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Sunday, February 20, 2005

Move Over Poochy!

Warner Brothers, hoping to resusitate its animated Looney Tunes franchise after the financial and critical debacle that was "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" has created "re-imaginged" versions -- I would say shitty looking evil versions myself -- of its Looney Tunes characters, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tasmanian Devil, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote for a new Kids WB series "Loonatics" set in the year 2772.



New Looney Tunes



Old Looney Tunes

Ugh. Was anyone clamoring for this? This looks just awful. The Simpsons mocked these kind of attempts to monkey around with icons years ago. Anyone remember the episode where Poochy, the hip to the extreme cartoon dog, joined the Itchy and Scratchy show?



Poochy -- Lame!

Guess Warner Brothers executive don't watch FOX. I wouldn't really care about this kind of thing normally -- what's another crappy animated kids show? -- except this feels a little like someone taking a dump on my childhood memories. When I was growing up, the world had about seven channels on TV. Every kid watched Looney Tunes, along with the Little Rascals, Three Stooges shorts, the Brady Bunch and a few other select shows. We knew all the Bugs Bunny cartoons by heart -- there was nothing else on. As a result, Bugs Bunny is a common reference point for everyone in my generation.

Now that we live in a world of hundreds of channels, the Looney Tunes are no longer part of childhood canon. They are great cartoons, but there are just so many choices now that the Looney Tunes will never have the same audience they once had. It's a shame because, unless they were Amish, everyone my age knows who Bugs Bunny is. Stupid things like Bugs Bunny unite my generation and bring us a little closer together. I don't know what kind of common ground today's kids will have when they're older -- Spongebob Squarepants?

The bigger shame though is that Warner Brothers is playing fast and loose with characters that have been around for over 60 years to try to wring a few more dollars out of them. The executives at Warner Brothers should really try to come up with some new ideas before pissing all over characters that are older then they are.

2 Comments:

At Monday, February 21, 2005 at 9:38:00 AM EST, Blogger Kid Various said...

What's with Daffy and the "Black Power" salute?

 
At Tuesday, February 22, 2005 at 4:05:00 PM EST, Blogger Mr. Scriblerus said...

There oughta be a manifesto about this!

 

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