Looney Tunes has had it’s his and downs over the years. But now down gets as low as this dark era. Support us on Patreon!!!: / mediamementos In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the link to the Media Mementos Discord Server. / discord
Last month, my dad and I went out to watch "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony," one of those 'movie screening with the music played by a live orchestra' deals, but with Looney Tunes cartoons. Occasionally, an HBO Max cartoon would be included among the classics, and Dad made a comment about Bugs Bunny going back to his lean 40s design, so I just tell him "It's like Warner Bros wants to pretend everything after the 1950s never happened." Seeing all the damage here, I don't blame them one bit.
I've thought that was strange and sudden return too, after being so used to the later Tunes, 2000's shows, Space Jam and Back in Action, Six Flags, video games, and general designs and aesthetic I've seen throughout my life of the characters that stayed totally consistent. Now Bugs in the 2020's has his old pear shaped body, more rabbit-like head, and yellow gloves. It's a subtle enough change to not be noticed by the mainstream, but I noticed it's being picked up as the main design in pretty much everything since the HBO cartoon brought it back. Seems A New Legacy might ironically be the end for the "modern" Bugs design I've grown up with, at least for the time being. You're one of the only people on RU-vid I've seen discuss the change, so good on you, and this channel.
@@daseal1479 I feel like the main reason they brought back the older character designs in the HBO shorts was to capitalize off the popularity of Cuphead.
@@daseal1479yeah, most of the characters in looney tunes cartoons have to be returning to their Tex avery-like designs instead of the more rounded renders from the 90s or designs more reminiscent of chuck jones (although some characters seem to have retained their chuck jones elements), kinda reminds me of how Mickey mouse's Ub iwerks-like design from the 30's seem to made a return since the early 2010's and overshadowing in some areas the standard fred moore designs.
I'll go a step further...the 60's were probably the worst time for animation in general. Hanna Barbera had a stranglehold on programing, which was always about quantity over quality. Other studios slashed budgets and cut down on animators, which caused the medium of animation to decline everywhere, including Disney. The industry as a whole didn't start to recover until the late 80's.
Most of walt disney time in the 60s was mainly concentrated on disneyland, his working on what would be walt disney world, going away from animation and into studio films (mary poppins) and television. And the fact his stressful workung schedule (he did it to himself) combined with his chain smoking caused his death in 1966.
Also, Chuck Jones made a great series of new Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM,along with other notable and memorable works like How The Grinch Stole Christmas,The Dot and The Line(which won him a Oscar at the 1966 Acadamy Awards),The Bear That Wasn’t,Horton Hears A Who,and The Phantom Tollbooth. Walt Disney produced a few great cartoons in the 60’s such as the early to Mid 60’s ones with Donald and Goofy,Scrooge McDuck and Money,the first two Winnie-The-Pooh cartoon featurettes,and It’s Tough To Be a Bird. Paramount released several cartoons produced and directed by Gene Deitch and a couple of cartoons made by John Hubley outside of their own cartoons produced by their lower-budgeted New York-based cartoon division. Also,Howard Post,Shamus Culhane,and Ralph Bakshi directed many great cartoons for Paramount right before they closed their cartoon department down in 1967. DePatie-Freleng was riding high thanks to the hit Pink Panther cartoons released by United Artists and followup cartoon stars like The Inspector and The Ant and The Aardvark followed. There were some great animated features during the era like UPA’s Gay Purr-ee(1962),Hanna-Barbera’s Hey There It’s Yogi Bear(1964),Disney’s The Jungle Book(1967),Rankin/Bass’ Mad Monster Party(1967),The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine(1968),and Bill Melendez’ A Boy Named Charlie Brown(1969).
i would say that the darkest time for cartoons were actually the early to late 80´s. I mean, despite Hanna Barbera´s poor animation quality they managed to keep cartoons alive. But by the 80´s it was all stagnant as hell and most cartoons ended up being 20 minutes toy adds with some of the worst animation ever.
Admittingly, Daffy and Speedy could work on paper. I like the idea of taking characters you don't usually see interact and having them play off one another. The problem is that they're only having interact because they don't have anyone else to team up.
@@CloverLovesTT It's kinda like Bugs and Porky, Daffy and Taz, Bugs and Wile E. Coyote, or Sylvester with Foghorn Leghorn. It's always refreshing seeing characters who barely interact interact with each other. But something about Daffy and Speedy's rivalry just doesn't stick like Sylvester vs Speedy or Bugs vs Elmer.
Friz Freleng (one half of “Depatie-Freleng) actually was a big part of the golden age of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes. Dude actually has worked on classic Looney Tunes shorts. He’s legit.
I know. He's one of the most well known and long running director. I mean, He's the creator of Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, Porky Pig and so, so much more.
That's the sad part. DFE was majority comprised of ex-WB animators. They made their own production company for artistic freedom after being let go only to be more heavily restricted once contracted for this era. The WB execs were even the ones that demanded Daffy and Speedy be paired up.
It is kinda funny that Friz Freeing, one of the key players at Termite Terrace, founded Depatie-Freleng, and even they couldn't measure up to the classics. and he use to be quite good back then. Sure, Depatie-Freleng were A step up from Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, and even the Seven Arts shorts, but compared to Termite Terrace at their peak, not even close. Funny enough, Marvel bought the Depatie-Freleng studio in 1980 to form Marvel Productions.
At the end of the day, WB was the blame for the dark ages. I mean, the fact that the DePatie-Freleng animations was limited to 5 characters (Daffy, Speedy Gonzales, Road Runner, Wild. E Cayote and Sylvester) and was forced to make cartoons on a ridiculously tight budget, was a plot set up to fail. As my father says, there's no Looney Tunes without Bugs Bunny, and man, did WB fall so hard on it's face.
