of the two sets was released on VHS in the states first). The first Road Runner cartoon was the only one included in the first Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD, then the second volume had a Road Runner disc with the next 11 in chronological order, and then all future Road Runner cartoons on DVD were later and random assortments, though the Road Runner release in the Super Stars collection pretty much had the cartoons presented in reverse chronological order (all other Super Stars discs presented the cartoons chronologically forward). And finally, with Blu-ray, the first volume of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection had the first two Road Runner cartoons, volume 2 had the third and fourth, and then the third volume had two random later Road Runner cartoons.

While Warner Bros. would eventually release complete video collections of certain characters (and the first two Platinum Collections had the complete filmographies of many characters with a small filmography), it's interesting that they kept doing this with Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote when a new video format comes out, but not really with the other major characters. Yeah, when the laserdiscs came out, there aren't many other characters that Warner Bros. could have released chronological collections for (just Speedy and many characters who don't have enough to spotlight their own video releases). But it would have been interesting if the other character-themed laserdiscs at the time did chronologically feature the earliest cartoons of the characters that Warner Home Video COULD release. Although the laserdiscs did include a few black and white cartoons (in addition to the computer colorized version of Porky Pigs Feat), I wonder if a Daffy or Porky laserdisc in this fashion would have been all-black and white (or all computer colorized, if they didn't want to put out an entire release of black and white cartoons) or if they'd start with the earliest post-1948 Daffy and Porky cartoons. But then with the DVD era, Warner has had the rights to all of the cartoons, it's interesting that they didn't begin each character by including their first few shorts altogether. Yeah, they probably would have skipped certain politically incorrect shorts when they got to that point, and some might have required more time/money to remaster. Of course with the Platinum Collection, although it didn't include the first few Pepe le Pew cartoons back-to-back, the two Pepe cartoons to be included were released back-to-back theatrically.

And then there's the two Road Runner video releases from 1996, which heavily repeats material from Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote: The Classic Chase. Both video only has one new-to-video each (with the Stars of Space Jam video being the only one to have a new-to-video classic short). With the "recent Looney Tunes shorts" video series, the majority of classic cartoons on those videos had all already been released in the Golden Jubilee series (and therefore they are all quality shorts regardless, even if the videos themselves have a less collector-friendly feel), but the Road Runner and Tasmanian Devil releases are the only ones in the Stars of Space Jam series to heavily feature repeats (and with Taz that's more understandable since it's his complete filmography), the other three videos heavily feature new-to-video cartoons (Person to Bunny on the Daffy Duck release is the only other home video repeat, but that was previously included in A Night at the Movies, which was not a "Looney Tunes video series", was long out of print - and admittedly, I think the Golden Jubilee series was as well - and, according to The Bugs Bunny Video Guide, was only available for rent). Why repeat so much Road Runner but not Bugs, Daffy, or Tweety and Sylvester? Additionally, the Stars of Space Jam video also has the Road Runner cartoon that appeared in another Golden Jubilee video, A Salute to Chuck Jones, two of the same cartoons were released in both of those 1996 Road Runner videos, Chariots of Fur is the only one of the two to feature a Bugs and Coyote/Wolf and Sheepdog cartoon (the same ones from the Golden Jubilee... would have been great if both videos had one of each), and one thing I didn't realize until recently was that there's actually one video on the Road Runner Golden Jubilee tape, To Beep or Not to Beep, that does not appear in either video.

One final thing is that, when looking at the Road Runner video guide at The Bugs Bunny Video Guide website, I found that there's very few Road Runner shorts that have not been released on any home video format (at least as far as what that guide counts - North American releases, the Canadian volumes of The Looney Tunes Video Show, and Japanese laserdiscs). In fact, I also found that there's only two Chuck Jones-directed Road Runner shorts (not counting The Adventures of the Road Runner or the two shorts that were edited from it) that were never released on VHS, with one of those two (War and Pieces) never even being included in a Looney Tunes video release (I wonder if it's because of the Chinese Road Runner).

Bob Allen, who had directed some of the Captain and the Kids cartoons, directed at least one MGM cartoon in the early 1940's, the bizarre "Chips Off the Old Block".

George Gordon directed some Barney Bear cartoons, two cartoons starring "Old Doc Donkey", and some one-shot cartoons in the mid-1940's.

