Yesterday’s installment of the countdown trended more adult. Lots of cartoons not for the kids, but today’s list definitely is more general audience. I like the spread today. It’s dominated by animation, as it so often is, but we also have a live-action, puppet, type show. We have weekend cartoons, and week day cartoons. There’s shows from Disney, shows from Warner Bros and it’s almost all entirely dominated by 90s properties. I haven’t really been keeping tabs on the decades as I go through this list, but it makes sense that the 90s would be heavily represented all throughout. That’s when cable really exploded and we had a whole bunch of cartoons with massive episode orders and throwing a Christmas one into that mass of stuff sure makes things a whole lot easier. Networks originally were said to dislike holiday episodes, but I think they changed their tune when they realized they could program an entire day, or even week, around a holiday like Christmas or Halloween. Even the prime time shows tended to do this sort of thing. Anyway, I feel like I’ve talked about all of this before so let’s cut the preamble and get to number 93:
It pretty much looks like Christmas, but with a fridge instead of a tree.
Dinosaurs was a real treat to come back to when Disney+ launched a few years ago. I watched it as a kid when it was airing on ABC, but kind of lost track of it. I think it got shuffled around some, or maybe my family latched onto something else in the same timeslot. I don’t know. What I do know is the show is great. It holds up very well in basically all respects. The satire it went for is still biting and relevant today, which is both a good and bad thing. Dinosaurs never technically did air a Christmas episode, but instead we got “Refrigerator Day” which is basically their version of Christmas. Since there is apparently no dinosaur Jesus, they worship at the altar of the refrigerator which changed their lives so completely. It’s a society that’s very consumer-driven, if you couldn’t tell. Despite that, the plot is pretty conventional and, for some, may be a tad too much like The Simpsons since Earl’s horrible boss foregoes Christmas bonuses and things get tight for the Sinclair family. However, they stumble upon a million dollar idea, the concept of store returns, and in exchange for making a huge company even more wealthy they get a few measly gifts and their repossessed appliance is returned. It’s a bit dark, but pretty funny. If you haven’t checked out Dinosaurs in a long time then do yourself a favor and go back to it. I promise you, it’s not as dominated by the baby character as you may remember.
It’s a weird environment for Bugs and pals, but it also kind of works?
The Looney Tunes Show is perhaps a more interesting concept than show, but the little I’ve seen is honestly not bad. It’s basically a sitcom starring the cast of Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny is dating Lola Bunny and is roommates with Daffy. Foghorn Leghorn is the mayor, and Yosemite Sam is more like a rich Texas guy than an outlaw. This Christmas episode of the show involves Lola directing a play, the titular A Christmas Carol, while Foghorn and Daffy head to the North Pole to try and find a way to make their local climate cooler. Their adventure is a bit more madcap, while the story with the play is more grounded. Lola turns out to be a very interesting and funny character. She’s very self-confident without any reason to be and a lot of the characters in her orbit are too polite to tell her when she’s making a bad decision. The play is basically terrible and goes way off the rails, but also the real Santa shows up for it which I honestly didn’t expect. I can’t figure out what the audience was supposed to be for this show, but I do know I was entertained by this more than I was the conventional Looney Tunes Christmas specials and that sure surprised me. It’s still not the best Looney Tunes Christmas special though.
The folks over at Warner Bros. got a lot of mileage out of this bit.
Our second look at The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries is the stronger of the two Christmas episodes. It’s a sort-of parody of It’s a Wonderful Life, only instead of focusing on the George Bailey character it centers on a stand-in for his drunk uncle. If you’ve never seen the movie, what sets the plot in motion is George’s uncle Billy losing a deposit of money that their savings and loan business was to make that night. Essentially, they lost the money of a bunch of people and would have probably been arrested for theft or misappropriation or something. For this cartoon, Granny and her animals are going to help her brother find the money he lost by retracing his steps from the prior night. They do a solid job of tiptoeing around the whole alcoholic aspect of the Uncle Billy character to keep things PG, and we do get a Potter stand-in to act as the villain. There are some solid gags throughout and none of the characters really dominate the episode, which is a full-length one as opposed to the half-length one we looked at days ago. It will amuse you if you’re familiar with the movie, but also you don’t have to be in order to be entertained. And it even one-ups the movie by having the Potter stand-in actually face some consequences for his thievery.
It’s kind of weird that they can’t share the same tree.
The Nicktoons tended to have solid Christmas episodes, few great ones, but most of them are fine. CatDog was one I had ignored for a long time because I simply wasn’t watching Nickelodeon when it was airing. I knew it had a Christmas episode and it was on my list for years until I finally sat down and watched it just a year ago. And you know what? It’s fine. I liked it more than I expected and I’m even ranking it ahead of shows I did watch a ton of like Doug and The Ren & Stimpy Show. I’m not elevating it to the level of Rocko’s Modern Life or even Rugrats, but this episode is fun enough. It’s almost a little like Mickey’s Good Deed in that CatDog essentially sells itself to a wealthy family as a Christmas present, but then has second thoughts. It’s the Christmas special that taught us being a whore isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Everything works out though and even the bratty kid that bought them comes around. It has a pretty straight ending where everyone learns something, but it’s not too syrupy sweet or anything. If you’re like me and didn’t really give CatDog much of a chance then you may want to reconsider this Christmas.
I still can’t believe I enjoyed an episode of Bonkers more than Darkwing Duck – and a Christmas one at that! Bonkers is the character no one wanted. He should have been Roger Rabbit, but that just wasn’t possible so we got this weird bobcat character. At least he’s better than Bubsy. This episode is a solid one though and it actually doesn’t feature a ton of the titular character. It’s centered more on his partner Lucky and an amnesiac Santa Claus. Poor Santa got knocked out of the sky and stuck with the character Fall Apart. Since no one can find him, the elves turn to the police and Lucky is chosen to basically be a stand-in. His motivation to help out is his daughter’s belief in Santa Claus. Pretty conventional stuff, but it all wraps up nicely. The animation is also gorgeous as it often is for the Disney Afternoon and the antics between Fall Apart and “Jim” are pretty funny. This also is just a fun world and the premise of the show is terrific, it just rarely came together to form a cohesive half hour of entertainment. For Christmas though, it nailed it.
Maybe this is why Batman doesn’t seem to like Christmas?
This Christmas episode of Batman: The Animated Series is fine. It’s funny, the Joker is a good villain for this type of thing, and I usually watch it every year. It’s also an episode that I just wish was better and that’s because of the show it hails from. Batman is the greatest superhero show to ever come around. I say that as a lover of X-Men, but the quality was just so much better. The writing was tighter and the budget greater so it looks terrific. It also helps that the cast was small and that’s one reason why I just can’t get into shows like Justice League following this one. This episode is a fairly standard Joker plot where he’s kidnapped some people and there’s a bomb or something. It just happens to be at Christmas so we get some Christmas puns and festive attire out of the Joker. It unfortunately doesn’t look as good as some episodes and there’s some awkward shots in here. Maybe it was rushed so there was no danger of missing the holiday? I don’t know, I just know it’s a pretty even episode of Batman, but not one of the show’s best.
You just know they’re going to spoof some holiday classics.
Batman’s network-mates the Tiny Toons got to make a contribution to Christmas. Unlike the more seasoned Sylvester and Tweety, their It’s a Wonderful Life parody mostly plays it straight. In the role of George is Buster Bunny who is questioning his own worth. Not to the degree that George was, but maybe he’s just not cut out for the life he wants? Through the magic of his guardian rabbit, Harvey, Buster is going to see what life would be like had he never been on Tiny Toons. Plucky is the star, Montana Max owns the Looniversity, and Babs is a humorless solo act. Naturally, Buster has a revelation and has his life restored where he’s able to help the other toons put on an entertaining Christmas show. It doesn’t do anything to upend the framing device, but the humor of Tiny Toons is able to carry this one. Tiny Toon Adventures is a show I can only handle in small doses, but when done well it’s usually pretty rewarding. This one is animated well and there’s some easy Christmas special gags to be found as well which are real crowd pleasers. I tend to lose track of this one among the many other Warner Bros. Christmas episodes and specials, but it’s worth returning to.
TaleSpin, like Bonkers, is another Disney Afternoon show I didn’t really care for in the moment, but it has a good Christmas episode. This one centers around the child character Molly, who is the daughter of Baloo’s boss, Rebecca. She’s having a bit of a Christmas crisis where her belief in Santa Claus is in doubt and it’s mostly all because of Baloo. He, with the help of Louie, tries to stage a North Pole to trick Molly into believing, but when Louie’s bar is closed for way too long on Christmas Eve the local drunks overrun the place and blow the whole thing. Now, this episode does fly too close to the sun for me when it comes to whether or not Santa Claus is real. I don’t particularly like it when a show aimed at young children places too much doubt on his existence, but they do rectify it at the end (as if there was any doubt). And that’s really my only complaint with the episode. It otherwise is pretty entertaining and it’s very well animated and heartbroken Molly worked on me so when her moment of triumph came it also affected me in much the same way. TaleSpin isn’t reinventing the wheel when it comes to Christmas episodes, but it brings the feels.
And that’s not even close to capturing the whole Anderson family.
Life with Louie is one of those forgotten Fox Kids shows. The network never celebrated its works like a Disney or a Nickelodeon would. They kind of just paid for them for the moment, then sold them off when it no longer suited them. As such, I think this show is owned by Disney who bought most of Fox Kids if not all. The company kind of treated most of these shows the same way Fox did using them to pad out expanded, digital, cable channels until it was no longer profitable. Some shows saw DVD release, and many did not. Life with Louie was supposed to according to series creator Louie Anderson, but it never happened. It’s too bad because Life with Louie is a sweet coming of age cartoon. There’s not a ton of stuff like that, especially from the 90s, and it managed to be plenty funny too. In this Christmas episode, Louie basically finds out a kid he thinks is the greatest is actually an orphan and it forces him to reexamine his own relationship with his family. It’s all heartwarming stuff and we get to see Louie’s dad be forced to play Santa which is where a lot of the comedy comes from. I prefer the first Christmas episode from this show more, but this is a worthy (if unexpected) follow-up.
Sing it with me, “It’s time for Animaniacs!” Yes, the first of three entries for the series is “‘Twas the Day Before Christmas.” In 1993, Animaniacs did the odd thing of releasing two Christmas episodes. I guess when you’re a weekday afternoon program you can afford to do that. It also helps that Animaniacs was a pretty large ensemble so giving everyone their own Christmas arc was just not possible in a single half hour episode. Maybe they first envisioned an hour long prime time affair? I don’t know, but this is the lesser of the two despite the other one being a parody of A Christmas Carol. I know – shocking! And the main segment is basically designed to squeeze most of the cast into one short as Aunt Slappy relays the story about the day before Christmas on the Warner lot. It’s the strongest segment across both specials, but it’s not very substantial since its just Slappy reading a parody of A Visit From Saint Nicholas with some funny stuff animated to it. The second segment is Chicken Boo who is playing a mall Santa. One kid sees the character for what it is, a chicken, but no one else does and he freaks out. It’s pretty damn funny, but also brief. The third segment is just the Warners in a toy store after hours where the toys come to life. It’s pretty weak and drags this one down, but it’s not terrible. It’s still an entertaining 25 minutes and most of these characters work best in quick bursts anyway, but there’s better stuff ahead. Especially for a couple of laboratory mice.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
When it comes to Christmas themed cartoons featuring Popeye, I’ve somehow managed to work backwards. We’ve looked at two previous Popeye cartoons that center around the holiday, but today’s Christmas short is Popeye’s very first. It comes to us all the way from 1933 where it premiered as just the fourth Popeye cartoon. I don’t…
Today we continue our lookback at the best holiday specials ever sent to television and today’s subject is everyone’s favorite pair of Gen X deadbeats Beavis and Butt-Head. Beavis and Butt-Head were created by Mike Judge and the pair got its start on MTV’s Liquid Television in 1992. There they were a cruel, destructive, pair…
Today we are continuing our look back at the best of the best when it comes to Christmas specials and today’s entrant comes from the quiet, mountain, town of South Park. South Park burst onto the scene in 1997 and basically transformed the Comedy Central network from the get-go. The show about four foul-mouthed kids…
I can feel it, folks – we’re getting closer! Closer to the Christmas specials that are almost universally worth watching! That’s not to say the specials that have appeared in the countdown thus far are not worth it, they just might require more nuance. These are the specials that are watched year in and year out chiefly due to nostalgia. They’re the ones you grew up with that you just have to watch each year or the holiday just wouldn’t feel complete – even if they’re objectively bad. And I do think we’re beyond the objectively bad, well past that even, and just into the splitting hairs category. Yeah, you could watch the specials spotlighted today, but each moment spent with one of these could also probably be spent watching something superior. Take our first Christmas special of the day…
Some redesigns are fine, while some are just “meh.”
Alvin and his chipmunk brothers Simon and Theodore are no strangers to Christmas. They had a stand-alone TV special in 1981 as well as a Christmas episode during their run in the 1980’s in a show with a very similar name. This particular Christmas episode comes from the most recent iteration of the franchise which aired on Nickelodeon in 2020. If you’re familiar with the 80s cartoon, then this one should feel very similar. It just looks different. Alvin and his brothers, while still not the size of actual chipmunks, are a great deal smaller than they have traditionally been depicted in cartoons, but also their features otherwise are a bit deemphasized. They look more like kids with weird noses. And it’s a CG-rendered show that while not as ugly as some of the CG shows from the early 2010s, is still far less pleasant than the 80’s cartoon. In this holiday episode, Theodore is feeling unwanted at home, and when he gets mistaken for an elf and brought to the North Pole, he thinks no one back home actually wants him. And Alvin kind of gave him to the North Pole because in most versions of this franchise Alvin is a selfish dick, but he learns his lesson, Theodore makes it home for Christmas, and everything is fine. It’s just why would you spend your time with this one when you could be watching the far superior A Chipmunk Christmas? I don’t blame you though for preferring this to the It’s a Wonderful Life parody that showed up in the 80s series.
By sheer coincidence, we have another CG program from the 2010’s that aired on Nickelodeon starring a character who was pretty popular in the 1980s: Garfield. And like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield has a much better Christmas special from the 80s you could be watching instead. Garfield and his pals made an okay jump to 3D. The models are a bit texture-less, but not unpleasant to look at. Frank Welker takes over for Lorenzo Music as the titular fat cat and does a solid job of capturing the same tone as Music. He’s low energy, almost bored, and rarely genuine. This episode, which is a tidy 12 minutes, features Garfield caroling because he sees it as a path to free food only no one he carols for seems to enjoy his antics. Meanwhile, Nermal and Odie are caroling together and dragging a wagon full of food behind them because they’re just so cute! There’s a few moments of genuine humor and since it’s so short it requires a much smaller sacrifice of time than most, but in the end it might still leave you wishing that you watched the more famous Christmas special featuring the orange cat.