This is kind of what happened to TMNT in the late 2000s; Peter Laird was very restrictive about what characters could be used, but while the 2003 series was incredible in its own right while avoiding most of the typical staples, it ran out of steam over the course of Season 5, and by the end, the franchise very much felt like the DPF era.
Gotta disagree about Looney Tunes not having strong characters. They’ve got some of the most enduring, hilarious, recognisable characters in animation that literally everyone in the west knows the personalities of.
I LOVE those videos. KaiserBeamz did a fantastic job researching Warner Bros. cartoons. I can't wait for the next episode, which will surely cover this particular era.
I'll correct this video on a few things. DePatie-Freleng did make the Looney Tunes shorts when Warner Bros. started ordering them again, but they weren't doing that during the ENTIRE dark age. Some of the shorts were instead outsourced to Format Productions (even under DePatie-Freleng's run) and the new characters like Bunny & Claude and Cool Cat weren't introduced until WB Animation was opened back up after Warner Bros. was merged into 7Arts Productions, turning into Warner Bros-7Arts. So all of those new characters had nothing to do with DePatie-Freleng.
You’re correct, but only the Road Runner cartoons directed by Rudy Larriva were farmed out to Format Productions. The exceptions were “Rushing Roulette” and “Sugar and Spies”. which actually were directed at DePatie-Freleng by Robert McKimson. Format Productions did do three Daffy and Speedy shorts in 1967 ("Quacker Tracker", "The Music Mice-tro", "The Spy Swatter") between the time DePatie-Freleng moved off the Warner lot and Jack Warner hired Alex Lovy away from Hanna-Barbera to start a new Warner cartoon studio that lasted only two years.
KaiserBeamz did an AMAZING multi-part series on the history of 'Looney Tunes', and he's now up to the late 60's in his most recent episode. So you know the next one is probably gonna cover this particular ere in 'Looney Tunes' history. You should definitely check it out!
And people say Loonatics Unleashed was the dark age, at least it was only short lived, and some fans appreciate it for what it is. This takes the carrot cake.
Eh, barely. They're barely worse than Loonatics. Loonatics removed everything the Looney Tunes were about and replaced it with the most generic action cartoon tropes possible. I give them a lot of credit in the second season for putting their actual villains in the show and actually making a couple good episodes, but they should have been doing that in the first place. Had it not been strapped to the Looney Tunes franchise, it would have been completely forgotten. I'm not saying a show where the LT are Super Heroes can't work, just it has to be funny and cartoonish, not stiff and lifeless.
I kinda like the Loonatics tbh It was its own thing and was entertaining for what it was. I view it as an anthro version of the Teen Titans, only shorter and with a bit less depth
@@Anko3342 But why watch a knockoff Teen Titans when the original thing is so much better? The problem I have with the show overall is that, for all the hysteria it caused, it's just nothing special. What they SHOULD have done, if they wanted to make a LT action series to relaunch the characters after Back in Action flopped, was some sort of parody JLA series, but with the LT characters as Superman, Batman, et al. Keep it humorous, yet introduce some action and stakes. Of course, they pretty much did that with the superior Duck Dodgers show, but it felt like a Looney Tunes project.
My least favorite was Baby Looney Tunes (not Tiny Toons); it had no action or any decent plots, and the characters were bastardized since they were all babies except for the Tweety Granny
I find it hilarious that most of this era, after spending the longest time in bootleg purgatory, all of a sudden surfaced in HD on HBO Max and MeTV not too far back, because they clearly knew they'd severely drag down any physical release they'd get attached to.
Yeah, though CBS did show them until they lost their rights in 1985, Nickelodeon did just that from 1988-99, bringing back not just the DFE shorts but Speedy period as ABC never showed him for P.C. reasons, and the W7 era-specific characters that had been in obscurity during the 1970s-80s were on Nick as well. The WB network and Turner-owned entertainment networks, solely Cartoon Network from 1998 onward, had some DFE shorts as well, and then some more plus the W7 ones after Nick, WB and ABC gave up their rights by 2000 and continued up to 2004 then off and on in the 2010s, but before 2002 no Speedy was shown on CN for the same reasons ABC did not either. Not that any American TV broadcasts have watchable since the late 1990s anyway, once logo bugs started staying on-screen for the whole duration of the show!
Weirdly enough, they did a Blu-Ray set called “Looney Tunes: Platinum Collection Volume 1” in 2012 and one of the DePatie-Freleng shorts is on it. Yeah, the FIRST volume in the series and they thought a short from this era was good enough to be put alongside the classics. I’m so perplexed as to why it was added.
9:31 It's pretty funny that Tom and Jerry were the original creations of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera even before they found Hanna-Barbera after MGM Cartoon Studios closed in 1957.
I think the biggest point missed is that the creative talent had to eat, so making crappy Looney Tunes was probably still preferable to not making them. They got paid regardless, and they weren't under the thumb of WB directly since it was being outsourced to DPE who didn't work for WB itself. And they probably made more of a living at it than they would have by defecting to Hanna-Barbera, Disney, etc.
DPE were also doing the pink panther shorts, so they were probably just fine moneywise. still, it's great to have more money than you need, especially as an animation studio
Actually, DePatie-Frelang Enterprises, whatever this was call, was the last animation studio to ever produce cartoons for theaters frequently. The last animation studio to ever produced cartoons established in the golden age of animation was Walter Lantz Productions, at the time, the studio was running out of stream, and they're were making mediocre Woody Woodpecker cartoons. Ever since then, they only make shorts occasionally for theaters, Pixar is known for it. Disney did went time to time such as The Small One, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Roger Rabbit roller coaster cartoon, and recently, similar to Pixar, they still make shorts, but only on occasion for theaters. I felt like this is the sad ending for Termite Terrace, as, they're known for better quality cartoons from the 1930s up to 1950s. Chuck Jones is my favorite Looney Tunes director, the second one being Tex Avery.