Preston Blair and Michael Lah co-directed a handful of Barney Bear cartoons in the late 1940's.

Dick Lundy directed some Barney Bear cartoons, and one Droopy cartoon, in the early 1950's while Tex was recuperating from a nervous breakdown.

After MGM had shut down Tex's unit, they decided they wanted to release some more Droopy cartoons in CinemaScope; these were directed by Michael Lah. (Lah also had to finish "Deputy Droopy" and "Cellbound", with animators borrowed from the Hanna-Barbera unit, because MGM shut down Tex's unit before they were finished.)

Yeah, Barney Bear was the stepchild of the MGM animation division. I'm not sure how those cartoons were made. Just random animators from the two other units, or did Gordon, Lundy etc. had their own unit as well? What was actually the point of making Barney toons without proper, established unit?

Btw. Unwelcome Guest is my favourite Barney toon, mostly because it was the one I watched regularly on a VHS tape as a kid. I really like those charming critters next to the main character.

It seems like the majority of the REALLY iconic Looney Tunes shorts were directed by Chuck Jones. Yeah, there's plenty of iconic shorts from other directors, but the ones directed by Chuck Jones seem to be the ones that are REALLY known by everybody, praised by critics and historians, often included in lists of the greatest animated shorts or WB shorts of all time (and Chuck Jones tends to dominate those lists, even with his less-iconic shorts), the ones represented in retrospectives and such. The shorts that some fans might complain about being overrated. Some of the really best-known/most celebrated shorts include What's Opera, Doc?, One Froggy Evening, the entire "hunters trilogy" (though Duck Rabbit Duck seems underrated), Duck Amuck, Duck Dodgers and the 24 1/2 th Century, The Rabbit of Seville, and others - and there's actually some I'm struggling to decide on the "iconic" factor for (like Chow Hound, Feed the Kitty, My Bunny Lies Over the Sea, and the Porky and Sylvester trilogy).

There are some cartoons from other directors that I see as just as iconic, such as Show Biz Bugs and Birds Anonymous. And yet it also seems like Bob Clampett directed the majority of the REALLY iconic pre-1948 cartoons (leaving before Chuck Jones got really good), cartoons such as Porky in Wackyland, Tortoise Wins by a Hare, What's Cookin', Doc?, The Daffy Doc, Porky and Daffy, Patient Porky, Tick Tock Tuckered, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, The Big Snooze, Coal Black (despite being unseen by many), Tin Pan Alley Cats (ditto), and so many more.

While Tex Avery seems to get a lot of praise by fans, I feel like I like his Looney Tunes work less than the other directors I view as "the big five" (Jones, Clampett, Friz Freling, and Robert McKimson). Of course I keep forgetting what the majority of one-shots he directed were, and it seems like he wasn't much of a "character director" at Warner bros. I know he directed most of the Egghead cartoons (and I like many of those), but it seems he did less with the other characters (though I think he would have directed a lot more Bugs Bunny cartoons if he had stayed longer - it's often said that the directors had to direct a certain number of cartoons with Bugs). I've recently seen something that mentioned an early 1940s Porky cartoon directed by Avery (which I was surprised to hear). Though most of his character shorts are ones that I really like (Daffy Duck and Egghead, Daffy Duck in Hollywood, A Wild Hare, and Tortoise Beats Hare).

My opinion on Taz the Tasmanian Devil:




I FOR THE MOST PART HATE THIS CHARACTER!



He is overused for a 5-cartoon wonder. If it weren't for those letters to Jack Warner saying, "I dig this character" he wouldn't be overused. Otherwise, he's too violent and descrutive (especially in the original cartoons), real kids would be disappointed that real tasmanian devils don't spin like tornadoes. In fact they are endangered and it's no joke. I set a flag with Taz on fire when I was a child using a 4th of July sparkler (the house didn't catch on fire and nobody was hurt, thank heavens).


I don't mind Tiny Toons' Dizzy, and Taz iS GOOD for SMALL DOSES (I liked Bugs' disguise as him in "The Looney Beginning" and some Taz-Mania episodes are fun to watch.)


[tweety] for at least 3 decades has been merchandised towards girls, and have Tweety "cross-dressing" to appeal to them. I like Tweety, but the licensing department should realizing that Tweety is a boy. When I was a kid, there were three fictional characters I couldn't quite know their traditional gender: 1)Gumby 2)Big Bird 3)Tweety

Sure, having him with other Looney Tunes characters appeals to boys, but I strongly believe there should be more Tweety merchandise aimed at boys.