I can think of something very wrong with that title. Yogi Bear’s All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper is pretty light on comedy, as most Hanna-Barbera things are. What it is not short on are cameos. That’s the “All-Star” part as you’re going to see most of the classic Hanna-Barbera characters in this one, even Fred and Barney! That’s actually the only part that did get a little laugh out of me as Snagglepuss points out the absurdity of the situation. Anyway, this one is about a lonely, mistreated, girl mistaking Yogi for Santa and him being unable to come clean about it because he doesn’t want her to feel worse. They need to help her greedy, selfish, father see the error of his ways. It’s not very good, and if I’m being objective about it then I probably should have ranked this one lower, but I do have some nostalgia goggles for it. It did get a genuine reaction out of me when I was younger which is hard to let go of. And I am a sucker for big ensembles, just not enough for me to make it through Yogi’s First Christmas. That damn thing is an hour and a half and I refuse to ever watch it again.
Space Goofs is a Fox Kids cartoon that started airing when I started tuning out on Saturday morning. Once X-Men and Spider-Man finished their respective runs I was all done. After watching this Christmas episode though, I do think I may have missed out. This is a bit of an ugly late 90s cartoon, the aesthetic for the era is not one that I look back on fondly, but it was pretty amusing. The premise of the show is a bunch of aliens are hiding out in a house and they’re oblivious to human culture, save for what they can get on their television. When Santa shows up on Christmas Eve, they think they’re being invaded. This Santa is incredibly stubborn though and insists on delivering presents so he keeps trying to sneak into the house which results in him getting caught by the various traps inside. He takes a beating, but he keeps on coming. It’s a bit like Smokey and the Bandit in that Santa keeps absorbing more and more punishment until he’s in a full body cast by the episode’s end. It’s an easy one to watch these days and if you like that 90s physical comedy that was present in many cartoons then you probably won’t need the benefit of nostalgia to find some enjoyment here.
If you didn’t like Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales then it makes sense why you’d give New Looney Tunes and its Christmas episode a try. Unfortunately, it’s not that great. It’s not terrible, and I am ranking it ahead of that first one, but it doesn’t take advantage of the holiday very well. This one has two segments. In the first, Bugs is Christmas shopping and after a hot item, but so is Yosemite Sam. This means the two go to war in a Walmart-type store for the last item available. There are some decent gags, but nothing particularly memorable (except maybe Porky having to mop up spilled ham). The second segment features Bugs’ friend, Squeaks, misdelivering his letter to Santa to a guy called The Barbarian on account of the fact that he kind of resembles Santa Claus. Bugs has to get the letter back so he can get it to the real Santa, but Barbarian is apparently not interested in giving it back. It’s kind of stupid. Again, it’s just Bugs inflicting pain on his opponent (with some pain returned) through comedic means none of which is particularly memorable. You’re unlikely to hate it, but it’s not the sort of Christmas special you’ll be inclined to watch again. And there are better Looney Tunes specials to come.
The Pink Panther is basically a silent cartoon star. The cartoons are not absent sound, but there’s no dialogue from anyone. The story is moved along through animation and the object is usually to convey pretty basic emotions that almost anyone can understand. Like most cartoon stars, The Pink Panther is accustomed to short subjects, but this television special had to fill a half hour and it really hurts the pacing. In this one, Pink Panther is basically homeless and just wants a hot meal. He goes through all kinds of hoops to land one which also lands him in trouble with numerous people along the way eventually leading to him getting arrested. It has funny moments, and there’s a nice ending to it as well, but it’s the sort of special that just wares me down. I don’t have any particular affection for the Pink Panther. I don’t think there’s anything especially sympathetic about him in any of his cartoons, but even so I get sick of him constantly losing throughout this one even knowing it’s going to work out in the end. Had this been a cartoon short, I think it would have worked better. It’s a bit too miserable in this form, but some may find that the constant misery leads to a better payoff I suppose.
Don’t be fooled by his cuteness, he just kicked the crap out of Santa.
Here’s one for the British readers. SuperTed is a living teddy bear that’s also a superhero. I really liked this guy as a kid and had pretty much forgot all about him until I stumbled upon this Christmas episode a few years back. In this one, the villainous Texas Pete is out to steal Christmas and it’s up to SuperTed to stop him. The amusing wrinkle in this one is that SuperTed thinks he gets the drop on ole Pete only to find out it’s the real Santa Claus, err, Father Christmas. He actually beats him up pretty well too in what is an almost shockingly funny little bit. Outside of that, it’s a perfectly fine little Christmas episode that probably works better if you have some affection for the character.
I swear it’s just a coincidence that SuperTed is followed by Super Dave.
Comedian Bob Einstein’s Super Dave alter ego actually had his own cartoon series in the early 90s. It was short-lived, but it’s one of those things that impresses me to this day. Super Dave, if you’re unaware, was a daredevil. Since this was a bit by a comedian, he was a terrible daredevil. None of his stunts go right and he often winds up in extreme pain. It makes sense to turn that type of guy into a cartoon since you can really do some damage to a cartoon character and he’ll always come back ready for more! In this Christmas episode, Santa is kidnapped and Dave has to rescue him. Why does a daredevil have to be the one to rescue him? Who knows? It has its moments, but mostly it ends up getting ranked this high because I remain tickled that this is a thing that exists. I also appreciate that it really has no moral. Sometimes we don’t need a preachy ending, we just need an ending.
Eek is the good-natured cat that roamed the Fox Kids Saturday morning lineup in the early 90s. He is an eternal optimist which makes him a great fit for a Christmas special. He can also scream like a bastard and take some serious punishment which makes him an ideal cartoon character. In this Christmas episode, Eek comes across a gift for Little Joey and takes it upon himself to make sure it reaches him. Along his journey, he’s going to get the snot kicked out of him. He’s also going to help people along the way which just in turn leads to more misery, but the cat comes through in the end and delivers the present to Little Joey. Who turns out to be a rat or something. It’s entertaining, it’s just not one of the better looking shows from the era. And since it doesn’t really invoke the “feels,” it comes up just a tad limp for me in the end. If Eek was your guy, or cat, when you were a kid then you’ll probably derive far more enjoyment out of coming back to this one than I ever could. I also think his other Christmas special is just a little bit better.
I apparently named this image “Dick Dexter.” I amuse myself sometimes.
Our final entrant for today is Dexter of Dexter’s Laboratory fame. He was one of the original Cartoon Cartoon stars for Cartoon Network and I have mostly positive memories of his show. In his Christmas segment, Dexter is confronted by his own ignorance for he gets into an argument with his sister about the existence of Santa Claus. Dee Dee insists that he’s real while Dexter insists that it’s merely their father in disguise. He seems to think his dad puts on an elaborate show to keep up the ruse indicating that while Dexter may be a boy genius, he’s also still a boy. Dexter then waits up all night and catches the real Santa in the act, only he still thinks it’s his dad and does horrible things to the big man in order to prove it. This just leads to injuries and destruction. Santa even loses his beard (coincidentally, the same thing happens to the Santa in Space Goofs)! Yeah, it’s kind of unsettling. What I love about this one is the continuity. This being a Hanna-Barbera Christmas episode that aired in 1998, it still made sure to have a Santa that looks exactly like the one from A Flintstone Christmas. That’s pretty neat, even if other versions of Santa have appeared over the years in other Hanna-Barbera productions. If you’re going to copy one though, that’s the one to copy. This Christmas episode is brief, but funny. A little dark, perhaps, but we need that from time to time out of our Christmas specials.
What’s not dark, is tomorrow’s Christmas special. Actually, it technically is dark, just not in tone or humor. You’ll see what I mean in short order, but tomorrow is a full write-up of a Christmas cartoon I never got around to. It’s one that has been on my “to do” list year after year and even pre-planned on at least one occasion, but I just never got around to it. That all changes tomorrow so come on back and see what ended up in slot number 147!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
I told you we would probably take a look at the other Christmas episode from The Cuphead Show!, though maybe you expected a buffer. I considered it, but why not pair them up just like the creators and Netflix already did? This second Christmas episode comes right after the first. Titled “A Very Devil Christmas,”…
When two billion dollar organizations butt heads, it can be hard to know who to root for. Take Disney, somewhat of an “evil” overlord when it comes to content, which seemingly owns everything these days and likes to throw its weight around when it comes to copyright claims. And then there’s Fox, owned by the…
In 1964, Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass unleashed a Christmas Classic upon the world in the form of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The special basically put the company on the map and put it on the path to holiday domination for decades to come. Despite that, few of the specials that followed Rudolph truly hit…
We’re back to the ranking posts, and following yesterday’s solo entry, it means our numbers are no longer nice and clean. This is also our first day with 11 entries and we’ll have a few more just as part of my organization. We’ll also never have fewer than 10 on these. It’s math, baby!
Today we slide a bit further into the “Hmm…okay,” category. There’s still stuff here that I am unlikely to ever return to, but there’s also some stuff in here that I watch just about every year. Now, I hesitate to call those particular specials good, but they obviously do something right or appeal to a certain part of me and flawed Christmas specials can be watchable. The first one on our list though is a bit murky.
Courtesy of the “new” Woody Woodpecker show comes “A Very Woody Christmas.” I could make this short and say this series had another Christmas episode, but I never watched it. I had my fill here. It’s not terrible, it just didn’t really make me laugh. It’s three segments: two Woody cartoons sandwiched around a Chilly Willy. I’d say the Chilly Willy one is the best of the three, but I always liked the little penguin. The third one is also in the discussion as Woody tries to get himself off the Naughty List by doing something nice for his neighbor, but everything just goes wrong. The show premiered in 1999 and it looks okay by those standards. Woody’s redesign is slight and not unsightly and I did like Billy West in the role, I just wish the cartoon was funnier.
You could take a lot of what I just said about Woody and apply it here. One would think a Christmas special centered around Bugs Bunny would be pretty funny, but this is not. Perhaps one of the most disappointing Christmas specials I’ve ever seen, this comes post Looney Tunes shorts when the made-for-television animation was obvious and the voices started sounding a little different. It doesn’t look particularly good and too much time is wasted on a tired A Christmas Carol parody that does nothing clever. My affection for these characters has helped to prop it up all the way to this spot and the fact that my kids love Bugs Bunny has kept this in semi-rotation over the years, but this is the worst Looney Tunes Christmas anything on this list.
We go from the Looney Tunes Christmas special to the superhero who wants to be a Looney Tune. The Mask is not a show I’ve spent much time with outside of this episode and I’m not likely to. Even so, this wasn’t bad even though it’s another “Character takes over for Santa” plot. Rob Paulsen is a good Mask and there were at least a few spots that made me smile. It also has Tim Curry and he’s great. I did enjoy the look of this one as it’s much better than the other Jim Carrey movies turned cartoons in that respect. And with this one, I can watch it and think, “This isn’t bad, but it’s definitely not made for me.” And that’s because it’s made for kids and if I were a kid I’d probably think higher of this. And had I been a little kid when this was on, maybe my nostalgia for it would have pushed it higher? Or not as we’ll see in a few entries.
I avoided this one for years because of that title. “Dickens” implies only one thing when paired with Christmas and my appetite to watch unfamiliar A Christmas Carol takes is nonexistent. This one isn’t really what I thought the title implied. Instead, the Brown family (and Marty) travel back in time to find that A Christmas Carol is essentially a true story. They don’t really come to that conclusion, but that’s basically what it is. The Brown kids get mixed up with an Oliver Twist like kid and a Scrooge-type gets it in the end. It’s all right. A cromulent Christmas episode from a cromulent cartoon. There’s so little Back to the Future things outside the movies that there was a temptation to rank this one higher, but if I’m being honest with myself I’ll never watch it again.
Speaking of surprises, this one definitely surprised me. I knew the Berenstain Bears as a series of children’s books. I read and enjoyed them as a kid. I also vaguely recall an animated series. The only specific of the animated version I could recall was the opening title. An actual plot from an episode is just not something my brain can recall. I assumed this would be a preschool styled show and when I went to watch it for the countdown that year I thought there was a really strong chance I was wasting my time as I avoid preschool shows for this blog. There just isn’t much to talk about with them. I was wrong as this was really a straight-forward comedic show aimed at kids. It didn’t exactly win me over, but I was charmed by elements of it and came to enjoy the dumb father character. I think if this were in the 11 minute range it would have been stronger as I just got sick of it. The plot didn’t have enough meat on the bone to sustain the full run time, but it wasn’t bad. If my kids had been raised on this franchise then I would have been fine introducing this to them. Since they weren’t, I don’t have to.
The last of the Jim Carrey movies turned cartoons I covered was Dumb and Dumber. Coincidentally, it was also the last to be released and the same is true of the movie and cartoon. And it’s also the best of the three, which I’d say is also true of the movies which is quite the coincidence. As for series, that I can’t attest to as I haven’t seen enough of any of them, but for Christmas specials I’m taking “Santa Klutz” over the other two. Part of the reason for that is the run time – this one is short. I like short. It is ugly as sin and I don’t really like looking at it, but unlike the other two this one did have some genuine funny moments. It can be hard to write stupid characters, but this cartoon did a good job with that. There’s some misdirection to jokes and the plot setup is also a strength. Reflecting on it, I’m almost talking myself out of ranking it here and moving it up, but I’m not here to second guess myself.
A Cosmic Christmas is a special that’s more interesting than good. I say that as someone who didn’t grow up watching it so my nostalgia here is nil, but the main plot beats are pretty standard Christmas stuff. The animation is rough, but in an artistic and interesting way. Some characters have weird flow or large blocks of color. There’s lots of smoking which is unusual in this day and age and some odd effects with the aliens and their spacecraft. I was never bored watching it even if the story wasn’t exciting. I also enjoyed the Christmas message contained in this one which is largely to help the less fortunate – the sort of thing a lot of high profile church people lose sight of. RIP Nelvana.
Here’s the one I was mostly calling out in the intro paragraph as one I tend to watch every year. X-Men was my favorite show as a kid so nostalgia plays a big role. I was predisposed to liking any Christmas episode X-Men did. And this is a pretty bad Christmas episode, but it’s also intentionally bad. The writing staff was tasked with doing a Christmas episode so they tried to get every trope they could come up with into this one because, on the surface, Christmas with the X-Men is pretty absurd. It just wasn’t the type of show that was going to tackle the subject. The only problem here is the writers were almost too good at making a bad Christmas episode. There’s no sense of irony within the episode, you’re only in on the joke if you happened to read an interview concerning it.