@@Launchpad05 And of course by the early 2000s, Warner Bros. Animation was basically retooled to mostly produce realistic serious action cartoons, in an Adelaide Productions-esque style.
I think the biggest issue this and the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry shorts had is the fact that the creator's aesthetics don't match the thing their adapting As a person who grew up with the old Pink Panther shorts, their style is very surreal and doesn't use much or any slapstick. Looney Tunes doesn't fit their aesthetic. Also a off-topic tangent on Gene Deitch's shorts is that his animations style also doesn't fit Tom and Jerry and if you check out his non Tom and Jerry works, they have their own charm
The Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry shorts are a fever dream. The overall design style is SUPER simplistic but then they start moving and it's like holy hell, where are my eyes going? Still love 'DICKY MOE' though.
Gene Deitch never really watched any Tom and Jerry shorts since he was from Czechoslovakia and never understood the dynamic which made them work. Same with the Popeye shorts.
It’s also because Gene had a powerful contempt for Tom and Jerry. He hated the characters, and had given a few interviews on how he detested working on those cartoons. Chuck Jones also had something of a dislike of the coyote and road runner cartoons. He intended them as a parody of other “chase” cartoons like Tom and Jerry, and was apparently always a little glum that they had become so popular.
The original Tom and Jerry cartoons made the characters feel larger than life. The cartoons were drawn in their perspective, with Tom filling the entire frame... those 60's cartoons changed that entire perspective. Even as a kid, I could tell that those were cheap.
One thing I think is worth mentioning about Cool Cat and Bunny & Claude is how so of the times those characters were. Like you said, the similarity between Cool Cat and the Pink Panther is pretty apparent, but among other things, he's also basically a beatnik stereotype, and I'd have to imagine that character trope was running its course by the time the late 60s came around. Bunny and Claude's first short also came out in November 1968, just a little over a year after the movie Bonnie and Clyde was released to critical and commercial acclaim. It's basically the studio capitalizing on a current obsession, need I say more? Now even the classic LT characters were also products of 30s-50s culture (ex Bugs Bunny with Groucho Marx), but unlike those characters Cool Cat and Bunny & Claude just weren't particularly strong enough to stand on their own.
I liked Bunny and Claude but you're right. Part of me thinks they just didn't go in well enough to make the characters stand on their own or in the cause of Bunny and Claude, they were good for one short rather than several.
Cool Cat, Rimfire, Merlin The Magic Mouse, Second Banana and Bunny and Claude were Bad Characters but Bugs Bunny and The Classic Looney Tunes are Great
it's worth mentioning Warner did this to the Looney Tunes themselves. The main Warner studio never really saw Termite Terrace (the animation studio) as worth much so it wasn't a hard decision to no longer require movie theatres to order films and cartoons as packages. Now they could just order movies on their own.
@@RobLobster29 One of the earliest characters they had was Foxy, who was a blatant MM rip=off The only differences were his round ears were tapered to a point and he had a bushy tail.
@@chrismulwee4911 It took Looney Tunes a few years to find their own identity. Even the names "Loony Tunes" and "Merry Melodies" was taken from Disney's "Silly Symphonies".
@@chrismulwee4911 And Fleischer/Paramount/Famous Studios released Screen Songs. The Fleischer original cartoons were from the 1930's and the Paramount/Famous Studios ones were from the 1950's
great video! I remember watching old cartoons from the 60s and wondering what happened for Looney Toons to fall from grace like that. Now it all makes sense to me. Thanks for another fantastic upload!
Wouldn't It Be Awful If Hanna-Barbera Got DePatie-Freleng To Make Theatrical Shorts Based on HB Toons. Character Flanderizations... - Daphne Blake: Became A Grouchy, Greedy and Selfish Female Jerk In The Daphne Vs Penelope Shorts, Where The Cute Orange-Haired Teenage Girl Wants To Kill Penelope Pitstop. - Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo: Became Sadistic and Malicious Annoyances Who Always Torture Ranger Smith at the Slightest Provocation or for No Reason at All. ( Gene-Deitch Jerry Mouse In A Nutshell ). And More.
Thank you so much for making this video. Whenever I think of Looney Tunes, these shorts always exist in the back of my mind as the worse of them. It always mystified me why Daffy and Speedy would be butting heads, but it being due to licensing rights made a lot of sense. Was never a fan of those Popeye shorts either, the characters and their designs felt a lot 'softer' and in one short Popeye gets outsmarted by a freaking mouse of all things. One thing I do want to give this studio credit for was they were behind some of the brilliantly made Dr. Seuss TV specials like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Lorax.
Actually, the DePatie-Freleng Looney Tunes of 1964-67 didn't use very many Hanna-Barbera sound effects. But "Sugar and Spies" and "Daffy's Diner" did have a few (the latter using the H-B "wind whistle scat" that soon became synon ymous with DePatie-Freleng's cartoons). It wasn't until Warner Bros. Animation reopened in 1967 where they began using more H-B sound effects (but still a small selection compared to what the real Hanna-Barbera had, again where the lower budgets come into play!) I will admit that I really enjoy "Sugar and Spies", as it's my favorite non-Chuck Jones Road Runner cartoon. Heh, nice Cool Cat joke! I did something similar in my "Injun Trouble" YTP. I also found the Sander Schwartz era to be another dark era for the Looney Tunes, accounting for much of the 2000s.