I've noticed how the old Looney Tunes cartoons often use a lot of high-quality rubber mask disguises, predating "Mission: Impossible" or "Scooby-Doo"! They're usually done for surprise gags/endings, or when wearing a cheesy disguise would not work (as they've done a number of times.) Plus, compared to real-life Halloween masks and such of the 1940s and 1950s, the masks seen in these cartoons were very expressive and life-like; DECADES ahead of their time (we have realistic and expressive rubber masks today, usually made of silicone or foam latex, but they can be really expensive.) Such examples include the female sheep disguise in "I Got Plenty of Mutton," that tomcat's Bugs Bunny disguise in "Odor-able Kitty," Pepe Le Pew's dog suit and mask in "Scent-imental Over You," Daffy's ranger dog mask in "What Makes Daffy Duck," the Supreme Cat's rat disguise in "Paying the Piper," Ralph Wolf's sheepdog mask and suit in "Don't Give Up the Sheep," Sylvester's female dog disguise in "Muzzle Tough" and goat mask in "Fowl Weather," the pig and mule suits in "Knight-Mare Hare" and the "disguise duel" in "A Sheep in the Deep."
Oh, and there's also the bit in the animated sequence to "Two Guys From Texas" when Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson's characters wear perfect 'toon wolf suits and masks! (like the one in my display pic)
TV Tropes refers to this as "Latex Perfection."

It's amazing how Warner Home Video tends to go all out when the classic Looney Tunes shorts are put onto a new video format. Other companies would likely just release existing videos onto a new video format, and MGM/UA Home Video did do that with it's first Looney Tunes laserdiscs, but when Warner Bros. put the cartoons on laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray (even if the Blu-rays eventually got released on DVD as well), they don't just put a current video release on the format, it's a newly-assembled compilation, mixing cartoons that have and haven't already been released, and often the early releases get out as many of the "best of the best" shorts as possible (though with VHS, Warner Home Video pretty much waited until its second Looney Tunes VHS collection to release the REALLY best cartoons).

Of course in the case of DVD, Warner Home Video's first DVD release of Tom and Jerry shorts was released on VHS at the same time (I think they were both released on the same day), ditto with some of Warner's television animation like The Powerpuff Girls (I think), while new Looney Tunes videos were being put on VHS only (they could have put Looney Tunes Presents on DVD, and putting Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition on DVD as well as VHS would have made that collection more special). Of course while Warner Home Video never put out any laserdisc releases of existing Looney Tunes VHS compilations in America, in Japan they put the entire Stars of Space Jam series on laserdisc (as well as the Bugs and Friends collection, which was released on VHS almost everywhere except for the US and Canada). Heck, for Blu-ray, Warner could have just ported the existing Golden Collections over to the new format, or released the then-current Looney Tunes Super Stars series on Blu-ray (maybe adding bonus features and making them more collectors-oriented).

It also seems like the classic Looney Tunes shorts were bonus features on each format before getting their own collections (not counting The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, which was the third VHS/Beta release from Warner Home Video, or Space Jam, which was probably the first Looney Tunes thing released on DVD). On VHS (and I think Beta), there was A Night at the Movies, which included a classic Warner Bros. short in addition to a full-length film (and coming attractions and a newsreel). On laserdisc, Night of the Living Duck was released with Daffy Duck's Quackbusters and Box Office Bunny was released with The Never Ending Story II (of course both were newer shorts, and were available on the VHS releases as well). Looney Tunes shorts started to be released as bonus features on various Warner Home Video DVD releases shortly before the release of the first Golden Collection (in addition to the DVD of Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens including two bonus shorts). And I've read that some Blu-ray releases contained bonus shorts before the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection was introduced (and there was at least oen HD release with a bonus short, while no Looney Tunes compilations were made for that format).

In The Scarlett Pumpernickle, Mel Blanc voices Elmer Fudd during his cameo, due to the fact (from what I've heard, though I can't remember where I've heard it) that it was just one scene so they didn't ask Arthur Q. Bryan to come in for that one scene. But Elmer Fudd also had only one line (plus a scene where he yelps in pain) in The Rabbit of Seville (despite being one of the leads), and as far as I know Arthur Q. Bryant did his voice there. This is a fact I didn't notice until I saw it pointed out at The Bugs Bunny Video Guide. Interestingly, I think both shorts are from the same year.