I don’t have a ton of nostalgia for the Teddy Ruxpin cartoon, but I did love my Teddy Ruxpin doll and the book this episode was based on. I feel like I can almost recite that story from memory because Teddy and Grubby told it to me so much. It’s not a true Christmas special as it’s one of those other world stories where they have their own customs that just so happen to resemble Christmas an awful lot. The only thing missing is Santa Claus. Teddy and his pals deliver gifts to their friends while the villain, Tweeg, tries to ruin their time, but he’s an idiot with idiot followers. It’s a little too syrupy sweet at times, but I was entertained.
Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas was so good that they had to come back for another one. Too bad that along the way someone decided that this should be animated in 3D as opposed to 2D and the classic Disney characters just weren’t ready for that. This thing is Ugly. Mickey looks weird, Goofy more so, and it’s an all together downgrade across the board. The duck nephews who are tasked with carrying one of the longer segments of this one look almost monstrous. It’s also a weird setup where we’re going with what is essentially a 90 minute block of programming broken up into 5 segments of varying lengths. It does improve the pacing when compared with Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, but the stories aren’t the best. The saving grace is the final segment where Pluto accidentally winds up at the North Pole and Mickey thinks he ran away because he got mad at him. It’s cute watching Pluto frolic with the other reindeer and it has a really sweet ending. It also helps that Pluto made the jump to 3D better than most of the cast. If you’re interested in this one, I recommend just fast forwarding to that part. The rest is filler.
Tex Avery’s contribution to Christmas is this short that’s also a sequel to the classic story The Three Little Pigs. Well, sort of. It doesn’t really matter, but we have two married pigs and their bratty son and old Mr. Big Bad is going to try and sneak into this home on Christmas. It turns out to be a bad idea as the little kid is a true screwball cartoon character with all the powers of the screwball. We get to watch this kid brutalize the wolf and get some laughs in the process. It’s light on your usual Christmas tropes, but there’s something there. What holds it back is just that, at this point in Avery’s career, there wasn’t a whole lot more he could do. It’s a lot of the same gags you’ve seen before and the attempts at making them bigger just lack imagination. I also don’t like the protagonist. I dislike his voice and most of his mannerisms so it ends up being one of those cartoons where you almost want to root for the bad guy. Eat the damn kid – he sucks!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
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For all of the success the cast of Looney Tunes have had on the silver screen, it’s rather surprising that they have never been given the chance to helm a feature in their native medium. Sure, we had Space Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, but both were live-action/animation hybrid films with one of those centering on a real life wanna-be baseball player. The Looney Tunes are cartoons, first and foremost. They make the most of their medium with wacky, screwball, antics and while those traits are able to show up in a live-action hybrid, they’re still limited and hamstrung by the technology available at the time. And yes, there was a Bugs Bunny/Road Runner movie, but that was not a true feature. It was basically a package film where some shorts were grouped together to pad out a feature sitting – hardly an honest to goodness attempt at a Looney Tunes movie.
That has all changed with The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, but it almost didn’t happen. The Peter Browngardt-helmed picture was conceived as an HBO Max exclusive back when Warner Bros. was going all-in on making the streaming platform a real Netflix competitor. The announcement came in 2021 and the first look at San Diego Comic Con in 2022, but following that things got murky. If you have been paying attention to the Looney Tunes franchise over the past few years, then you know how the franchise has been jerked around by Warner. A new set of cartoons were commissioned for theaters, but plans were quickly dashed and they were put on Max and Cartoon Network instead. Another live-action hybrid film was announced, Coyote vs ACME, and was allowed to go into production before ultimately getting cancelled. That film, which is finished or nearly finished, sits in limbo as a likely tax write-off for the horribly mismanaged corporation that is more than comfortable with turning its back on the stars that made it a household name.
The Day the Earth Blew Up was possibly heading for a similar fate, but was eventually allowed to be shopped around to find another distributor. In other words, Warner Bros. wasn’t going to distribute it on its own. Oh no, it felt better about taking someone else’s money for the privilege of doing so. The film’s budget is estimated to be at a mere 15 million, peanuts for a company of Warner’s size, but perhaps that’s what saved it. The Coyote vs ACME budget is estimated at somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 million making it a far more enticing tax write-off to the villains running the show. The fact that this little 2D animated film was so cheap is likely what saved it. And riding in to save it is Ketchup Entertainment. I don’t like pumping up corporations as heroes, but I’ll make an exception here. Ketchup acquired the North American distribution rights to the film and is the reason why the Looney Tunes property is getting a shot. I don’t know if it will pay off for them, but I’m doing my part to make sure that it does.
Porky and Daffy are your starts with not a rabbit in sight.
Now, most folks would have probably assumed that if a Looney Tunes movies was to happen it would be either helmed by Bugs Bunny or presented as an ensemble. It’s not. The Day the Earth Blew Up is a Porky Pig (Eric Bauza) and Daffy Duck (Bauza) vehicle that also brings Petunia Pig (Candi Milo) along for the ride. And it’s a smart premise to start from. Out of all the characters in Looney Tunes, the best, most logical, duo to center a film on is Porky and Daffy. Sure, they started out as adversaries with Porky in a hunter role and Daffy his would-be prey, but they would evolve over the years into unlikely partners. Often, Porky was the everyman of the group while Daffy was the instrument of chaos. His unpredictable nature would get Porky into trouble and foul things up. Later, Daffy would transition away from his looney roots to a schemer and Porky would be his sap. Sometimes, Porky got to be more of the comedic relief with Daffy a hapless protagonist as seen in the Duck Dodgers cartoons. For a sequence of cartoons that exist in increments of about 8 minutes, it’s pretty incredible how the relationship between these two has been presented over the years.
For this film though, we’re going back to basics. The Looney Tunes Cartoons which Browngardt oversaw were not shy about their affinity for Bob Clampett’s style. And it makes sense because the guys who outlived everyone (namely Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng) got to see their interpretations of the characters become the more recognized. Now, with everyone long gone, the animators of today are able to shine a spotlight on the guys who were left behind like Clampett and Tex Avery. Porky and Daffy are very much their Clampett interpretations with Porky a bit of a worry wart and Daffy his more looney self (and they get a lot of use out of that word in the movie). They’re given a backstory where they were found by a man named Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore) who raised them and eventually left his house and property to them with the advice to always stick together and take care of their home. In the modern day, they have stuck together, but have mostly let that house fall into a state of disrepair. A wayward asteroid puts a hole in their roof which proves a major problem for the pair as the local HOA rep (Laraine Newman) was due that day to come by and inspect the property.
We have ourselves an alien invasion plot, which gives the film a 50s vibe despite its modern setting.
Things do not go Porky and Daffy’s way and they’re given ten days to repair the roof or see their home condemned. The problem there is not only do they not have enough money for repairs, they don’t have jobs! This leads to a series of job failures by the duo until they eventually happen upon Petunia Pig who, as a flavor inventor for a local gum company, is able to get them factory jobs. Unfortunately, the hole in their roof was caused by an interstellar being (played by Peter MacNicol) who plans to use the factory’s gum and its much celebrated rollout of a new flavor as a way to seize control of the population! Daffy, Porky, and Petunia are the only beings on Earth capable of saving it, a prospect likely not to give anyone much confidence.
It’s an honest to goodness plot for the film rooted in 1950’s sci-fi movie tropes. If you were expecting something more scatter-brained and suited for their usual format, this isn’t it. This is a real feature that has real conflict, character growth, and a proper resolution. At 90 minutes, there are times when the film starts to feel a little long, but smart use of musical bits help break things up. No, this isn’t an actual musical, but it’s not afraid to use some licensed music to help speed things up and it’s usually done in a humorous way.
The movie does a great job of inventing characters that take advantage of the medium.
And humor is the film’s main goal as it never forgets its roots. The Day the Earth Blew Up is a very funny movie and it’s able to pull it off without an overreliance of recycled gags from the shorts. If you’re expecting a classic misdirection bit to occur between two characters then you may be surprised to hear there isn’t one. Less than 24 hours removed from seeing the film for myself, I’m having a hard time coming up with a bit lifted directly from an old short. There’s a reoccurring spit-take joke, but the spit-take is not a uniquely Looney Tunes gag so I’m not sure I’d count that. You’re going to get stutters from Porky and Daffy’s “hoot hoot” routine, but that’s expected. Instead, the film just relies on good timing and creative gags to induce laughter. It’s about as fresh as one could expect Looney Tunes humor to appear in 2025.
The voice cast and music do a great job of uplifting the movie. Eric Bauza has basically made himself a modern day Mel Blanc with how many characters he’s able to voice. I’ve seen some criticism of his Porky voice on the internet that I mostly don’t agree with. His Porky is not going to be mistaken for any other cartoon character. The stuttering has been toned down slightly, but I think that’s for the best since we’re talking 90 minutes vs 8. And his Daffy is just plain terrific. Do these characters sound exactly like they did in 1950? No, of course not, how could they? Mel Blanc is dead and has been for over 30 years. It’s my personal pet peeve when people criticize a film or show when the characters sound different either because a new actor took over or an existing one is aging. It’s what happens, folks. These characters get to outlive us all and it’s part of their appeal. The alternative is stitching things together with old tapes or A.I. which strikes me soulless. Or there’s recasting in the case of someone who is just getting old, but that’s taking away someone’s job. In short, yes, these characters sound different. Get over it!
The movie may star Porky and Daffy, but Petunia makes a mark as well.
In addition to Bauza we have Candi Milo as Petunia Pig. She does a fantastic job with the character, and unlike Porky and Daffy, she practically gets to start with a blank slate. Petunia was seldom used in the golden era, and when she was, she didn’t have much personality of her own. This film rectifies that making her a very ambitious scientist with a bit of a quirky side to her. The chemistry between she and Porky feels genuine and not tacked on and she’s allowed to be funny, just like the boys. MacNicol’s invader character, who is never given a name, is an interesting antagonist in that it’s allowed to remain somewhat mysterious while also getting to join in on the comic relief. Often with things happening to it as opposed to a result of something the invader does. Joshua Moshier’s score lives up to the reputation of the brand. He was able to record with a live orchestra and the film is all the better for it.
The star of the show is not really the characters or the voices, but the animation. Glorious 2D animation! If you have seen the more recent Looney Tunes Cartoons or the Animaniacs reboot on Hulu then you have a pretty good frame of reference for how The Day the Earth Blew Up looks. In my reviews of some cartoons from those respective shows, I’ve often come to the conclusion that they look as good as they possibly can for a modern production. Everything is digital, but with a hand-drawn flourish. This isn’t the puppet-like animation you find with adult animated sitcoms like Bob’s Burgers and The Simpsons. There’s actual squash and stretch animation here with exaggerated movements and excellent effects animation. Since this is a feature, it does look better than the TV counterparts, but not dramatically so. It’s a very interesting movie to look at and in some of the faster paced sequences it made picking out the visual gags and little touches more fun. I look forward to being able to watch this at home some day so I have the benefit of being able to linger on a scene a little longer than I could in a theater.
Hopefully, this won’t be all.
We had to wait a long time for a proper Looney Tunes movie, but The Day the Earth Blew Up was worth the wait. It’s another feather in the cap of this venerable franchise and it does nothing to harm its legacy, it only adds to it. It’s a funny, engaging, film that’s a treat for the eyes and should find little trouble in appealing to both kids and adults, provided both have at least some affection for Looney Tunes styled animation and humor. My two kids loved it, but I’ve also raised them on Looney Tunes (the Looney Tunes Golden Collection is one of the best purchases I ever made) and my daughter brought her well worn, much loved, Bugs Bunny plush to the theater with her so he could see his buddies in action. Unfortunately, the franchise is in the hands of Warner Bros. who can hardly be trusted as proper caretakers. For that reason, I’m skeptical we’ll get a sequel or another Looney Tunes movie in this style, but at least we have The Day the Earth Blew Up. If you’ve ever loved the Looney Tunes or 2D animation, then I urge you to check it out while it’s playing in theaters because who knows if we’ll ever get this chance again?
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When it comes to classic cartoons, few would argue against the merits of Warner Bros Studios’ Looney Tunes. Pretty much all of the major studios were invested in cartoon shorts in the 1930s into the 1960s and Warner was a gold mine for hilarious content. The Leon Schlesinger produced Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes churned…
Let’s try this one more time for 2023 – can we find a good Looney Tunes Christmas special? And more importantly, a good Bugs Bunny one? We’ve looked at two already that were merely okay. Nothing terrible, but hardly holiday classics. For our final go at this, I’m feeling a little more optimistic and that’s…
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Let’s try this one more time for 2023 – can we find a good Looney Tunes Christmas special? And more importantly, a good Bugs Bunny one? We’ve looked at two already that were merely okay. Nothing terrible, but hardly holiday classics. For our final go at this, I’m feeling a little more optimistic and that’s because we’re jumping to the world of Looney Tunes Cartoons. Looney Tunes Cartoons resulted from a meeting between Uncle Grandpa creator Pete Browngardt and Warner Bros. for an unrelated project. That meeting with Warner Bros. apparently didn’t go all that well as Browngardt wasn’t interested in whatever project Warner was selling. Audrey Diehl, the executive leading the meeting, apparently wanted to try to salvage something from it and asked Browngardt if there was a project that might interest him and I bet you can guess what his response was. Looney Tunes Cartoons was born out of that meeting in 2017 and Browngardt was put in charge of basically bringing back the classic characters in a format befitting them. He would team-up with artist Jim Soper and many other talented writers, artists and voice actors to create the show which finally premiered in 2020 on HBO Max.
The timing of the premiere kind of sucked some of the wind from the sails of Looney Tunes Cartoons. Not because the show was poorly received, but because it came during the great lockdown that was brought on by COVID-19. Locking the cartoons behind the HBO paywall also didn’t help matters and despite myself being pretty plugged into the world of animation, I didn’t see much of these new shorts until the next year. At that point, Cartoon Network had begun airing the first season as a means of promoting Space Jam: A New Legacy. If you want kids to go see a new movie based on the Looney Tunes characters it pays to make them accessible to today’s kids. When those episodes did land, I watched them with my kids and we all pretty much enjoyed them. Eric Bauza is probably the best Bugs Bunny since Mel Blanc and the characters both look and feel like Looney Tunes. They’re certainly different from the golden age and no one would look at one of these and mistake it for a classic short, but they can exist alongside it. My kids have also been raised on this stuff so that helped, and there was a period of time in my house where the new cartoons were preferred to the originals (that has since passed).