Those Daffy vs Speedy cartoons. *moans* Speedy is mean and sadistic to Daffy in these shorts ! He literally doesn't get his punishment at the end of those cartoons ! In cartoons like "Quacker Tracker" and even "Rodent To Stardom", he's at his worse making Daffy's life a living nightmare ! In "The Music Mice-Tro", he and his stupid band constantly torture Daffy with their music, and everywhere the poor duck goes, the three sadistic mice did what Droopy did in Tex Avery's MGM classic "Northwest Hounded Police" and badly annoy him ! That version of Speedy is Gene Deitch's version of Jerry Mouse in disguise of Speedy Gonzales, no wonder why he's a jerk to Daffy in those cartoons ! Somebody oughta force 'em to drink rat poison !
If Daffy had his Tex Avery personality, he would've definitely caught Mexico's fastest mouse! DF could've tried that, but they would've not liked it, anyways.
The last cartoon I saw in a movie theater was also the first time I had ever seen in a movie in a theater. I was 4 when I saw King Kong in 1976 and a Pink Panther cartoon aired before the movie.
The first and last cartoon that I saw in a theater was the Woody Woodpecker episode "Misguided Missile". It was shown before the main feature, the Mel Brooks movie "High Anxiety", so obviously that makes me old as dirt.
Ironically, half of DePatie-Freleng was Friz Freleng, the legendary Looney Tunes director who created Speedy Gonzales, Yosemite Sam, Tweety Pie, and others. He won a bunch of Oscars in the 1950s for his work. But even he couldn't keep the brand alive during this period. One gentle correction: "Gopher It, Tom" isn't from the 1975 Hanna-Barbera "Tom & Jerry" TV show. It's from the 1980 Filmation "Tom and Jerry Comedy Show." As noted, the animation (and music, I would say) are at their lowest point for the twosome here...although in the '75 H-B series, Tom & Jerry were *friends,* so it's a toss-up as to which is worse. :D Thanks for sharing about this weird part of animation history!
Yes but the Friz design of Tweety has been used after Clampett left and most people would argue that in some ways Friz did at least co create Tweety. Same with Speedy, even though Robert McKimson created him originally.
Not blaming you or anyone in particular-- valid subject, valid video, it's all good-- but just on a general level it both depresses and pisses me off that ALL of the golden age of animation just gets boiled down to Looney Tunes now. Popeye, Felix, Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, entire other studios with OTHER well known characters and LOTS of notable one shots, just ONE of which being Fleischer-- it was an entire ERA, and it lasted a LONG TIME-- Looney Tunes was even probably the LAST addition to the entire scene, and didn't even START as the characters and formula it's REMEMBERED for!
I do think Looney Tunes is the best out of all of the golden age animation, but people seem to forget about the amount of great stuff that came from other studios.
I think you were a little too hard on Gene. His take on Tom and Jerry was strange sure; But you could definitely tell it was his style. He mixed things up. Some things worked, some didn't.
Daffy and speedy shorts feel illegal and werid It's written badly, animated badly and the set up doesn't work Like it's something fan made Can't believe they would even think this would work
I always was curious to the when and why of Looney Tunes going downhill in the old days. This definitely educated me and so quickly. Thanks so much for the fun history lesson.
When I was a kid in the early 2000’s, I loved The Sylvester and Tweetie Mysteries, in which Cool Cat would frequently appear as a background character. I always wondered where he came from and now…yeah, that seems about right.
11:13 there wasn't a rule that road runner had to be unaware that wile e. was trying to catch him, but there was a rule was the road runner cannot harm the coyote except by going “beep-beep!” i didn't see it as the road runner was unaware or ignorant that wile e. was trying to get him, or was "just trying to keep himself alive." to me it was obvious that road runner was VERY well aware, and i don't think he ever worried about being caught by wile e. at all. in one short he even gave wile e. a match to help him make his trap (which of course backfired on him anyways). road runner will even go right up to wile e. and say "beep beep" to tease wile e. about not being able to catch him, before he speeds away, sometimes sending wile e. off a cliff or making him hit a rock above him. but watching the 1960's cartoons and seeing road runner hurting wile e. by dropping boulders on him, chasing him in a car to run him over, etc. is more jarring than funny. since lots of the humor was based on being a parody of the "cat and mouse" cartoons, seeing wile e. fail because of acme products or his own incompetence and having road runner come out of every cartoon completely unharmed by doing almost nothing to stop wile e., seeing road runner actively hurting/fighting back against wile e. honestly takes away some of the enjoyment of watching the cartoons
My least favorite Looney Tunes character was that baby kangaroo that would beat up Sylvester. I hated how he always had that stupid smile on his face and poor Sylvester wasn't even trying to eat him or kill him, just make sure he got delivered to the zoo safely, and that little fuck kept punching Sylvester in the face.
Actually Freleng and Patie left WB in 1967 and then WB merge 7 arts studios and decided to open WB-7arts animation and hired Alex Lovy (one of the workers of Hanna-Barbera), then Lovy left and hire Bob Mckimson till 1969
I grew up in the 90s watching the reruns of the classic Looney Tunes in my country (let's call it Colombia). For some reason the channel was mixing the segments. One segment of classic L.T and then the 50s and 60s era. Even as a 6 or 7 year old I could tell the HUGE difference of quality. I just changed the channel once the crappy segment started.
I started noticing that later episodes and broadcasts of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show seemed to be diluted heavily by 60's TV era Looney Tunes. I became very weary of anything that had a production date of 1963 or later. I noticed as well that some of the later Roadrunner shorts reused earlier animation.