It's interesting how when Blanc voiced Fudd in The Scarlet Pumpernickle, he sounded close to Bryan's voice, but when he did the voice after Bryan died, it sounded more like the voice Hal Smith gave him in the two cartoons he did.

I wonder if they asked Blanc to take over after Bryan died or if they decided to just have a different voice actor do the character, before Blanc more-or-less became Elmer Fudd's new voice actor (which was mostly for television productions). In the Mel Blanc documentary on the last Golden Collection, it's said that Freling asked him to voice Elmer Fudd for a commercial and Blanc was unsure, before coming up with a good enough voice, so maybe Blanc was against taking over at first.

It's also interesting how in the two cartoons where Smith voices Elmer, he doesn't appear with any of his usual co-stars. Don't know if that had to do with the new voice or if they just happened to come up with two solo Elmer outings. And after that, he appeared in Crows Feat where he was a silent character. I wonder if they decided they didn't like Smith as Fudd or decided nobody was a good enough replacement (at least until Blanc finally took over) and just wanted him to appear or what.

Hal Smith also voiced Elmer in TV commercials in the 1960's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du3qGXwfr0E 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRYh1MqynA 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzM_u0TuIvM 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqatHM-VMDI 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdhZRawpS5I 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7U6OYfizVY 

I've always figured the same myself.

Didn't know Hal Smith also voiced Elmer in commercials. Not that surprised, just didn't know it. I'd be interesting in knowing if there's info out there about his career as Elmer (any archival info? Does Jerry Beck or any other historians know anything about it? Anybody still alive today who would know?).

There's a lot of politically incorrect cartoons that Warner Bros. hasn't released on video, but there's also a lot that have been remastered and released pm DVD, not just collectors sets like the Golden Collections, but also the more family-marketed Super Stars ("Bushy Hare" on Bugs Bunny: Hare Extraordinaire, "Wise Quackers" on Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl, and the two Mexican crow cartoons on Foghorn Leghorn and Friends: Barnyard Bigmouth) and I think also on the casual fan-marketed Essential Bugs Bunny and Essential Daffy Duck releases. Which brings to mind the question of which politically incorrect cartoons Warner is against releasing on video anytime soon and which ones they aren't really against and just happen to have not been released/remastered yet. It would be interesting to know if there are any politically incorrect toons that have been remastered and released that Warner initially objected to (like if there's any that Jerry Beck had to fight to get included).

There's a few that seem obvious, like the censored eleven (despite the fact that all 11 were remastered and came very close to a release), the Inki cartoons (none of the Golden Collections even have clips of the character in their bonus features, though one of the bonus features does have a clip of the Minah Bird.... and a handful of clips from the censored eleven have appeared in the bonus features), most likely Which is Witch?, and the wartime cartoons Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips and Tokio Jokio (considering those are the only two WWII-themed cartoons, not counting any Private Snafu or Any Bonds Today, that have not been released on home video by Warner Home Video - the Patriotic Pals disc of the last Golden Collection had all remaining unreleased wartime cartoons, had only three bonus WB shorts while the other discs had four each, AND the discs main program was filled with three educational shorts about the economy as opposed to shorts truly about the war). A few years ago I read about one early black and white Merry Melody that was never in the pre-1948 package that would have most likely bumped the censored eleven to a censored twelve, can't remember what the title is, but I'm guessing that one is just as likely to be released as the censored eleven. And I'm guessing Africa Squeaks might not be likely to be released anytime soon.

But then there's a lot that I wonder if Warner Bros. isn't against releasing but just never got around to. Cartoons like China Jones and many Indian cartoons. A few Indian cartoons have been released (Hawiatha's Rabbit Hunt, Wagon Heels), I'm not sure which ones would be considered more offensive than others. The Bugs Bunny Video Guide has a special wishlist page showing how most of the remaining post-1948 and main character cartoons can realistically be released using the Super Stars format, pointing out a handful of cartoons ommitted due to political incorrectness, like Injunn Trouble on a theoretical "Cool Cat and Friends" disc for the remaining post-1964 cartoons, but while that one was never broadcast and has been so rare, I must wonder if political correctness is why that one has not been released, or if it's really just because so few post-1964 cartoons HAVE been released on home video (and none of the Cool Cat cartoons have ever gotten a release on any format).