Part of that first season, but exclusive to HBO Max, is the show’s lone Christmas special titled Bugs Bunny’s 24-Carrot Holiday Special. It uses the star power of Bugs in its title, but it’s an ensemble piece like most television episodes of Looney Tunes with Bugs leading a segment alongside Porky, Daffy, Elmer, and others. A holiday special formatted for a half hour based on Looney Tunes is a bit concerning going in. These characters and shorts work best in quick hits, but as I said before, I’m cautiously optimistic going in as the shorts I’ve seen have been pretty good, but I’ve been burned before so I’m still going to keep my guard up.
A cozy holiday setting to set the mood.
The cartoon begins with a shot of the show’s logo covered in snow. The orchestra sounds like it’s warming up, and we smash to the classic WB shield, also covered with snow, and the familiar sting of “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.” An image of Bugs Bunny’s visage is shown like this is the start of a Bugs Bunny short, but it fades to be replaced by the title of the special over a warmly lit house like a classic holiday special of old. And orchestral version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” has replaced the usual Looney Tunes fair and as the logo fades the camera starts to zoom in until we find ourselves inside this cozy home. It appears to be an actual set, though with modern CG I suppose it’s possible I’m being fooled. I’m thinking it’s probably a combination as there’s a lit fireplace that looks a little off so maybe that’s being CG generated while the set is real. There’s a picture of Bob Clampett on the far wall and opposite him is Mel Blanc. There’s a very full and well decorated Christmas tree and a narrator chimes in to set the mood. He muses on the tradition of decorating the Christmas tree as the camera finds a wooden ornament of Daffy and Porky dressed as elves. The ornament is titled “Santa’s Little Helpers” and it’s a hint at the short to come.
Looks like Santa is having some labor issues up north. We’re going to need some scabs to save this Christmas!
That short begins without a title card, but according to Wikipedia it’s called Elf Help. We’re at the North Pole, and an announcer informs us that not all is well up here. The elves are on strike, and Santa can’t make Christmas happen without them as we see him attempt to wrap a gift and it bursts into flames. This is a news broadcast we’re watching and we’re transported to the home of Porky Pig (Bob Bergen) and Daffy Duck (Bauza) as they react to this news. Daffy is horrified at the thought that Christmas might be cancelled this year since he won’t be receiving any presents! His design is a noodlelike bowling pin and he’s more in-line with the Clampett Daffy personality wise, though his selfishness is a bit more from the Chuck Jones mold. Daffy is worried that he and Porky won’t be getting their usual delivery of Christmas coal, as he opens a closet to reveal a whole bunch of the stuff. He loves it though as it keeps their house warm and Porky seems to be of the same mind. Daffy then proposes that he and Porky head up there and help Santa turn things around. Porky wants nothing to do with crossing a picket line, but Daffy has no shame. And it also doesn’t take much convincing on his part to get Porky to agree to go and save Christmas.
And apparently these are just the scabs for the job.
We return to the North Pole and find a family of penguins just hanging around. The little penguin is basically the same character model as the penguin from the Bugs Bunny short Frigid Hare (he’s apparently named Playboy Penguin). An elevator comes shooting up out of the ice and dispatches the penguin family – just what are penguins doing at the North Pole anyway? Daffy and Porky emerge to “Jingle Bells” from the elevator. Daffy is full of enthusiasm while Porky is freezing. He probably should have put something on since he’s just wearing his blazer and bowtie. Daffy soon spies the striking elves and decides to show them a strike of his own. Gathering up his friend into a bowl, he hurls Porky towards the elves who get knocked out of the way with relative ease. Porky smashes through a window and gets lodged in something gray and squishy.
Santa is apparently a traditional, inept, corporate overlord.
It’s Santa! Daffy comes running in to find the big man miserable and his face covered in cookie crumbs. He’s in his long underwear and seems to be pretty deflated over this whole strike thing. When Daffy asks him where his usual jolly-ness went, Santa (Fred Tatasciore) confirms it died when his elves went on strike. Daffy tells him not to worry as he and Porky are here to help him get ready for Christmas. Santa somewhat sarcastically asks if they’re going to make all of the presents for Christmas and Daffy confirms that’s the intent. Santa then surprisingly jumps up and seems okay with this! He decides they’re the Christmas miracle he was waiting for, and he belly bumps them across the room to smash into the wall and slide down through some elf outfits hanging on said wall.
Looks like they’ve got this covered.
We cut to the two dressed in their elf attire almost giddily building toys. It’s set to a very cheery rendition of “Deck the Halls” and as the boys work on their toys Santa comes into view. He starts laughing almost hysterically until they ask what’s so funny? Santa then gestures to the toys they’re building, which include a wooden duck and other traditional trinkets, and tells them kids don’t want that crap anymore. What they want is high-tech video games! He slams a console down in front of the two that’s like a hodgepodge of an X-Box and a Super Nintendo which makes some futuristic type noises. He then ushers them along into the room where those are to be assembled: it’s a dark, windowless, cold room with posters on the wall of “Santa is Always Watching” that portray the jolly fat man more like the dreaded overlord the elves are protesting against. He encourages Porky and Daffy to have fun with it as he urges them in, but adds in a threatening voice, “Or else!”
Maybe I spoke a little too soon?
With the door slammed shut behind them, Porky and Daffy are left to figure out how to construct a game console. Porky is basically freaking out as he views this task as an impossible one. Because he is a good-natured ham, he’s actually worried about letting Santa down when I’m starting to think he isn’t deserving of any sympathy. He walks into a bookcase and a bunch of books fall out on top of him. Daffy tells him to cheer up as he picks up just the book they need: A Total Nincompoop’s Guide to Building a Video Game System. Daffy hands the book to Porky and instructs him to read while he makes adding the obviously fateful line of “This video game stuff can’t be that complex!” Porky starts reading off instructions while Daffy sets himself up at a conveyor belt. The camera focuses on a classic cat clock, only this one is dressed like Santa with a candy cane tail. I kind of love it and want one. Also of note, the calendar in the background suggests that the present date is December 3, which just so happens to be the day this went live on HBO Max. We hear Porky read out the instruction number as he stammers along finally reaching step one-thousand two-hundred seventy-six, which is basically final assembly. When he looks up from the book, he just sees Daffy with a pile of unrelated junk that he’s covering in glue.
Boy, that sure looks painful.
Porky is ready to freak out as this monstrosity does not resemble a game system in the slightest. It even features tentacles and what appears to be a giraffe’s knee. Daffy tells him to calm down and yanks on a pull chain which triggers a hydraulic press that smashes the two into each other with the…game console…in between them. The resulting collision reduces Porky and Daffy to a paper like consistency as they float to the floor, but it surprisingly turns Daffy’s stuff into something! Daffy declares they’ve done it, and at first we get a shot of an actual game console. Porky then adds it looks more like a killer robot to him and as the camera zooms out it’s hard to find fault with the pig’s assessment. The game console is on top of what is otherwise an intimidating machine. It’s boxy, purple, and on tank treads with spikes sticking out of it. It is indeed a killer robot as it reaches out an arm to grab Daffy while uttering “Destroy! Destroy!” Porky winds up getting smacked by the robot (wielding Daffy like a club) onto a conveyor belt and when he realizes he’s not moving as he runs he lets out this hilarious scream that sounds so convincing. It’s clear the pig thinks he’s about to bite the big one. The robot lifts Daffy and aims the duck’s rear at Porky. Cocking the duck like a shotgun, it then makes Daffy start firing eggs at Porky from Daffy’s…well, you can probably figure that part out for yourself.
He apparently had no built-in defense for a duck wielding a pig like a bowling ball. So long, killer robot!
The robot tosses the spent duck after assaulting Porky and closes in for the would-be kill. Porky begs the robot to spare them, which triggers an idea in Daffy’s brain. It’s either a callback to how he dealt with the elves, or just a repetitive gag, but Daffy declares “Why settle for a spare when you can have a strike?” and scoops up Porky once again and rolls him like a bowling ball at the robot. The robot was readying a bunch of missiles to kill the pair, but once struck by the Porky bowling ball they get deflected into the air above the robot. As they crest and begin their descent, the robot meekly pulls out a cocktail umbrella to shield itself which obviously results in a rather large explosion.
The sticking point for them was apparently their dental plan…dental plan…dental plan…
The rumble wakes up a napping Santa who heads to the factory to investigate. When he gets there, we find the robot has been destroyed, but the actual game console that was a part of its head has been left intact! Daffy presents it to Santa who seems rather impressed. He suggests they test it out and when he presses the power button on the device it, well, explodes. The explosion does nothing to Daffy and Porky, but Santa looks rather worse for ware. His face was nearly blown off and he’s covered in soot and as he fumes over the explosion he just keeps repeating “Why I oughta…” as he inches in ever closer to Daffy and Porky. Only after the third one, he returns to his usual demeanor and finishes his thought with “I oughta hire those elves back!” It’s very reminiscent of the gag where Ren of The Ren & Stimpy Show threatens Stimpy and Sven (“I gotta take a whiz!”), which was almost certainly referencing something from Looney Tunes that I’m not recalling off the top of my head.
There are some terrific screams in this cartoon. My hat is off to Eric Bauza and Bob Bergen.
Santa heads outside, and rather coyly, restarts the bargaining process with his striking elves. He ends it by offering a 20% raise if they return to work, but the apparent union leader just gestures for him to come up higher. Santa them grumbles and adds, “Plus dental,” and the elves all cry out with glee revealing mouths full of horrendous teeth. With the elves back to work, it would seem Christmas is saved which prompts Daffy to mosey on over to Santa and suggest that he and Porky deserve a present for kind of, sort of, saving Christmas. Santa agrees and hands the duck a gift. Daffy removes the top to find a game console and Porky seems delighted with the gift. The console then lifts up to reveal the killer robot the pair had crafted and both characters utter some terrific screams in horror. They run right through the wall and the robot chases after them and the cartoon ends with the pair racing over the snow-covered hills of the North Pole with the killer robot hot on their heels.
Taz just wants to spread holiday cheer in the old-fashioned way, but the world is apparently against him.
Our next segment stars Taz (Fred Tatasciore), everyone’s favorite ever hungry creature from down under. It’s a bit where Taz is out caroling, but something keeps interrupting him or otherwise causes him to flub what he’s doing. We start with an interior shot of a front door and the sound of someone knocking. The door opens and we see Taz with his book of carols in hand and a Santa hat on his head. He informs us that he’s going to sing a carol, but when he opens his mouth to sing we hear the cry of a cat. A surprised look crosses his face and he reaches down his throat to pull out a soaking wet orange kitty. Taz chuckles and remarks, “Cat got tongue,” and the owner of this dwelling slams the door in his face. The bit continues at different homes, but they all start the same way. At the next house, he tries to sing “Angels Heard on High” but the sound of police sirens keeps interrupting him until he eventually gets so mad that he destroys the police car. At the next house, he never even gets to his song as he’s enraptured with ringing the doorbell. The following house sees him disappointed in the handheld bell he brought with him for “Jingle Bells,” so he blows a raspberry at it and takes off only to return with a giant church bell which the occupant of the home apparently wants nothing to do with. The next door opens to reveal a trio of kids singing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and they sound lovely. Then Taz sees them, and viewing them as threats, chases them off. He returns with a scarf hanging out of his mouth that he sucks up like a string of spaghetti. I’m guessing he ate those kids. The door slams shut and the occupant locks all of the locks on it. Taz then peers through the mail slot and says “Taz know you’re still in there,” so the guy nails a 2×4 over the slot. The next house finds Taz looking grumpy, but he whips out his book and goes into a warm-up routine. When he finally starts singing, it’s the closing part of “Silent Night” and he has the voice of a woman who is an accomplished singer. The position of the camera then finally changes to an angled shot and we see the occupant of the house is Granny (Candi Milo). She just says “What?” and asks him to speak up as she pulls out one of those old-fashioned horns for hearing. Poor Taz looks utterly defeated.
Sylvester will experience much pain in this one, as he should.
We return to the Christmas tree and the narrator which started this whole thing. There’s an egg-shaped Taz ornament on the tree and we pan to one featuring Sylvester and Tweety in a shopping cart. The image dissolves onto a department store being ravaged by shoppers. Granny and Tweety (Bauza) come strolling up to take part in the big holiday sale and the pair have no trouble simply walking through the mob clogging the entrance. Emerging from a garbage can nearby is Sylvester (Jeff Bergman)who shares what he wants for Christmas – a delicious, yellow, bird. He has a much harder time getting through the mob as he first tries to push his way in, only for his arm to get sucked into it. He tries to run, but eventually his whole body gets sucked into the mob and flung through the store where he crashes into the hardware section and a circular saw splits him in two for a “Half Off” gag.
Where’s my Sylvester nutcracker, Warner?!
Granny and Tweety are off shopping and Tweety pulls out a sock from a bin of clearance, left, socks. He wears it like a stocking hat and prompts Granny to check him out, who ignores him. Sylvester emerges from the bin of socks, but before he can grab Tweety a clerk puts a 90% off sign on the bin and a mob of people descend upon it. They clear out the entire bin leaving behind just Sylvester’s nose and eyes. Tweety then tosses his “hat” back, declaring it too big, and one last person snatches it up along with the remains of the cat. Tweety and Granny then head to the nutcracker section and Granny instructs Tweety to pick out a good one. Tweety hops onto the shelf and draws Granny’s attention to a big, ugly, one. It’s Sylvester in disguise, and Granny scoops him up and declares they need to put it to the test. Sylvester is sweating profusely as Granny shoves a handful of walnuts into his mouth. She then uses his tail like a lever and Sylvester tries to crack the nuts, but all he does is crack his teeth. Granny keeps tugging to no effect prompting Tweety to smash Sylvester in the head with a novelty candy cane. The nuts fall out of his mouth, along with the remains of his teeth. Granny then nervously tries to put the defective merchandise back without anyone noticing and urges Tweety to come look at the Christmas trees. Sylvester emerges from the shelf, and with a pan and dust broom, sweeps up his shattered teeth and dumps them back into his mouth. The clinking foley on his teeth is most unpleasant.
And for that matter, where’s my Sylvester Christmas tree?!
In the Christmas tree section, Granny and Tweety survey their options. Tweety notes the trees are rather skinny, but Granny demonstrates they work like umbrellas as she opens one. Tweety then poses on top of another pretending he’s a star, but above him Sylvester is waiting to strike. He sings the opening verse to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” substituting the partridge for a yellow canary. He dives at Tweety, but the little bird flutters away leaving Sylvester to land mouth first on the tree. It goes all the way to his tail and Tweety, seemingly totally aware that Sylvester is trying to get him, tells Granny he likes this tree declaring it funky. Granny regards the cat tree curiously and then opens it up. Sylvester becomes a full blown Christmas tree, but Granny thinks he looks a bit scraggly. Tweety just thinks they need to plug it in, so he does, and Sylvester gets a good jolt as his eyes and nose turn into Christmas lights which promptly explode to an instrumental rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Sylvester with his face missing a nose is giving me my second The Ren & Stimpy Show impression of this special as his face has a very Stimpy-like appearance.