I remember watching the redrawn versions of many of the classic Looney Tunes that were originally in black and white. I never was a big fan of the "choppy" animation used there. Computer colorization wasn't invented yet and once the original classics were computer-colorized, I was able to see how dedicated the animators were when those cartoons were produced
2 года назад
I'm a simple man. I see a video about Looney Tunes, I click it
I admire your dedication to having watched all those really horrible cartoons. You're a stronger person than I am. I have subscribed to your channel, at first because of your perseverance, but then I realized that it's a really good channel! I will enjoy binging your videos!
9:11 "If you're gonna keep going back to the old stuff, why make new stuff at all?" I think the best way to answer that question is because a lot of businesses in the entertainment industry don’t really want to try anything new or original in some ways. They only want to focus on what was successful in the past and try to capture the same thing again, and that includes rehashing stuff. Take for example the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Yes, there are some people who actually like it, which is fine, but the problem with that trilogy is that they basically rehashed everything that the original trilogy did, mainly because they had no plan. George Lucas himself said he didn’t want to retell the same story again, which is why the prequels turned out the way they did. Say what you will about that trilogy, but it can’t be denied that those movies at least tried something new, and they weren't relying on any effects, practical or CGI. They were made to tell a story, a story that had a plan. The sequels on the other hand chose to retell the original trilogy because of the backlash of the prequels had, although at the time, some people started to look at them in a more positive way. It may not be exactly the same, but the point I'm trying to make with this is that when entertainment tries something new, more often than not, they just want bring back the old stuff again and trick people into thinking it's something new, and I feel like that's what happened with these Looney Tunes shorts
I can't blame DePatie/Freling for how the shorts turned out. Here's why: It wasn't just budget cuts. They had lost a lot of people that were essential to making Looney Tunes what they were. Chuck Jones was fired for violating his exclusivity contract, and he was probably the one guy that could make Looney Tunes work on a tight budget, though Freling was no economic slouch. I would say before you blame DePatie or Freling, look at how they worked before their hands got tied.
I think if Chuck hadn't worked on 'Gay Purr-Eee' for UPA, he would've kept his job at WB and probably would've helped wether the storm all through out the 60's.
@@Launchpad05 Mmmm, I think he would have lasted another year or so, but I also think he was outgrowing the confines of WB and he was going to leave one way or another.
I'm gonna be honest I thought this video was gonna be out the sitcom looney tunes show (which imma be honest is my favorite) but I had no idea that the 60s was this bad I can't imagine the looney tunes without bugs and I agree Coyote should have gotten the rode runner.
I'm glad people have come around on The Looney Tunes Show and the Back in Action movie, I always dug them and could never understand the scorn they earned.
Right? Even when Chuck Jones rewrote Daffy into a sort of 'Anti-Bugs', they still made him very funny and endearing. Here he's just as generic of a villain as they come. I mean just the idea of Daffy and Speedy butting heads has got to be one of the dumbest premises I've seen. It'd be like if, say... Tweety battled Yosemite Sam, or Foghorn vs Pepe Le Pew, there's no real correlation between the two to make it funny. They just slap two random LT characters together and try to force out any jokes they can with it. Compare this to the Bugs vs Wile E Coyote shorts. It sounds weird on paper, but worked in that Wile E was trying to eat Bugs like with Roadrunner, but instead it's Wile E's genius versus Bugs' cunning. They also had a lot of fun making Wile E into this sort of super narcissistic genius that separated him from Elmer, Sam, and the other Bugs villains.
12:20 I get that these cartoons didn’t capture the original charm that Looney Tunes had in the 40s and 50s but understand that around this time looney tunes was going through a rough time around this decade. They we’re going through a rough time Mostly thanks to television being the same fact then I may just have to work with what they got. So that’s why I wouldn’t be so mad at these cartoon because sometimes not all things last forever
Something else to mention as to why there was a pairing between Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales, one of the reasons cited was possibly for TV broadcasting reasons. TV shows mostly had re-showings of theatrical animated shorts in character themed blocks, most notable Looney Tunes' own Bugs Bunny show. So if they needed cartoons for a Daffy Duck show or a Speedy show, there'd be quite the backlog of toons to air. As since there were shows like the "Sylvester and Tweety, & Daffy and Speedy show" which had most of these. Something also to mention a good chunk of these cartoons were directed by WB director Robert McKimson. He had help create characters like Foghorn Leghorn, Taz, and the early version of Speedy before Friz revitalized him. McKimson had suffered severe burnout by this point in his career, something that happened since the 1950s, as during 1953, he was just flat out fired while Friz was told to stay on board with his unit and Chuck Jones went to work for Disney for a short while. He managed to get rehired, though with a severe paycut if we're led to believe, and always knew he was on the knife's edge at WB of getting fired. Not to mention McKimson preferred to use the Screwball-Tex Avery-Bob Clampett Daffy over the Chuck Jones one, which he was mandated to do. If you ever wonder why Daffy comes across as a different character, that's why.
Confession: I genuinely like a few of the Daffy/Speedy cartoons. Particularly the ones where the writers at least TRIED to make some sense out of why Daffy would chase Speedy (case in point: Daffy Rents, where Daffy owns a pest control company and is hired to go after Speedy). Plus, a few of them have genuinely good gags and interesting setups, given what little the animators had to work with. On the other hand, there are plenty of other logic holes that were never once covered in these cartoons - like, why was Daffy now living in Mexico to begin with? Here’s my advice to those who’ve never seen them: Watch the later shorts of the DePatie-Freleng era (Daffy Rents through Daffy’s Diner), as they show the writers at their most comfortable with the formula. And skip everything before or after - especially the awful Alex Lovey cartoons.
I also kind of enjoy the one Daffy and Porky that was made during the DPF era. It's weird, cause it seems like they could've used Porky, and just... didn't. Of course, even the best of the DPF era is still just okay, imo.