And there's a lot of cartoons that just have short politically incorrect gags (ones that have been broadcast a lot but with those scenes cut). All This and Rabbit Stew has been announced as a bonus feature a few times but ended up being dropped from those releases - but has Warner been against releasing that and Fresh Hare because Bugs appears in blackface? After all, Warner Home Video has released Southern Fried Rabbit, where Bugs also appears in blackface - why would that blackface scene be okay while the other two wouldn't? I Taw a Putty Tat hasn't been remastered, fans tend to think because of the blackface gag, but it was included, uncut, in Bugs Bunny Superstar which Warner Home Video has released on DVD a couple of times (as a bonus feature and as a Warner Archive release), and a handful of DVDs include the dubbed version (with the scene cut) as a bonus feature. It's good that Warner didn't make them cut that out of its releases of BBS (and I've recently noticed that that movie has a brief clip of the "Bugs in blackface" scene from Any Bonds Today).

I've heard that Jerry Beck said somewhere (probably Stu's Show) that Warner is against releasing certain politically incorrect Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry cartoons but is not against releasing any politically incorrect Popeye cartoons due to the fact that Warner doesn't own the rights to the characters. But I wonder if it would be so bad for Warner to release some of the censored eleven as bonus cartoons on DVDs not aimed at children or families, especially since very few of them have main characters (surely Warner isn't worried about damaging the reputations of all those characters who only appear in those shorts, it's not like Warner is marketing Coal Black figurines or Tin Pan Alley Cats t-shirts or Jungle Jitters video games, after all). And since they have all been remastered, that would make the bonus features extra special.

When it comes to old VHS releases, it seems like the ones spotlighting Daffy Duck are among the ones that have the best content, the ones that I most wanted/wanted to see in the pre-DVD days.

Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues is a great selection of Daffy Duck shorts, but then again, the entire Golden Jubilee series focused on the best of the best of each character (though there are a number of questionable shorts included on most videos, and there are a lot of great shorts not included). It was among the last of the Golden Jubilee tapes that I saw. I started being exposed to them in 1992 when I started renting them at a video store, one that did not have the Daffy Duck one, and I had really wanted to see the Daffy one despite not knowing what was included.Shortly later I visited a video store that had it (but I passed up on renting it), and a few years later I saw it at another video store and looked at the back of the box, seeing that Duck Amuck was included - up to that point, I had only seen it as part of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, and wondered about the ending since the movie cut the iris-out and had it lead to new footage to appear to be part of the framing device (by then I figured part of it must be new, but wondered if there was an iris-out or if it actually faded to black or what) - and yet I still didn't rent it then. Then I got a copy of the 1995 edition of Video Movie Guide and was heavily looking in the Looney Tunes sections, seeing the description for that video only mention the inclusion of Duck Amuck and wondered what else was included (having not paid close enough attention when I looked at the box contents before, though Rabbit Fire is the only other one I would have known by title). And then I finally rented it (earlier that day I saw a copy of an old Golden Receiver Video Guide which had a full listing of the shorts - and I think I had actually dreamt about renting that video the night before). It had a number of shorts I had not remembered seeing, like The Daffy Doc (though I was familiar with the "inflating/deflating head" scene which appeared in promos on Nickelodeon), Porky's Duck Hunt, Drip Along Daffy, and Deduce You Say - and it was a great selection, even if there's a few I am indifferent to and felt it contained a bit too many of the cartoons where Daffy plays a role.

And then there's Daffy Duck's Madcap Mania in the Cartoon Cavalcade series. To me, that video series seems like a lesser version of the Golden Jubilee series, but the Daffy Duck one seems to have the most cartoons that I really like. The other two compilations don't seem as good (though the Porky one has a few cartoons I am a big fan of), and the two specials included as part of the series are not really among my favorite of Looney Tunes specials.