Sylvester always looks extra pathetic when naked.
We next find Granny and Tweety in the electronics section. Granny is occupied looking at the sales while Tweety is playing with a remote-controlled car. Sylvester, lurking behind a display television, tries to grab Tweety, but he moves out of the way just in the nick of time. Sylvester then picks up the TV and tiptoes after the bird using the television to keep himself hidden, only for the bit to repeat. After the third attempt, Sylvester turns the TV on to reveal himself looking quite angry before he turns it off. When he next places the TV down he has the misfortune of finding himself in a sale section with arrows and signs declaring the item is free. A mob descends upon Sylvester once more leaving him battered and furless. He remarks “It’s black and blue Friday,” before collapsing. We now cut to Sylvester in a wig tying some mistletoe to the end of a fishing rod. It would seem he’s going to give the old mistletoe routine a try as he casts the rod over a display where Tweety resides on the other side. The little bird looks up to see the flowers over his head and then Sylvester emerges in drag to point out the obvious. He declares that, by the laws of Christmas, they must kiss and as the cat puckers up Tweety concedes he doesn’t want to break the law. He also does not look at all thrilled about kissing Sylvester, but he closes his eyes and prepares to do just that, only for Sylvester to snap his jaw shut over him. Contented, Sylvester relaxes a little, until smoke starts escpaping from his mouth. He sticks out his tongue to find a lit menorah, and a cheerful canary wishing him a happy Hannukah.
Sylvester seems so touched by this gesture that I feel kind of bad for him that this will not end well.
Tweety hops down, but Sylvester is done playing around. He simply scoops the bird up in his hands apparently done with the little game they’re playing. As he tells Tweety what he’s about to do, Tweety informs the “puddy tat” that if he eats him then he won’t be able to give him his Christmas present. Sylvester is taken off-guard as Tweety produces the wrapped box. He takes the gift as tears well up in his eyes declaring that no one has ever given him a Christmas gift. He’s bathed in an angelic light and Tweety urges him to open it. Sylvester at first refuses for what would Santy Claus think of him? Tweety flirtatiously says “I won’t tell,” and that’s all the convincing Sylvester needs. He rips into the gift and pulls out a little catnip mouse. He says it’s what he’s always wanted and looks genuinely touched. As he gives it a squeak, the fur falls off revealing a stick of dynamite. Sylvester is then blown up and comes to rest on a pile of fruitcake in a fruitcake-like shape himself. Tweety sticks a sign designating the fruit cake as costing a mere fifty cents and the mob returns. Only this time they stop short, turn up their nose at the sight of fruitcake, and leave. This allows Tweety to do his customary mugging for the camera routine which has closed many a Tweety short previously. He declares that no one likes fruitcake, or puddy tats, and leaves us with a big, exaggerated, smile.
As was the case with Sylvester, much pain is ahead for Wile E. Coyote.
You may have expected this one to return to the Christmas tree, but we’re not ready to do that just yet. Instead, the iris shot which closes the preceding cartoon opens on a fairly familiar looking desert landscape. Only this time, it’s dotted with patchy snow. A trail of smoke ends with the familiar sight of a speeding road runner. He looks pretty much like the road runner of old, only with a more saturated blue tone. Nearby is the ever hungry Wile E. Coyote scoping out the road runner through a pair of binoculars. He also looks like the coyote of old, but with a floppy snout that adds a touch of ugliness to his design. He has a festive trap planned for his would-be dinner: a gift addressed to the road runner from Santa Claus. The gift is placed in the center of the road, and above it lurks a large boulder being supported by a small stick. It’s tied off with a red ribbon secured to a rock at ground level and when the road runner snatches his gift it should pull the stick free and cause the boulder to come crashing down upon him. How the coyote will consume the squashed remains is a problem for later. When the road runner comes upon the gift, the coyote braces for impact, which never comes. Instead, he looks to the road and sees another gift, this one addressed to him! He’s quite touched by the gesture and it’s hard not to feel like we just saw this exact same scenario play out with Sylvester a moment ago. It makes me think these were all produced independently. He cheerfully opens the present and inside is a stick. Not just any stick, mind you, but the stick that had been keeping the boulder at bay. It lurches forth and comes plummeting down to crush the coyote. It splits in half like an egg, and when the battered coyote emerges he too splits in half.
Who wouldn’t want that card on their fridge?
The next plot involves a phony Christmas picture photo booth. A sign beckons those who come upon it to come get their picture taken with a Christmas tree. We then see how this plan is supposed to unfold as the coyote opens a box for an ACME extra large mace. He puts the heavy, spiked, object on top of the tree and hits it with some yellow spray paint. He then consults his blueprints which shows that the road runner is supposed to stand on the “X” in the road and look at the camera while the coyote chops down the tree sending the mace onto him. The “meep meep” sound of the bird alerts the coyote to hide and as the road runner comes upon the trap, he falls for it! The coyote springs out from behind the tree with his axe and chops at the base. He does a pretty good job, but the tree does not fall. He kicks at it, pushes it, but to no avail as the road runner waits for the camera to go off. A few shoulder tackles finally gets the job done, but as the tree falls, the mace stays in place. It floats in the air a moment, and then falls on the coyote as the camera goes off and we’re treated to a Polaroid of the mangled mutt.
Since Santa and his reindeer are on the screen for a fraction of a second they must have felt like they could get away with only having four reindeer.
The next bit involves an ACME Santa’s Workshop kit. It’s basically a façade with a working door and behind it the coyote places a whole bunch of explosives. He then takes shelter behind a boulder where he keeps the detonator, a plunger styled device, and waits for his prey. The road runner comes upon the trap, looks it over a moment, then runs right through the door! The coyote pushes down on the detonator, and nothing happens. He does it a few times before he decides to investigate, but as he nears the door it swings open and out comes Santa Claus in his sleigh (pulled by only four reindeer – boo)! He leaves the coyote flattened, and the road runner is riding alongside him in the sleigh. As the coyote gets up and watches the two head out of sight, he regards the phony workshop curiously. He approaches with some trepidation, like he knows what’s likely to happen, and just before his hand touches the door it all explodes. The charred and angry coyote just looks at the camera and whips out a “Bah Humbug!” sign in defeat.
And now for the star of the show. Did they save the best for last?
Now, we return to the Christmas tree setting as we move away from a cactus ornament the narrator remarks the holidays are a time for sharing. The camera comes to rest on an ornament that reads “Love thy Neighbor” and the image dissolves to come upon the site of a mailbox beside a hole. This can only belong to one Bugs Bunny (Bauza), and we find the wabbit sitting by a roaring fireplace enjoying a nice cup of hot, carrot, tea. A large amount of snow comes down his chimney to blunt that fire, and when Bugs cries out another clump falls on him. He needs to investigate what’s going on and pops out of his hole as-if it were equipped with an elevator. This Bugs is the more streamlined Bugs as he appeared in his earliest cartoons. He also has yellow gloves, as the prototype Bugs featured, and I’m still torn on if I like the gloves or not. They’re a very pale yellow, but they still clash with the gray of his fur, but at least it’s different.
Elmer may have been forced to give up his shotgun, but otherwise little has changed between these two over the years.
The culprit for this snow storm is Bugs’ neighbor – Elmer Fudd (Bergman). Elmer has a pretty traditional design as well, but with perhaps a bit more exaggeration to his jowls. He’s shoveling his walk and tossing the snow wherever he pleases. Bugs approaches him and, rather politely, requests that he not do that. Elmer just declares it’s his home and he can do whatever he wants demonstrating that he is completely absent of reason. When Bugs, rather flirtatiously, reminds him that he should love thy neighbor he punctuates it with an “And I love you!” followed by a hug. Elmer tells him he hates him, and he hates his house too! He swats a lump of snow with his shovel like a baseball bat that takes out Bugs’ chimney. He then fires up a snowblower and blows the wabbit away. He follows that up by pounding the snow that is now over the rabbit hole, and while dusting himself off, declares that no one tells him what to do. This could quite literally be the hill that he dies on. Elmer then starts thinking about how he’s going to treat himself when he’s done clearing the snow. As he does, he’s oblivious to the snow rising beneath him as Bugs pushes it out of his hole. He tosses it, and Elmer, like a log and Elmer is still thinking about pie as he crashes into his own property. His head bursts out of the snow looking beat up and with some stylish snow hair!
Though I will say, Elmer just being a flat-out asshole in this one is a bit of a change for his character.
We then find Bugs trying to rebuild his shattered chimney, but he keeps getting hammered with more snow! It’s Elmer, who after getting dusted by the bunny needs to re-shovel his walkway and is tossing the snow back in Bugs’ direction. Bugs pops up behind him and casually asks him what he’s doing. He explains the situation, unaware that he’s talking to the wabbit that caused this mess. Bugs sympathizes with him, but then tosses in a casual reminder to mind those walkways this time of year as they can be mighty slippery. He then dumps a bucket of water on the surface Elmer is standing on which freezes instantly. He does a faceplant, and when he lifts his head up we see his face crack and shatter into pieces on the ground. Bugs then smashes him with a refrigerator for good measure.
Come on, Elmer! Usually, Bugs at least hides his ears to fool you, but here it’s like he’s not even trying!
Bugs then walks off thinking that problem is solved, but we still have several minutes left in this short which suggests it most certainly is not. He sings his own version of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” to substitute in shoveling the walkway, until a snowball hits him in the back of the head knocking him over. It’s an enraged Elmer, and Bugs confronts him and warns him not to do something he’ll regret. Elmer responds in kind with more snowballs and Bugs just…takes it? He gets repeatedly pelted with snowballs as he cries out in pain before falling face first in the snow. Elmer gets a few more shots in apparently targeting the ass of Bugs. When the camera switches to focus on him, we see an old lady come rolling up in a wheelchair behind him. It’s obviously Bugs, but he lifts off his disguise momentarily to wink at the camera in case there was any doubt. He then shouts “Junior!” and it’s clear he’s playing Elmer’s mother. Convincingly, apparently, as Elmer is fooled. She reprimands him for not dressing in layers before slamming a ton of clothes on him. She then tells him to finish the job and bash that rabbit and hands him what looks like a skinny Christmas tree from the Tweety short. Only it’s the top of an actual tree that Bugs just bent over and when Elmer takes hold of it he lets go sending the man on a trip through the air. He crashes into a funeral home, which explodes on impact, leaving behind a somber looking grave complete with tombstone.
The wreath is one of the few hints of Christmas in this short and it even mysteriously vanishes from the door in the next shot.
We get a nice close-up on the headstone which reads “Here Lies Elmer Fudd, Loved by neighbors (not really)” and his date of birth is just 1940 and date of death 2020. The headstone then splits and an enraged Elmer emerges from behind it. He’s going to bash that wabbit, and his weapon of choice is a lead pipe (I guess found in the rubble of the funeral home?). He goes rushing off to seek his revenge, but is taken aback when he gets to his house and finds all of the snow is gone. There’s a nice wreath on his door and that along with the stocking on Bugs’ fireplace is about the only Christmas this short has. When Elmer approaches the house, Bugs shows up to say he’s responsible. He felt bad about how things had gone down, so he cleared all of the snow. Elmer is overjoyed and invites the rabbit in for tea, but in doing so also declares that he was in the right this whole time and is glad that Bugs came to see that. This might have been a wrong move, though it also seems like the trap was already laid, for when Elmer inquires what Bugs did with all of the snow he’s told it was put in a place that will make them both happy. Bugs opens the front door and a wall of snow is visible which basically explodes from the house, including the chimney! Bugs then walks away content with his work, but the mountain of snow that was Elmer’s house shudders and explodes leaving behind a monstrous snow plow and an angry, little, bald man behind the wheel.
Wait – he’s had this massive plow the whole time he was shoveling?!
Bugs then remarks “Too far?” as he runs for his life while Elmer drives after him, his face purple and red with rage. He chases Bugs to the edge of a cliff and as Bugs finds his back up against nothing but thin air, he uses cartoon magic to get out of the predicament by simply crawling along the underside of the cliff like a gecko or something. He emerges from behind the snow plow as Elmer waits to hear the scream of Bugs as he falls. And since he’s doing so, he’s not actually watching what he’s doing as Bugs encourages him to keep moving “a little further” until he finds himself suspended in midair. Once he realizes what he’s done, the plow falls and explodes upon impact on the ground below.
Silly Elmer, don’t you know the wabbit always wins?
There Bugs finds the unconscious, but still rather put together, Fudd. He resorts to the old painted glasses trick and paints a beach setting onto the lenses and puts them on Elmer’s face before he regains consciousness. Once he does, he’s soon convinced by Bugs that summer is here! He puts on his best green Speedo and sets himself up with a nice beach chair. As he settles in to enjoy some rays and reflects on his apparent victory over the wabbit, we smash cut to Elmer completely frozen like the end of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Bugs emerges from behind him to declare that Elmer’s victory has been frozen in time. He then has a laugh at Elmer’s expense, who can only blink his eyes, and we return to the living room setting.
Bugs gets to do the honors of wishing us a happy holiday, which is fitting.
The narrator then attempts to wrap this thing up. And as he does, we see the arm of Bugs reach out from in front of a lounge chair to grab a carrot and milk. The camera changes to then show Bugs outright revealing that he is, in fact, our narrator. Before he can wish us a merry Christmas, he’s overtaken by a fit of coughing, which once over returns his voice to its natural sound. He waves at the camera and apologizes for his allergies, then ends with a “Thanks for stopping by and Happy Holidays!” Cue the “That’s all folks!” screen, sans Porky, and put a bow on it!
This edition of Looney Tunes Cartoons is, without question, the best half hour of holiday themed Looney Tunes content we’ve ever been graced with. It’s better than the other toons we’ve looked at this year, and probably better than Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales. It’s helped by having character designs that are pretty much classic interpretations of the characters with just a touch of added stylizing. The voice acting and sound design are both terrific, and the quality of the animation, while obviously digital, is pretty damn good for what it is. One could perhaps quibble with the length of this one as it’s three standard-length shorts with a pair of smaller segments used to break them up. And yet, I quite liked the bit with Taz trying to carol and the Road Runner segment was rather short and sweet. Of the meatier segments, I think the Daffy and Porky one was probably my favorite of the three. It had a conventional plot of two dim-witted characters chipping in on Christmas, but with the added subtext that this version of Santa is kind of a monster and the helpers are scabs. He’s more like an evil overlord, and while it made him rather unlikable, he at least did the right thing in the end. The Sylvester and Tweety short was fairly typical of the duo with the cat trying to capture the bird, but getting outwitted by him at every turn. It had some solid gags and I rather enjoyed seeing Sylvester as a Christmas tree, but man, I hate fruit cake jokes so it had a bit of a sour ending.