Your analysis is pretty accurate - "Daffy's Diner" is my personal favorite Daffy/Speedy short, partly because Daffy only goes after Speedy not because the latter is an annoyance or Daffy hunting him for personal gain but trying to save himself from getting blasted by the real antagonist - a gun-toting cat customer demanding a mouse-burger. Although I do have a soft spot for "The Astroduck" and maybe "Assault and Peppered" as well. And almost totally yes on the Lovy/W7 shorts with Daffy/Speedy in them... other than "Skyscraper Caper" where the duo are concerned friends rather than foes and thus the only one of those I like, they all stink; the final one, "See Ya Later, Gladiator" being the ultimate coup de grace (by that I mean the bottom of the barrel) of not just this series but this entire era of LT.
Actually Daffy never wanted to eat Speedy, that's a weird misconception about this series. In basically all entries, he chased the rodent because of things, like wanted him out of his house, village, etc. The problem was: cheap animation, horrible stock music, reused gags, terrible Daffy personalization. I admit though: Daffy Rents has some decentish moments, particularly with the interaction between Daffy and his robot, Hermann. But some gags were terrible there though, like that weird off scene with the electric poles.
i remember watching a short from this era where wile ACTUALLY managed to catch the roadrunner and although he still lost, it pissed me off that they actively broke the rule that he could never catch him
I still can’t believe that some of the episodes from that era introduced me to the entire Franchise, jeez I need to get baptized with good Looney Tunes Cartoons for this…
As a kid, I remembered when these "filler" episodes would air. Something not touched upon here was the music. Obviously the classic cartoons had access to a full orchestra headed by Carl Stalling. And the 60s cartoons sounded like they were orchestrated by a crew of 8 in a small room, *and* the tone of the music was now kind of experimental and discordant.
Yeah, there's a reason for that. Carl Stalling retired, but he had a replacement lined up, Milt Franklyn. So things on the music front were great... until April 24, 1962 when Milt died. He was replaced by Bill Lava, who had his budget cut and couldn't afford the orchestra.
Apparently for the roadrunner and coyote shorts sucking, according to Kaizerbeamz history of looney tunes, it was that way on purpose. The animator rudy lariva was upset at Chuck jobes for not rehiring him and carried a grudge against him. He likely made the shorts bad to get back at Chuck. To disregard the rules Chuck had set up for the duo and make them bad on purpose.
So one thing you missed is that the shorts up to Daffy's Diner are all done by DePatie Freleng, with the exceptions being the Larriva Eleven Road Runner cartoons which were outsourced to Format Films. After Daffy's Diner, Format Films took over animation duties until they reopened the in-house studio now as Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Animation, and it gets worse from there... Animation became something you could've seen on TV at the time, music became stock-like and tinny, sound effects rely on Hanna-Barbera's stock sound library, stories became very weak as hell and the quality took a big nose dive. For me, I do not mind these cartoons. They're not good, but they ain't special, but they're interesting considering they differ from the usual Warner Bros. Cartoons shtick we've come to know.
Warner Bros. brought back Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse for the Tiny Toons Looniversity reboot. Merlin appeared in the B-plot "Extra, So Extra" as Buster's mentor who taught him the art of magic. Merlin proved to Buster that he could be funny, entertaining and a good teacher despite the rabbit initially dismissing him as boring and lame. Buster had developed a lot of respect for the Magic Mouse and was proud to have him as his mentor despite hoping for the more famous Bugs Bunny. Also, Cool Cat appeared in the B-Plot of "Souffle, Girl Hey", where he takes a yearly tour of ACME Looniversity to see if it passes his test of being the best college for toons. He is also revealed to have his own Tiny Toons counterpart, Chillest Cat, who is his son and the third Tiny Toons character to be directly related to their Looney Tunes counterpart (the first being Gogo Dodo, the son of Yoyo Dodo, and the second being Marcia the Martian, the daughter of Marvin the Martian). I don't usually have a lot of positive things to say about Looniversity, as I consider it inferior to the original Tiny Toon Adventures series for many reasons, but one of the positive things that I can say about it is that it gives Cool Cat and Merlin some much-needed character development.
"Watch them whenever they wanted" I think you don't quite know how broadcast television works. Being less facetious, I don't think you know how it *felt*. In my childhood in the 1980's we could watch cartoons more often than people in the 1970's or 1960's, but you still had to watch them when they were on, and you got what you were served, and that was limited If you didn't have cable, you had maybe 3 channels and a maybe 2 hours in the afternoon on Weekdays, maybe an hour in the earlier morning, and a few hours in the morning on Saturday (if sports didn't preempt it like frequently happened on the west coast). Most of that wasn't Looney Toons. If you had cable, TBS had a limited selection of Looney Toons during the day, and by the end of the 1980's they had more, while USA and Nickelodeon added some cartoons. But these were during the day, and depending on when you got out of school you wouldn't see most of them. Cartoon Network doesn't arrive until 1992. You might have a few cartoons on VHS, but through most of the 1980's tapes are still expensive and people were likely to have a limited collection of programs recorded off TV. Pre-recorded VHS tapes of TV shows were either expensive and short or cheaply made public domain cartoons. If you go back before my time in the 80's the selection is even less. Before Cable you only had broadcast, and even early cable wasn't 57 channels (and nothing on). There were fewer broadcast channels as UHF had growing pains. You still likely had Saturday Morning Looney Tunes in the 1960's at least. The point is the 1960's audience had far more chances to catch these cartoons than the 40's and early 50's audience, but they certainly did not at all feel like they could watch them "whenever they wanted". I don't think I felt I could watch something when I wanted until the rise of cheap DVDs and TiVo in the 2000s.