Then there's Daffy Duck: Tales from the Duckside, from the 1992 video series, which feels like a "casual market" follow-up to the Golden Jubilee, in that almost all of the shorts included in the whole series are among the best shorts that they couldn't fit into the Golden Jubilee series (well, I'm not sure about the Sylvester and Tweety one...). It has (computer colorized) versions of a few of my favorite black and white Daffy Duck cartoons (Porky and Daffy, Porky Pig's Feat... and The Impatient Patient is also a good cartoon), as well as the rarely-seen Wise Quackers which is good (maybe I like it more because it's a rare politically incorrect short, though there are a lot of rarely-seen politically incorrect shorts that I don't find very good), I guess Stork Naked is the only weak one on the set (but it's not really horrible).

And then the Daffy Duck volume in the Stars of Space Jam series has a number of fairly important Daffy Duck shorts (Stupor Duck and Boston Quackie seem like mainstays),the Daffy and Foghorn Leghorn crossover The High and the Flighty, and Person to Bunny, a short that I had not seen often before that, had just been reminded of thanks to the internet, and had really wanted to see again (of course most of these Daffy Duck tapes I've never actually watched - I wouldn't see that short again until the 2001 June Bugs).

There's also the Superior Duck tape, which, like most of the "Modern Looney Tunes Series", primarily repeats cartoons that appeared on the Golden Jubilee tapes (so it has a bit of quality content), but it also has The Stupor Salesman, making it the only one in that series to contain a classic short that had NOT been released on video already (I'm not counting the computer colorized You Ought to Be in Pictures on the Carrotblanca tape). And then I was looking at what contents were on the Bugs and Daffy release in the international Bugs and Friends collection, and of the Daffy Duck cartoons featured, it has two of my least favorite Daffy Duck cartoons (Suppressed Duck and The Iceman Ducketh) in addition to a couple that I like.

Of course I am a bit indifferent to the various Daffy Duck VHS tapes released by MGM/UA. I was recently looking at the contents of some, and it seems like they have a mix of cartoons I really like and ones that I feel are so-so at best (of course I grew up with the post-1948 cartoons a lot more than the pre-1948 ones). I had been thinking that, for example, the first wave of videos in the Cartoon Moviestars series had the most essential pre-1948 cartoons of each character and that essential/random-quality shorts varied on later videos (feeling that Just Plain Daffy and Daffy Duck and Company had more "lesser" Daffy Duck cartoons), but it seems like each of the Daffy Duck ones had an equal ratio of great-to-not-so-great cartoons.

And on the DVD front, most of the Daffy Duck cartoons on the Daffy and Porky disc of the first Golden Collection are among the best (of course it has a good number of cartoons that appeared in Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues), and I think most of the Daffy cartoons that appear in the Bugs and Daffy disc of the fifth volume are very good. And of the first two Super Stars volumes, Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl has a lot more cartoons I really like (and really wanted on DVD) than Bugs Bunny: Hare Extraordinaire (though it also has a few I'm not too big on - including a couple of my least favorite Daffy Duck cartoons, see what I said about regarding the Bugs and Daffy release in the Bugs and Friends collection). While I didn't bother with The Essential Bugs Bunny or Essential Daffy Duck releases, The Essential Daffy Duck actually seems more appealing - it actually has one newly-remastered cartoon, in addition to a better selection of bonus features.

And it also seems like Warner Home Video's various Bugs Bunny VHS releases often feature the characters best shorts. Bugs Bunny's Wacky Adventures and Bugs Bunny: Truth or Hare have many of the best-of-the-best (if not the most celebrated) Bugs Bunny cartoons, all of the classic cartoons in From Hare to Eternity were previously released as part of the Golden Jubilee (so, again, all quality shorts), Bugs Bunny's Hare-Brained Hits has a few cartoons I don't really like (Hillbilly Hare, Baton Bunny) that I know have a big fanbase (and pretty much all of the other cartoons are ones that I do really like).I'm not really a fan of any of the cartoons in Bugs Bunny's Hare-Raising Tales, and for the most part am not sure what the general fan opinion is (though I feel like Rabbit Hood is a classic). The Bugs Bunny video in the Stars of Space Jam collection is the start of Bugs Bunny videos comprising of lesser content, though there's still some that I like, and some that I consider classics. The Bugs Bunny Video Guide refers to it as the weakest in the series, noting a few classics and weak efforts - some of which I disagree with (it refers to Hot Cross Bunny, another short I don't really like, as one of the classics, and Barbary Coast Bunny as one of the lesser ones - I thought that one was among the Bugs Bunny masterpieces). And it does have a few I have soft spots for (Hare Splitter, Forward March Hare) but can see that they're not all-time classics. And then there's Warner Home Video's final Bugs Bunny VHS compilation, Big Top Bunny, which has an odd mix of good and lesser cartoons, many of which had already been released on VHS (though all of the new-to-video cartoons were included in the Bugs and Friends series which had been released everywhere except the United States and Canada).