It really is almost..time…for Christmas!
The weak spot for me was the Bugs Bunny cartoon. Not because it was bad, it was actually quite entertaining, but because IT WASN’T A CHRISTMAS SHORT! This whole month I’ve been trying to find not just a good Looney Tunes Christmas special, but a good Bugs Bunny one too and in a way I’m still left wanting. The Bugs Bunny cartoon is basically a snow fight between him and Elmer and the only Christmas I noticed was the wreath on Elmer’s door and some decorations on Bugs’ fireplace. What a bummer. They could have just tossed Santa into the end or something and had him play a role in settling things, but maybe they didn’t want to since that’s how the Road Runner segment ended? Again, not a bad cartoon, just not really a Christmas one.
The wrap-around segments with the uncredited narrator added a little holiday charm, but it also felt a tad derivative. There was no gag, unless you count the Bugs reveal at the end which was hardly a shock, so it felt surprisingly earnest. It very much reminded me of the Mickey Mouse special Once Upon A Christmas and its sequel. It’s an easy way to make a Christmas special feel like a Christmas special so I don’t fault them for doing it, but just wish they did it better.
Even though I admittedly have one rather big problem with this Christmas special, I still think it’s deserving of a recommend. I could recommend the other Looney Tunes specials as a curiosity piece, but this one works as just good entertainment. Which is how I view the whole of Looney Tunes Cartoons. It’s a solid B+ show that’s keeping these characters alive outside of Space Jam, and for that I’m thankful. For now, this one appears to only be available on HBO/Warner’s Max platform, which is unfortunate. Maybe it will get a showing on Cartoon Network, but don’t count on it. It looks like it’s available for purchase digitally, and you may even be able to find it elsewhere. I think it’s worth checking out and there’s a bunch of other Christmas stuff on Max so a one-month subscription might be just the ticket for your holiday entertainment, though maybe not at this point since we’re nearing the end of the season. Hey, there’s always next year!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
When it comes to The Christmas Spot, I have very few rules. I definitely favor animated Christmas specials, but that’s not some rule I’ve created for myself. The programs don’t have to be all ages, they don’t have to be “nice,” and they certainly don’t have to be any good as I’ve looked at an…
One of my favorite modern Christmas specials is the DuckTales episode “Last Christmas.” I feel like anytime I talk DuckTales I have to specify which era, though in this case I really shouldn’t since the original DuckTales never did a Christmas episode. To make up for that, the 2017 edition of the show did two…
During the late 80s Nintendo was on fire in the US. The Nintendo Entertainment System came storming into living rooms, basements, and dens across the country making Mario and Luigi household names. In addition to video games, there were tons of licensing deals for clothing, school supplies, bedding, you name it. If it could be…
It was just over a week ago that we took a look at the Christmas episode of The Looney Tunes Show. That show featured the cast of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies in an animated sitcom and it was…okay. It definitely didn’t feel like Warner stumbled onto something with that idea and the search for a worthwhile Christmas special starring Bugs Bunny continues. After that show more or less failed, Warner went back to the drawing board with Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production which would take those same characters and put them in a setting more familiar to them. The show would center around Bugs Bunny and feature some loose continuity. Later seasons would see other stars more prominently integrated. Erik Kuska is credited as the developer of the program which was executive produced by Sam Register. The design of the show would take these characters back to their infancy really with Porky more rotund and Daffy a screwball type instead of the jealous, scheming, duck of the Chuck Jones era. Bugs, for his part, was back to being his rascally self. His design might be a touch more Bob Clampett than we saw in The Looney Tunes Show, but overall he feels a bit more stylized and unique.
The show was originally called Wabbit and was a Bugs Bunny vehicle until someone realized that these characters work best as an ensemble.
The show began as Wabbit, but by its second season it was simply New Looney Tunes. I kind of hate it when a venerable property gets rebranded as “New” because it will inevitably be not the newest version at some point. Wabbit was a solid title, but I get that they wanted to move on from it when the show stopped being centralized on Bugs Bunny. Nevertheless, it’s approach is pretty true to classic Looney Tunes with the caveat that it’s being made in 2018 and not 1945. Anvils apparently were out in favor of more modern implements of destruction, but this is a toon where the bad guys get hurt, blown up, and traditionally have their violent actions redirected upon themselves. Unlike The Looney Tunes Show, I was aware of the existence of this show at the time and watched a little of it. I got the impression that guns were deemphasized though I don’t know if that’s necessarily true or not. As we’ll see in this short to come, there were ways to work them in. The show also premiered on both Cartoon Network and its offshoot Boomerang, which I believe only exists as a streaming service now, but might still be a channel on cable too. Once again, I couldn’t confirm another suspicion of mine, but I think Warner was hoping this would give Boomerang a boost as they premiered it on both platforms and then moved the show over to Boomerang exclusively. Get the kids hooked on the channel with wide distribution and get the parents to fork over extra money so they can continue to watch it on the subscription service. Pretty clever, though I have no idea if it worked. Considering I rarely encounter kids who know these characters outside of Space Jam, my guess is it didn’t move the needle much.
Some of these designs obviously date back to the origins of these characters, but most also feature some element of stylization unique to this show.
New Looney Tunes not only returns the characters to their roots, but also to a more natural running time. Each episode is two cartoons and they only total around 11 minutes. These cartoons are designed to bring the action and find a quick resolution. Even so, these feel a little shorter than the classic ones which I want to say normally ran for 8 minutes or so. These don’t even hit six. During the first season, New Looney Tunes did tackle Christmas. The show premiered on the Boomerang streaming service, and as far as I can tell, never aired on Cartoon Network. There is a separate date of February 8, 2018 that I assume is for the Boomerang cable airing though that’s a rather peculiar date for a Christmas episode premiere. Talk about a mistake to leave a holiday themed cartoon behind a paywall. If any were going to get a big premiere on Cartoon Network, it should have been the Christmas one as that’s easy ratings. It’s just yet another curious decision by Warner and if you were paying attention in 2023 then you know they had plenty more still to come.
The show begins with an original composition by Joshua Funk titled “Wabbit.” No offense to Funk, but it doesn’t feel like the right song for this program. In his defense, he was tasked with creating a song for a Bugs Bunny show and not specifically a Looney Tunes one. To no one’s surprise, once the show did change focus the opening theme did as well bringing back “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.” The interesting thing about the opening is it contains a shot of Bugs outside his rabbit hole with his mailbox on display. He jumps down it to coincide with the lyric “Going down the rabbit hole,” which leads to clips from the cartoons that will be following this. I take it they did this for every episode in the first season? That’s pretty interesting and I can’t recall a show that did something similar.
The return of fat Porky!
When the cartoon begins, we find Bugs Bunny (Jeff Bergman) looking over his shopping list. All of the names (Sylvester, Tweety, Daffy, Taz, and Foghorn, if you’re curious) are crossed out except one: Squeaks. Squeaks the Squirrel (Dee Bradley Baker) is a new creation for the this show and he’s the neighbor of Bugs. He’s shown in the intro and bares a resemblance to the MGM character Screwy Squirrel. As Bugs enters the store, we see a sign that says “Holiday Shopping Season Is Here – Only 360 Days left!” so we’re apparently not even close to Christmas. Porky Pig (Bob Bergen) is the doorman and he’s not only back to being rather large, but also quite tall. He might even be taller than Bugs! He’s also dressed like a nutcracker and following his stuttering greeting Bugs asks him where he could find an Easy Cook Acorn. It’s apparently a big seller, and as Porky tries to get out where the item can be found, Bugs gives up and walks on by. Porky, to his credit, doesn’t seem to mind. I’m guessing this happens to him a lot.
He’s become desensitized to the swine atrocities that surround him on a daily basis.
Bugs goes bounding past some aisles and then ducks down one to retrieve the very last Easy Cook Acorn. As he holds it up triumphantly, a large crate of hams lands on him. It’s Yosemite Sam (Maurice LaMarche), who hops off the top shelf to retrieve this hot holiday item from the crushed remains of Bugs Bunny. He’s back to being a very short man, but he’s also quite round now with bad teeth. He’s definitely designed to be some sort of rich Texan and he has a little exposed chest hair and his bandit mask is still quite prominent. As Sam yanks the toy away from Bugs, he remarks that he plans to sell it for 100 times the asking price and takes off. After he leaves, we hear Porky over the store’s intercom requesting a clean-up on aisle “never mind” as he can’t get the number out on account of his stutter and just says “I’ll do it.” He then comes into frame mopping up the ham juice while Bugs continues to remain motionless. He remarks to the camera “I’ve always been conflicted that we sell these,” which makes sense since he’s basically mopping up the remains of a potential relative.
Porky is getting way more facetime than I anticipated.
We then cut to Yosemite Sam running triumphantly down another aisle only for a huge barrel of eggnog to get tipped over in front of him. As the viscous liquid spreads, Sam gets stuck in it. Bugs pops out from where the can was and snatches the acorn thing and takes off. Porky then comes into frame with his mop to clean up the latest mess and Sam asks him why it’s so sticky as he can’t even get his boots out of it. Porky tells him it’s eggnog and that it’s mostly made of eggs. When Sam points out that eggs aren’t this sticky, Porky responds “Yeah, but that’s all yolks!” Oh Porky, you never miss an opening! Sam just grimaces and yanks his feet out of his boots to scramble after the rabbit.
That’s a rather speedy forklift.
Bugs, looking over his shoulder as he runs, remarks that Sam has a “Scrooge” loose, but he soon loses the acorn to him when he runs past a ladder Sam was standing on (his boots are back on, which is consistent with how a classic short resets everything after every gag). Sam laughs, but Bugs dropkicks the ladder out from under him and regains possession of the acorn box. As he runs, he soon finds the lift portion of a forklift slide under his arms and pick him off the ground. A laughing Sam is, of course, driving it, but he’s too proud of himself to react when Bugs jumps out of it just before he slams into a display for Block-O, obvious Lego knock-offs. I’m a little disappointed they used the same generic name as The Simpsons, but I’m guessing more than just those two shows have relied on the same.
This happens more than once. He’s not a very smart man.
We cut to the electronics section where Sam finds himself surrounded by television sets. As he ponders where Bugs could have gone, he hears the rabbit call out and finds him right over his shoulder. He tries to tackle Bugs, but it was just the rabbit on TV. This goes on for a bit as Sam keeps smashing into TVs that Bugs was on and I kind of like that this cartoon gets something dated into it. I associate classic Looney Tunes with lots of stuff that dates them, and a TV section at a big box store with a display camcorder that would be connected to a television is definitely something I haven’t encountered for years. Sam eventually finds Bugs, who was in the midst of making a crack about how all of the weight a camera adds to a person went to Sam’s head, before taking off again with a half-hearted “Yipe.” That’s already the second one and feels a bit too formulaic even for a Looney Tunes short.
Spoiler alert: this is the closest we’re going to get to a Santa sighting during this post.
Sam runs after Bugs, but soon gets distracted by the Santa’s Village section of the store. Sam then gets the bright idea that he can just ask Santa for one of them there acorn toys rather than deal with the rabbit. He then proceeds to just shove everyone out of the way including one woman and a stroller which is a pretty funny, and harsh, visual. He gets to Santa and jumps on his lap and we, the audience, can tell right away that it’s Bugs in disguise. Sam tells him what he wants: a train set, a pony, some TNT, and the Easy Cook Acorn. He’s pretty giddy about the whole thing, but Santa Bugs has to consult his Naughty List, and sure enough, Sam is on it. If you thought that would end this discussion you thought wrong. Sam instead pulls out a pair of pistols and points them at Santa demanding the presents he requested. The guns are clearly designed to be old fashioned, black powder pistols which was likely a requirement to get them into this cartoon. They’re also partially obscured by the list in front of Bugs and we only get a real glimpse of them when Santa agrees to Sam’s demands and he cheerfully tosses them in the air.
That poor pony.
Sam dives into his gifts while Bugs tries to slink away. We hear Sam hollering from off camera “My train set! My pony! My T-N-…” followed by an explosion. We pan back to see Sam covered in soot with his hair shot back from the blast and the poor pony too. What did that pony do to deserve to get blown up?! We then jump back into the chase routine as Bugs goes running down yet another nondescript aisle. In search of a place to hide, he dives behind a store display for a train set and Sam appears to see him do so. Once behind it, he finds another shopper (Candi Milo) doing the same as she has an Easy Cook Acorn under her arm too. She’s real excitable and acts like the two are in a foxhole together. She tells Bugs to cover her as she makes a break for it. Bugs just remarks to himself that next year he’s doing all of his shopping online. We never find out if the woman made it to the register or not. I like to think she did.
I hope she made it.
Sam reaches down from atop the train set to once again reclaim the acorn set by yanking it from the hands of Bugs. As Sam runs off, Bugs overhears Porky calling out about free samples of potato pancakes. Bugs runs over and scoops up a handful taking the time to tell Porky he’s going to need another clean-up. He doesn’t even get the full sentence out before Porky just says “I’m on it,” and grabs his trusty mop. Bugs then whips the pancakes like shrurikens at the feet of Sam causing him to go sliding into a display of Christmas yard decorations. Bugs cries out “What the?” as he sees Sam’s head emerge inside a giant snowglobe. Sam shakes out the cobwebs and takes notice of the Easy Cook Acorn sitting nearby on the floor. He pushes the snowglobe and it leaves the base of the decoration like a giant, glass, hamster ball. That must be one expensive yard decoration. Bugs just remarks “Oh brother,” then gesturing to a giant, store display stocking adds “This guy’s been ‘stocking’ me all day. It’s time to sock it to him,” and he jumps into the stocking.
So long, screwy!
We then see the two set for a collision. Sam rolling in his ball towards the Easy Cook Acorn and Bugs bounding in his stocking for the same. The two arrive at the same time and Bugs uses the oversized stocking to punt Sam clear out of the picture. He is forced to add “I really gave him the boot!” These quips aren’t really doing it for me. Sam winds up getting wedged between two objects on the ceiling, I have no idea what they’re supposed to be, and the globe breaks open. Despite it sounding like rolling glass earlier, it looks to be a plastic inflatable and Sam falls out of it to land in the gift wrapping department. The unassembled box he lands on then springs to life to seal him in and Bugs slides over to wrap it and launch it into the back of a box truck which drives away.