Personally, I don't think Gene Deitch's Tom and Jerry cartoons are that bad. At least those cartoons had lifeful animation and were anything but boring.
The problem with those shorts is that he was the wrong director for the job. He never liked the cartoons to begin with, but was roped into making them. Add to the fact the Soviet animators didn't really understand American humor, and you just have a team that shouldn't have been doing them in the first place. Though they did actually get much better right up near the end. Still, I don't get the constant sound effects getting reverb.
@Khaled Shanshal His other works, the works he actually wanted to do and had more creative freedom with, are legendary. If anyone is to blame for the Deitch era it's MGM and producer William Snyder for forcing him to make them. He just was not the director for the job, but frankly neither was Chuck Jones. Doesn't mean they were bad directors, but rather had a different vision and animation background than Hanna and Barbera did. And frankly, both of their Tom and Jerry series are preferable to when Bill and Joe got the characters back, but had to water them down for the 1970's, post-ACT TV audience. The styles might not have worked, but at least they HAD style instead of something more generic and disappointing.
@Khaled Shanshal Exactly. They have a lot of talent, they're great when they're in their element, but every so often any director in any field will get a project that just doesn't work for them. Though, at least with the Chuck Jones Tom and Jerrys, there was a learning curve that gave us the original Grinch television special. And the Deitch ones did get better once they had stronger writing. I've always said "Buddies Thicker than Water" is one of my favorite Tom and Jerry cartoons of all time. It's a shame that his team didn't really get things together until the end.
I just hate that google made some people think gene created tom and jerry. I saw some viral instagram meme pages pist tributes about “omg the creator of tom and jerry: gene deitsch died” with corny tributes depicting him and his “creation’s” from people trying to farm karma
Most of Format Films’ Road Runner cartoons were just a complete downgrade of what Chuck Jones brought to these characters and these Larriva Eleven shorts broke all his rules he made for the original cartoons by having the Road Runner attack or torment the Coyote other than just sneaking up behind him and saying Beep-Beep! At least the two Road Runner cartoons that DFE made and Robert McKimson directed, “Rushing Roulette” and “Sugar and Spies” stayed faithful to Jones’ original vision and rules of the cartoons.
Depatie-Freling Enterprises only worked on shorts up to Daffy's Diner and the rest along with the new characters were made by Alex Lovy's Team when they reopened WB Cartoons. The reason is because the contact consisted of things that Depatie-Freling Enterprises declined as they would limit their creative freedom more, cancel anyone contracts they had with other studios, and yes, make new characters that they would only share 50/50 credit with WB along with the older characters being the sole property of WB. KaiserBeamz has made an excellent biography series of the history of Looney Tunes and the stuff around them like their directors and stuff within the studio if you want more detail on that stuff. Highly recommend it if you wanna know more.
Not that I think about it too, I think the Roadrunner shorts were outsourced to another studio too all directed by Rudy Lryiba (I'm sure I butchered that). I could be wrong, but I think that checks out.
The Looney Tunes and the other animations of the Warner Bros company must continue to have hype and that people also continue to balance the cartoon as they did decades ago, and as they did last year, which was 2021
What's actually funny about these shorts is that they open with that somehow dread-inducing rendition of the Looney Tunes theme, like you're about to witness a war crime.
Even as a kid, whenever I'd watch "Looney Tunes" cartoons, whenever that black-background, weirdly stark music-laden intro would pop up from the Dark Age cartoons I'd just know that I'm going to have a disappointing time. I didn't know that they may actually stop airing these entirely, 'cause they used to play these mixed up with the older "Looney Tunes" cartoons (not too unlike how every network that broadcasts "The Simpsons" now mixes the "classic era" episodes with those that were made in the 2000's and beyond) and it'd feel like somehow despite that run likely being shorter than the older cartoons', it felt a LOT more likely at points to get thrown a Dark Age cartoon than the ones people like better. Glad you made this video for everyone who ever wondered, "Yeah, what WAS up with those?" and that what distinguished them and why boiled down to way more than Warner Bros. getting bad management.
I actually liked these, they had decent animation compared to other 60s productions (Hanna Barbera, Filmation, etc) and cool jazzy music, admittedly, Daffy chasing Speedy made no sense, but, it was still more interesting than watching a Bugs Bunny I'd seen 400 times (At least they were something new)
The Famous Popeyes from the 1950s weren't very good (I really hate him with big teeth!). But their 1940s stuff was actually great, esp. during the war, black-and-white and color, before redesigning Olive Oyl and keeping the navy uniforms on Popeye & Bluto post-war.
It seemed like half of the Famous Studios were remakes of the Fleischer ones, and bad ones at that. The Fleischers were great when they hit stride by the mid-late 30's. Mercer's "mumblings" were far more frequent and always funny. Bluto in the Fleishers was a likable villan who had his own wit. The Famous era Bluto was just an a-hole. The Famous had just violence with no slapstick.
@@jacktheripoff1888 The worst remake, in my opinion, is 1953's SHAVING MUGS. It's a remake of the SUPERB 1936 Fleischer entry A Clean Shaven Man. The earlier version is an all time classic. But in the remake, some of the violence is so sadistic that it's just not funny. Especially when Bluto cover Popeyes head in plaster cement, pours gunpowder into the pipe, lights the fuse and says 'So long grenade head!'