I'm not really going to go into all the Bugs Bunny videos from MGM (especially since MGM gave Bugs his own VHS collection), the Bugs Bunny content of the Bugs and Friends line, or the many Bugs Bunny discs from the Golden Collections, since there were so many, making bad or lesser cartoons as inevitable as great cartoons. In fact I also know that Columbia House's Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition had a Bugs Bunny release and a Daffy and Porky release (the only ones to spotlight specific characters), but I keep forgetting most of the contents of those two.

One thing I didn't notice until last year: Yosemite Sam has a beard.

For years, I thought he just had a mustache, but after watching a lot of shorts last year, I noticed that when he talks, his mouth opens from the middle of his mustache, meaning he has a beard (either that, or the animators just put his mouth in the middle of his mustache).

Though I've noticed that he didn't have hair on his chin in his first few appearances. I wonder what the first cartoon was where he didn't have a bare chin.

On a subject similar to Yosemite Sam and hair, for some reason, in Southern Fried Hare, he is bald for most of the cartoon (at least when he's shown without his hat), but in the last scene where he's hatless, a cannon shoots him, and he has hair. Wouldn't it have made more sense if he had hair for most of the cartoon and then lost it after getting blasteds (which has happened in some cartoons when he got blown up, like Ballot Box Bunny)? Considering how his head looks it's clear that he was drawn bald and the animators didn't just miscolor his hair to be the same color as his skin. I think Sam might have been bald in another short, can't quite remember. He was also bald in Bugs Bunny in King Arthurs Court and at least one episode of The Looney Tunes Show.

The Harman-Ising Merrie Melody that wasn't sold to aap was the very first one, "Lady, Play Your Mandolin!". But it doesn't have any racist content and has aired on Cartoon Network as part of an episode of Toon Heads, so it's a mystery why it wasn't sold to aap. (I suppose it's also a mystery why the rest of the Harman-Ising Merrie Melodies were sold to aap with the color cartoons, instead of going to Guild Films with the rest of the B & W WB cartoons.)

Actually I was referring to a different early Merrie Melodies, one of the non-Harman and Ising black and white Merrie Melodies. Those were sold along with all the black and white Looney Tunes in 1955.

EDIT TO ADD: I just checked the Likely Looney Mostly Merrie blog and found that the short I'm talking about is Go to Heaven on a Mule.

http://likelylooneymostlymerrie.blogspot.com/2011/12/80-goin-to-heaven-on-mule-1934.html 

"goin' To Heaven on a Mule" was sold to Guild Films. A print with Guild Films titles (including a Buddy title card) used to be on YouTube.

Recently I've noticed that in cartoons with Henery Hawk, the character tends to have happy endings. We never actually see him cook Foghorn Leghorn (and he's alive and well in the next cartoon, but the cartoons don't follow continuity), but the cartoons do typically end with him dragging his intended prey home to cook/eat. Interesting that the majority of cartoons with a predator character end with him being able to cook his prey. The same can also be said about the weasel.

Which reminds me that, back when I was a kid, I saw Foghorn Leghorn as the good guy and wondered why so many of his cartoons had unhappy endings for him (though some do - Crowing Pains, Raw Raw Rooster, Fox Terror, The High and the Flighty). I thought "good guys" always had to have happy endings. Of course I saw him as the good guy because he was the star (Henery Hawk was the star at first, but that was lost on me when I saw the early cartoons).

And recently it's occurred to me that so many Foghorn Leghorn cartoons co-star a small character. There's recurring characters like Henery Hawk, Egghead Jr, and the weasel (and I guess Miss Prissy also counts as a small character), not to mention the worm from A Fractured Leghorn, the small rooster from Fox Terror, the boxer from Sock-A-Doodle-Doo, the kid from The Slick Chick, the ostrich from Mother Was a Rooster, the rooster from Broken Leghorn, and the beatnik from Banty Raids.