Dated reference aside, this was a solid joke to go out on.
Bugs is then shown leaving the store with the Easy Cook Acorn secure under his arm. He’s happy to have that ordeal over with and also happy with himself for getting the very last Easy Cook Acorn. He then spies a large truck being driven by Foghorn Leghorn (Bergman) who is speaking with Porky. It’s a huge delivery of Easy Cook Acorns. Porky tells him to take it over to the loading dock and Bugs looks at the camera with an annoyed expression. Hey Bugs, be happy a bunch of kids, or squirrels, will get their Easy Cook Acorns this year. I almost get the impression he was going to resell it like Sam was planning on doing. That’s the end though as we smash cut to an image of Bugs’ hole (that sounds pretty gross) and “New Looney Tunes” above it. This must be the standard act break between shorts. We then get a very quick interlude of a kid excitedly running down the stairs at Christmas. He rips open his present to find Yosemite Sam still sealed inside. The kid says, in a disappointed tone, “You’re not a Tickle-Me-Barbarian” and Sam just responds “My guess is you were naughty this year.” I can’t believer we were still making Tickle-Me-Elmo jokes in 2017.
Meet Squeaks. He’s actually not going to be around much in this short.
Now our second short begins titled “Winter Blunderland.” It begins with Squeaks showing Bugs that he’s written a letter to Santa Claus. Squeaks just speaks in…squeaks…but Bugs can understand him. It’s basically like how Luke can understand R2-D2 in Star Wars. Also, he sounds like Gizmo from Gremlins. Bugs is decorating his mailbox with Christmas lights and seems amused that Squeaks is writing a letter to Santa. Squeaks insists he saw Santa in the forest and runs off, but Bugs decides to follow him as he seems intrigued by the little guy.
There were a lot of new foils created for Bugs Bunny in this show and The Barbarian is one of them.
Squeaks soon comes upon The Barbarian (Steve Blum), a new character created for the show that’s just a big man in a loincloth. He’s always joined by his polar bear buddy Krakos (Baker) who behaves like a somewhat realistic polar bear, but he gets to wear armor. Barbarian is looking to do some thieving as that’s apparently all he does, but it soon becomes clear that he’s the one Squeaks mistook for Santa. It’s made all the more obvious when Barbarian gets some snow on his head that somehow takes on the shape of a Santa hat. Squeaks comes running over waving his letter in the Barbarian’s face who seems genuinely confused by what’s going on. He falls onto his butt and Squeaks jumps onto his lap and seems rather insistent that he take his letter. When he finally does, Squeaks leaves satisfied while Bugs witnesses what happened. He vows to get that letter back to make sure it gets to its proper destination.
Bugs is actually going to take quite a beating in this one.
If you thought maybe The Barbarian was a decent fellow who would just drop the letter in the mail you thought wrong. He’s also stupid and doesn’t really know what it is and even tries eating it. He eventually just decides that since stealing is what he does he’ll just keep the thing and slides it into his beard. Bugs then shows himself by hitting the guy with a snowball and demands the probably smelly Barbarian hand over the letter. That’s when the Barbarian actually realizes what it is and regards it in a somewhat disinterested manner. Maybe he would have done as Bugs said, but Bugs also decides to threaten him with another snowball which the Barbarian scoffs at. He then scoops up some snow of his own which forms into a massive snowball. Bugs utters another “Yipes!” as he tries to run away only for the Barbarian to nail him with the snowball which smashes him up against a giant rock.
Bugs wants that letter, but The Barbarian refuses to surrender it. Those are the stakes.
The Barbarian is then shown remarking to Krakos that they need to get back to stealing while Bugs is lurking from high up on a mountain. Or maybe it’s more like a hill as we see from the side angle, but I think they’re just having some fun with perspective. Bugs is also holding a tiny, Coco Puffs, sized snowball in between his thumb and index finger and lining it up with The Barbarian. He then gently rolls it down the hill and soon the cereal-sized snowball becomes a massive onslaught of snow that starts uprooting trees on its path towards The Barbarian. When the burly man finally sees the thing coming for him it’s too late and he’s crushed. The snowball breaks apart and Bugs comes trotting in to attempt to snatch the letter and a seething Barbarian emerges from the snow with an even more Santa-like appearance. He intends to keep that letter since he views it as his and that’s all that matters to him. A sensible person would let the worthless letter go, but it would seem this guy is anything but sensible. As Bugs tries to yank it from The Barbarian’s beard he gets punched in the face for his troubles and soars off screen.
The bear trap in the collection pot. Classic.
Krakos approaches The Barbarian who seeks some accolades from his bear buddy for ringing that rabbit’s bell, as he puts it. Krakos seems to be in agreement as he nods his head, but he looks angry about it so I can’t tell if he’s actually on The Barbarian’s side or not here. The two are interrupted by an actual ringing bell and it’s Bugs who is dressed like a mailman or something, but in green, and doing a Salvation Army bit. Bugs urges The Barbarian to make a donation and even suggests donating letters to Santa, but The Barbarian informs him that he doesn’t give – he takes! He reaches into the collection pot instead and Bugs informs him he was counting on that. We hear the snapping sound of a bear trap closing on the hand of The Barbarian and Bugs takes off. Krakos laughs at his “friend” which seems to indicate that maybe he is on the side of Bugs. The Barbarian just angrily demands the bear find him and tosses Krakos in the direction of Bugs.
That’s no snowman, you dumb bear!
Krakos is apparently an obedient bear as he starts sniffing around and comes upon a snowman. As he sniffs the carrot nose it vanishes leaving the bear perplexed. As he investigates the snowman more, the stick arms start to move and the top hat winds up on Krakos’ head. Bugs then waves a stick arm and gives some repeated whistles and Krakos responds by acting like a dog eager for a game of fetch. Bugs tosses the stick which lands at the feet of The Barbarian. Krakos comes running into frame and tackles him by mistake as the two slide out of frame.
Oh joy. The return of Christmas Carol.
We then cut to Bugs standing in the woods dressed in drag. It just wouldn’t be a proper Bugs Bunny Christmas special without at least one appearance of the rabbit in a dress. This purple dress with a bonnet looks awfully familiar and when The Barbarian approaches it’s confirmed for me why this dress looks so familiar as Bugs introduces himself as Christmas Carol. I can’t believe they’re repeating a bit from The Looney Tunes Show. Bugs even mugs for the camera for a second like we’re supposed to know this, but I bet most wouldn’t. Carol then asks The Barbarian if he would like to hear a Christmas carol and he actually responds rather enthusiastically and asks her if she knows the one “filled with false and unrealistic expectations?” Carol responds by singing “The Carol of the Bells” and Barbarian confirms that’s the one he was thinking of. Bugs then starts changing the words to describe their current situation telling him he took the letter and now he’s going to take it back and so on and so forth. He starts smashing The Barbarian with the little bell he’s holding. Barbarian even gets in on the action as he responds in melody confirming he took the letter and then uproots a tree to try and smash Bugs with it, but he just hits himself repeatedly.
I’ve never had them, but I can relate to being entranced by the scent of roasting nuts from such a cart.
Once The Barbarian collapses in the snow, Bugs takes off with the letter. Proving his resilience once more, The Barbarian intercepts him on a frozen pond. Bugs gets knocked on his back, but he deftly spins his nemesis and sends him sliding across the ice. Remarking, “What a neanderthal,” he goes to place the letter in his fur only for The Barbarian to come sliding past him snatching the letter in the process. He hops to his feet and remarks that he’s pretty fast for a big guy, but soon is distracted by an aroma. It’s coming from a nut roaster who is obviously Bugs Bunny in disguise. The Barbarian walks over and requests an order, but Bugs tells him he’s all out of packaging and asks if he has any paper he can place the nuts in. The Barbarian hands over the letter, but then demonstrates he’s not as slow as we all think he is. He realizes it’s Bugs and pulls off the rabbit’s moustache. It was held on by an elastic, which Bugs removes from his head and releases from behind his nut roasting cart. The band grabs the whole cart and carries it right into the face of the Barbarian who goes sailing across the ice once again.
This Poseidon is anything but merciful.
The Barbarian rises up in anger, and grabbing a club, declares that this is the end! Bugs then encourages him to mind the thin ice he’s standing on and when The Barbarian looks at his feet he finds all of the hot nuts Bugs had been roasting came to rest on the ice in a circle around him. He soon falls through the ice and the resulting splash freezes instantly trapping The Barbarian inside in a humorous position. Bugs waves the letter about remarking that it’s better to give than to receive, basically one final dig at the hapless barbarian.
These two seem to have no trouble getting along.
Bugs then heads over to his finely decorated mailbox and puts Squeaks’ letter in it. Krakos is there as well and is seemingly no threat at this point as Bugs even remarks to him how cute it is that Squeaks wrote a letter for Santa. The mailbox then starts to shake and we hear a “Ho! Ho! Ho!” from offscreen. Sparkles ring the mailbox and it soon opens all by itself and the letter floats out and is carried off into the sky. Bugs and Krakos look shocked as they watch the letter fly away and Bugs simply turns to the bear to excuse himself for he has a letter to write! He dives into his hole and that’s the end. We don’t actually get to see Santa so we’re denied a moon shot. Bummer.
And away goes the letter. Merry Christmas, Squeaks!
I think I enjoyed these two shorts more than I enjoyed the holiday episode of The Looney Tunes Show, but I think we’re still in search of something that could be considered worthy of Bugs Bunny’s reputation. Both shorts were two characters essentially playing tag with an item. In the first one, we had Bugs and Yosemite Sam fighting over a toy in a department store with the confrontation escalating throughout. The gags were okay and the best joke was probably Porky’s line about mopping up the ham juice, but there wasn’t really anything truly memorable about it. At least Maurice LaMarche got to do a proper Yosemite Sam this time and he was terrific in the role. Bergman’s Bugs remains consistent, though the writing wasn’t great. His one-liners are pretty bad and I can’t tell if they’re trying for a “So bad it’s good,” kind of thing with them or if we’re supposed to take them at face value. It was fine, but it’s but a footnote in the history of Bugs Bunny.
The second short was mostly more of the same. I did like the character of The Barbarian and I was able to accept that he’s just so single-minded and prideful that he wouldn’t relinquish a worthless letter under any circumstances. Most of the gags were predictable at first, but I suppose the nut roaster deserves some credit for being a different way to introduce some fire into the mix to melt the ice. The Christmas Carol gag works far better here than it did in The Looney Tunes Show for what it is. I did like the joke that Lola is such a bad writer that she named a character that, but after that the rest of the jokes at the character’s expense were lacking. Here it’s just a simple bit and the exchange Bugs and The Barbarian have was the short’s best part and maybe the best sequence between the two cartoons. I am a little salty at being denied a glimpse at Santa though, not that it would have really made the experience that much better.
There were some decent gags to be found in this one, but nothing to write home about, though apparently plenty to blog about.
After looking at two different Looney Tunes holiday specials I am still left wanting. This was a step in the right direction, but it’s not going into my personal holiday rotation. Nostalgia may even still win over when it comes to Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales even if I concede that holiday special isn’t very good. Even though it’s not going onto my annual “Must Watch” list, I do think it’s worth a look for those who have access to it and have never seen it. At just 11 minutes, it’s hardly much of a commitment. You can find New Looney Tunes streaming on HBO Max and Boomerang and maybe the actual Boomerang channel will even air it or has aired it if that’s something you have. And for those who are hoping for something better, we do have one more shot this year at just that and I intend to follow through so keep checking back each day to find out if there is a worthwhile Looney Tunes Christmas special out there.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
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I’ve been known to be a bit critical of Warner Bros. for not creating more Christmas shorts. The most notable one is Gift Wrapped starring Tweety while Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck basically had to wait until after the Golden Era to give Christmas a whirl. And those weren’t really that great. Low key, the best Christmas anything featuring a Looney Tunes character might be the episode of Taz-Mania. Tweety’s old short is fine, and we’ve seen some decent Christmas episodes of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, but it is a shame that we don’t have a great Bugs Bunny Christmas.
Could this episode of a forgotten series more than 10 years old be the Bugs Bunny Christmas special I’ve always wanted?!
Maybe that is about to change. In the 2010’s, Warner Bros. was interested in reviving the Looney Tunes brand. There were some new shorts made for television, but they didn’t make a tremendous impact. Something different was seemingly required which is what lead the company down the path of creating a sitcom featuring the Looney Tunes characters. Conceived by Sam Register, Spike Brandt, and Tony Cervone, The Looney Tunes Show was the result of that premise and it premiered on Cartoon Network in 2011 and ran for two seasons. The show was an animated sitcom starring Bugs Bunny (Jeff Bergman), Daffy Duck (Bergman), Lola Bunny (Kristen Wiig), Porky (Ben Bergen), and all the rest. In it, Bugs was a pretty well-off rabbit as the result of some carrot peeling invention he cooked up. He lives with his best friend, Daffy Duck, who is basically a mooch. He’s very much the Daffy of the Chuck Jones era in both appearance and personality, though his antagonism towards Bugs is dialed down since the two do consider each other friends. Lola is Bugs’ romantic interest, though it’s more of a one-sided deal as she’s basically obsessed with the rabbit who is a bit put off by her manic personality. Bugs is somewhat oddly cast as the straight man in the show, though I suppose this isn’t all that different from how Tiny Toons used him. Other stars from the Golden Era are featured and most have a suburban type job. The only one that’s really odd is the Tasmanian Devil who is now a pet of Bugs. Yeah, you read that right.
A sitcom starring the Looney Tunes. I’ve heard worse ideas.
The concept of using these characters in a sitcom has some appeal, but it definitely needs to be a high energy sitcom. There should be more physical comedy present than say The Simpsons if these characters are going to be utilized, otherwise what’s the point? A show should be judged on its own merits, but if there isn’t going to be a “looney” component to the show then it’s just trying to coast on the reputation of the characters rather than utilize them as best as can be. I say that all going in, but I don’t know if those things are present or not. I have no memory of this show and it’s likely because I really wasn’t paying attention to what Cartoon Network was doing at the time. Somehow I’d catch wind of them prepping a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show for 2012, but apparently I missed this one. I’m guessing I must have heard about the Looney Tunes being turned into a sitcom and probably had a negative reaction to such news, but obviously I don’t remember. It didn’t set the world on fire or else it likely would have been around longer than it was, but I’m guessing it also wasn’t a total trainwreck since it did earn a second season and no one was ranting about how bad it was. We were early in the smart phone age and I’m guessing if the show had launched just a couple of years later it would have made more noise, for better or worse.