Small correction. The Gopher Tom and Jerry Short is from the Filmation Tom and Jerry cartoon, not the 70's HB series. The actual HB series is much worse, at least Filmation had Tom and Jerry chase each other. Now the Filmation Droopy cartoons are PURE garbage. They didn't get the character, they didn't get his cartoons, they're just freaking awful except for a decent Incredible Hulk parody. Anyway, Yeah. These cartoons are the absolute nadir of Looney Tunes. Safe, ugly, unfunny, terrible music. I somehow half expect they were thinking of television Standards and Practices when making these. Poor writing and characterization. I hate that somehow those bad Road Runner shorts somehow still get played in rotation. They can't even get the slow burns with Wile. E's sour expressions right. But those Daffy and Speedy cartoons are beyond depressing. Daffy's my favorite of the bunch and I like both his goofy "Woo Hoo Woo Hoo" phase and his self important, greedy, jealous loser phase. I've taken to see the latter as him being bitter Bugs overtook him in popularity. Here, he's just flatly angry and personality devoid. I don't think they would have been much better with Sylvester, but at least it would have been in character for Sylvester.
I think that the 80s and 90s were a great time for looney tunes and I love the looney tunes from The 1940s and early 60s than the Depatie-Freleng and Seven Arts toons
@@dynostretch9215 The only one of those that's any good, or even comes close to matching what Droopy is all about was the one where he becomes the Incredible Hulk. It's even almost funny at points. Then again, I don't think ANYONE got Droopy right outside of his original shorts except maybe the Roger Rabbit movie and shorts and the early CN short where he's a coffee delivery boy.
LOL on Filmation Droopy. I was actually 5 going on 6 when CBS first aired the Filmation Tom and Jerry. Even at that young an age, I had at least seen a fair amount of the MGM/Tex Avery shorts and Droopy had because a favorite of mine. And yeah, the Filmation version had his personality completely off kilter. I guess they assumed their target audience wouldn't have access to the original shorts.
Technically, Depatie-freleng didn’t do all of the shorts from 1964 to 1969. In 66 or 67 Warner seven arts made the rest of the cartoons and those are the worst. Shorts in the series.
Since you've done the Dark Age of Looney Tunes (Seven Arts Era), do you think you could do it with Tom & Jerry next? (Gene Deitch Era or Tom and Jerry comedy show)
The DePatie-Freleng, and Seven Arts eras were definitely sore spots in the classic 'Looney Tunes' era. With Seven Arts being the weakest of the two. Though there is on major stain in 'Looney Tunes' history that's even worse. When Filmation paired Daffy, and Porky with The Groovy Ghoulies.
I feel like having Daffy and Speedy as a duo was a complete mismatch since Daffy worked better alongside Bugs,Elmer,Porky,and other co-stars,here,the DFE team behind the 1964-1967 shorts really made him a malicious jerk when paired with Speedy. At least Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson felt bad what a mistake it was and A Taste of Catnip made fun of the mismatch. At least the three Daffy solo shorts(Suppressed Duck,Chili Con Corny,Suppressed Duck)we’re a lot more watchable and had a few laughs few and farther between.
I remember the intro screen being something for a nightmare fuel for me as a kid. The sudden lines coming out of the black and the weird chime-like sounds were what made me fear of the dark until I grow up enough to sleep without light. It was so out of place for a Looney Tunes short and then, upon research, I discovered it was meant specifically for a Chuck Norris cartoon that had similar visual and audio effects. To this day I still wonder how and why they chose that abomination of an intro rather than keeping the iconic one.
I remember seeing the W7 toons in Nickelodeon's Looney Tunes block in the mid-90s, which was so all-encompassing it even included the Bosko shorts, which felt extremely iffy to me even then.
3:50 there was a funny gag in a Roadrunner short where Wile E. breaks down crying and Roadrunner holds up a sign that says "what a wuss." Like Wile E. Is so tired of not being able to get food he just snaps.
I remember watching a lot of these shorts in 1992, after Nickelodeon got the rights to them for their Looney Tunes program, and wondering "Cool Cat? Bunny and Claude? Merlin the magic mouse? Who ARE all these guys?"
When I was a kid, I knew of DePatie-Freleng through their Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons. I couldn't understand why they seemed so different from all the others (aside from the intro and outtro of course). I guess I know now!
the 60s stuff was a mainstay on the show "Loony Toons on Nickelodeon" in the early 90s. I was utterly WTF on stuff like "Cool Cat" and would groan when you had to sit through that after a Bosko short.
I grew up in the 80s. The W7 Looney Tunes mostly showed up on Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite during 1988-1989. It was used as filler to finish up the Nickelodeon Schedule as it signed off at 9 PM for Nick at Nite(8 PM on Sunday Nights). Nick at Nite also showed Bosko and *Sigh* even the Terrible Buddy Shorts.
I’ve always had a spot soft for these cartoons, they were aired constantly on TV when I was a kid in the 90s (syndication costs were probably cheaper for these, surprise surprise) so I grew up watching them all the time. Yeah they’re clearly lower quality but I can’t totally hate them.
From what I have learned about Rudy Larriva and why his shorts were hated, even back then in the 60's. Rudy Larriva was Chuck Jones' top cartoonists out of all of the cartoonists Jones had at the time. After World War II ended and when Larriva returned from the war, he tried to convince Jones to get his job as a cartoonist back, but to no avail due to the fact Jones' animation staff was already full during that time. This pissed Larriva off so much, he held a major grudge against Chuck Jones, even after his Disney imitation phase from the 1930's to the early or mid 1940's had passed on. When he was given the job to make 11 of the Road Runner cartoons for the DePatie-Freleng run of the cartoons from 1964 to 1969, Larriva broke all of the rules that Jones established on all of his Road Runner cartoons to get revenge on Chuck Jones out of spite, even when Jones himself was fired from Warner Bros. for moonlighting during that time while he was working on his own Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM. Now that I have heard about this not too long ago, it is very reasonable and evident as to why all eleven of his Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons were hated by animation enthusiasts, critics, cartoon goers, and even fans. All that grudge and hatred he had against Jones was why the Larriva Eleven was hated.