The subject of today’s post is the second season episode “A Christmas Carol.” Before you get too worked up, no, this one isn’t a direct adaptation of that venerable story. Rather, the timeless classic is just part of the subject as Lola Bunny wants to stage a performance of the play at the local theater. That doesn’t excuse the lazy title, but this is not Bah, Humduck!, a special I kind of want to look at some day, but also don’t if that makes sense.
Well there’s an idyllic, Christmas setting, though it does kind of look like a toilet bowl.
The episode begins with a narrator ushering in the Christmas season. We’re getting a bird’s eye view of wherever it is this show takes place and the local scenery is covered in snow and decorated for Christmas. Then the deadpan delivery of the narrator notes it’s 104 degrees out and doesn’t much feel like Christmas. All of the snow vanishes and so do the decorations before we head into the home of Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny is in his home reading a newspaper in which the heat wave is front page material. I might as well talk about the look of the show now. Bugs looks like Bugs, but he’s been restyled and simplified. There’s more straight lines and his head is a different shape from the classic versions we know and love. His nose is far more prominent and honestly if it wasn’t for that I’d probably like the look well enough. Instead, it just makes me miss the old Bugs. The rest of the cast appears far less stylized to me with some being really no different than what Warner was using as stock art in the 90s (which all seemed to be heavily influenced by the Chuck Jones aesthetic – that’s what happens when you outlive nearly all of your peers). Some characters, like the suddenly rich Foghorn Leghorn, had room for more of a redesign, but as we’ll see in a bit, he’s still a big, naked, rooster.
Meet Lola. She’s basically nothing like the Lola you know from Space Jam.
Bugs is interrupted by a ring of the doorbell and we can see that it’s Lola on the other side. When he opens the door he finds the female rabbit covered head-to-toe in Christmas fashion, the kind of fashion one might wear if it was -2 outside, not 102. Lola inquires if Bugs is excited for the coming holiday, but when he notes how the weather is sapping his Christmas spirit, Lola acts like she’s going to faint. Bugs reminds her that she’s wearing a parka and that’s more likely the cause of her sudden dizzy spell. Lola rather matter-of-factly acknowledges this detail and simply removes the heavy garment including the mittens she was wearing over her usual gloves, an interesting choice. She stands for a moment with a frozen expression on her face that’s mildly unsettling before asking Bugs what they were talking about. I’m sensing a bit of Ralph Wiggum in Lola, which is not something I was expecting. When he reminds her the subject was his lack of Christmas spirit, she finally faints. Bugs mugs for the camera for a second before the opening credits begin.
This is low key a wonderfully staged shot of a couple just lounging around casually.
The opening title is rather brief and features a remixed, and very brassy, rendition of the classic theme and provides for quick glimpses of the redesigned characters. When the episode returns, Elmer Fudd (Billy West) is on the telly giving a news report on the heat wave. In this world, he’s apparently a news anchorman and basically looks like the Elmer of old. We see a shot of the town from last Christmas when there was snow on the ground juxtaposed with this year where Yosemite Sam (Maurice LaMarche) can’t sell a tree because no one has any Christmas spirit. One catches fire during the broadcast due to the dry conditions which leads to Sam suffering what are likely horrible injuries. Bugs is laying on the couch and Lola is casually laying on him still bemoaning the lack of Christmas spirit in the town. She jumps up and decides she won’t stand for it as she puts her heavy parka back on along with her knit hat which has bells dangling from it that chime every time she moves her head. She thinks a play will help put everyone back in the Christmas spirit and Bugs asks if she’s going to do A Christmas Carol? Lola has no idea what that is and confesses she was going to do Cats. Bugs has to hand her a copy of the book and she thanks him by calling him “Bun Bun” which is kind of adorable. After she leaves she only makes it to the stoop before expressing, “Damn, it’s hot,” and passes out again.
Nice, they’ve got purple stuff!
Bugs then heads into the kitchen looking rather hot himself. In there he finds Daffy rummaging through the fridge and pulling out a bunch of stuff. When Daffy tells him he’s making room for something, Bugs snaps back it better not be for a turkey because he’s not cooking one of those this year on account of the heat. Daffy corrects him by saying he’s making room for a duck as he intends to climb into the fridge and out of the heat. Bugs tells him he’ll suffocate and yanks him away from the fridge. Daffy retorts that suffocation is the most pleasant way to go and Bugs doesn’t appear interested in arguing. He grabs a can of something Daffy had pulled out of the fridge and starts rubbing it on his forehead as he heads back into the living room leaving Daffy to ponder if he got it wrong and suffocation is the worst way to go? He decides he should probably do some research before crawling into the freezer. Bergman’s Daffy for this show is far more subdued than usual. It’s actually a little bizarre to hear such a low key Daffy Duck.
Foghorn Leghorn is very rich and also very serious about Christmas.
Daffy joins his friend in the living room and Bugs remarks that Daffy’s buddy is on the television. That buddy is Foghorn Leghorn (Bergman) who is apparently a billionaire. He’s giving a press conference titled Operation Save Christmas to a group of reporters. Interestingly, everyone else in the room is a human except Foghorn. He shares his plan to restore the Christmas spirit in town by traveling to the North Pole to install a giant fan that will blow cool air down to them. Upon hearing this ridiculous plan, Bugs remarks he’s surprised that Daffy isn’t going with him which just causes Daffy to confirm “I am!” A beep from a car outside is apparently the ride north as Daffy gets up and heads out. Upon encountering Lola still passed out on the stoop he calls back to Bugs that his girlfriend fainted again. He then hops into a stretch limo and heads off. At least this will get him out of the heat.
Lola demonstrating her range as an actress for the group while the animators demonstrate their desire to have relations with a cartoon rabbit.
The next scene begins with a shot of a marquee for Lola’s A Christmas Carol. Below that it is prominently advertised that the theater is air-conditioned. Inside, Lola is handing out scripts to those who are to participate in her play. There’s Sam, the Goofy Gophers Tosh (Jess Harnell) and Mac (Rob Paulsen), Speedy Gonzalez (Fred Armisen), Porky Pig, and Bugs. All of them are said to be there for some noble reason (per Lola), except for Bugs, who she needed to drive her there because her nail polish wasn’t dry yet. Sam also informs her, delicately, that he’s also there for the money, but when Lola has no reaction to this he just sheepishly suggests he is indeed there due to his love of the theater. I very much doubt that Lola is paying any of them. Lola then starts handing out the scripts and notes she’s made some adjustments. When she tells Bugs he’s playing Santa Claus, the cast finds out she didn’t make adjustments, she re-wrote the whole thing. Bugs rhetorically asks if she rewrote a beloved classic and Lola shares her opinion that a play about some greedy old man isn’t going to restore the spirit of Christmas. Sam is to play nightclub owner Rick Evans while the gophers will play elves (and they politely disagree on who will play which elf, much to the annoyance of Sam), while Speedy is playing Manu Ginóbili who Speedy points out is a basketball player. That one definitely dates this production. Porky is dismayed to find out he’s playing a pet pig named Hambone who has no lines, probably a good idea for a stuttering pig. Lola then remarks how they don’t have anyone to play Carol, the title character of her play. When it’s suggested that she play Carol, she displays an abundance of false modesty as she describes the role and all of the complexities that go into it while displaying her ability to capture them all. Bugs looks on with boredom like he’s seen this routine out of Lola before while the rest just seem perplexed, or in the case of the gophers, indifferent as they’re still trying to settle on which elf they’ll play. I’m curious if they’re brothers or if this show is allowing them to be the gay couple we always assumed they were?
Oh Daffy, you think you’re cold now…
We then head to the skies as the narrator sets the tone for Daffy and Foghorn’s mission up north. They’re in a large plane and preparing to parachute down to the North Pole which makes sense as there aren’t any airports way up there. Daffy does not seem thrilled to find out they’re jumping, but Foghorn Leghorn isn’t bothered one bit. He sends the giant crate containing the enormous fan out first, then helps give Daffy a nudge out the cargo door. Both scream as they fall to Earth and it looks like Daffy has a camera mounted on top of his helmet. Foghorn’s screams are also those of excitement as he doesn’t seem too scared about the freefall.
Porky is apparently down for doing nude scenes for unpaid community theater performances.
We’ll have to wait until the next scene to see if anyone accidentally grabbed a backpack containing utensils instead of a parachute as we’re taken back to the theater. The gang is in costume now and Sam can be heard remarking that he read the script and it isn’t worth the air conditioning. Lola comes strutting over wearing an elaborate, Victorian era gown and calls for their attention. She has to whistle to get it and then tries to boost everyone’s morale by telling them they need to perform this unrecognizable version of A Christmas Carol flawlessly if they want to save the town. No one seems moved as rehearsals begin with Porky disrobing and turning his red bowtie around before laying on a rug. Lola, as Carol, takes a seat in a large chair by a fireplace and says her line which Porky oinks in acknowledgement upon its completion. Lola then looks at him with disapproval and passive-aggressively asks “Is that how you’re going to do it?” Porky just smiles sheepishly and adds a second “oink” and Lola just tells him they’re going to have to work on that. Are we supposed to like Lola? So far, this episode has depicted her as a passive-aggressive, uncultured, moronic, scatterbrain who is also very self-absorbed and has a high opinion of herself. She’s also the only female so far and it kind of sucks that the lone woman is pretty terrible. This isn’t going very well.
For the second time already in this episode, Daffy is contemplating suicide.
At the North Pole, the parachuting apparently went fine as both Daffy and Foghorn are walking through the snow. Foghorn is pulling the massive container for the fan while Daffy is just marching behind looking rather worse for ware. He then stops and announces his sense of adventure has been usurped by his tiredness and out-of-shapedness (sic) before collapsing. Foghorn Leghorn stops to reprimand him pointing out he’ll freeze to death which Daffy remarks “It’s the most pleasant way to go, according to my research.” That must be how Daffy passed the time during the flight. Foghorn just grumbles about the situation and everyone’s give up attitude which in the process should serve more as a demotivational technique since it includes the factoid that they have to pull a six-thousand pound fan another seventy miles before they’re through. Despite that, Daffy ends up popping up with a smile on his beak and starts pushing the crate from behind while Foghorn pulls from the front. That’s definitely not the Daffy I know. Maybe the hypothermia is making him delirious and extra-agreeable, because there was really no reason for him to suddenly jump up and resume their journey. Unless this is one of those show’s going hard into “random” humor as Daffy’s change of heart was certainly random, though the narrator attributes it to “the Christmas spirit.” Even the Grinch at least needed to hear a song.
Bugs seems to have utter contempt for his girlfriend. He’s not as bad as Al Bundy, but he only had to do this for two seasons.
Back at rehearsals, Tosh and Mac are shown in their adorable elf costumes as they answer Carol’s door. Carol is surprised to find Santa’s helpers at her door, but they’re there to deliver an important message: Santa is missing, and they need Carol to take his place! When she asks, “Why me?” the gophers drop a bombshell: she’s Santa’s daughter! Carol is pretty much floored by this news and as she builds up to an important declaration she’s forced to call out “Line?” when she’s supposed to announce her intentions to go with the elves. Bugs, still sporting his annoyed face, tells her the line “I have to go with you to the North Pole.” Lola responds with “Right,” then says “I have to go with you to…line?” Bugs clues her in, but when she goes to deliver the line she can only get out “The North…” and Bugs just finishes it for her. Lola points out she didn’t ask for a line and plays it off like she knows her lines. Bugs does not look amused while Speedy, in his basketball attire, just sits beside him with a look of wonder on his little face. We then end the scene with Lola once again calling for her line. This show really wants us to hate her.
Hey, someone gets to be happy int his thing!
At the North Pole, our two heroes are still dragging that crate through the snow until Foghorn announces they made it! The two start celebrating by dancing and yelling until Daffy remarks “I always knew we’d make it! Except for that one time I laid down in the snow to die, but all the rest of the time I knew we’d make it! Well, not that one time when I tried to kill you so that I could climb inside your carcass for warmth, but then realized how hard it would be to clean out your carcass so then I just laid a second time in the snow to die! But every other time I always knew we would make it!” This confession from Daffy is the first time I’ve audibly chuckled at this episode as he delivers it rather cheerfully and with a matter-of-fact manner while Foghorn Leghorn looks on with some distress. When he finishes, there’s a slight pause like Foghorn is still processing what Daffy said, but then the two just resume their celebration. More of this, please!
Happiness is fleeting.
We then jump ahead and find Foghorn putting the finishing touches on the giant fan’s assembly. Unfortunately, now that the fan is ready there’s just one problem: where to plug it in? Daffy is pretty incredulous at the realization that he followed his friend up to the North Pole on this ridiculous expedition when Foghorn Leghorn didn’t even come up with a way to power his massive fan. While Daffy essentially freaks out, Foghorn just keeps repeating, “W. W. S. D.” over and over while looking thoughtful. Daffy finally bites and Foghorn confirms that he’s wondering “What would Santa do?” Apparently, he always asks himself that question when he needs guidance making Foghorn Leghorn some sort of Santa worshipper. He then has a eureka moment and declares they’ll just plug the fan in at Santa’s workshop! Daffy is not thrilled with this suggestion and when he points out how Foghorn intends to just wander around a frozen wasteland in search of Santa’s workshop the rooster just asks “What could possibly go wrong?” We smash cut to Daffy covered in ice and snow his teeth chattering together as a result of the cold. Foghorn Leghorn doesn’t look any better as the two march through the snow in search of the workshop.
Santa shows up out of no where and that’s how the play ends. I’m guessing something similar happens here too.
At the theater, Lola is setting the mood for the next scene which is Carol and the elves confronting Sam’s Rick Evans character over the disappearance of Santa while Speedy dribbles a basketball in the background. As the scene begins, Carol marches into the nightclub and asks if Evans kidnapped Santa. He denies any involvement and that’s apparently good enough for Carol. She flubs another line and Bugs provides the correct one. Lola notices he doesn’t have a script and asks “Bugs, did you memorize the entire script?” to which Bugs responds, “Unfortunately.” It’s time for Santa to make his grand entrance and Bugs is lowered from the ceiling in a sleigh. When Carol asks where he’s been, Bugs gives a wooden performance as Santa and suggests he lost track of time then remarks that he knows what he needs for Christmas: a watch. Carol laughs at the remark and playfully says “Oh, Santa!” She then gasps, and wrapping her arms around Santa says, “I mean, Dad.”
Lola then enthusiastically shouts “The end!” and throws up her hands triumphantly! Lola expresses her enthusiasm for the play as she walks off stage leaving Porky, Bugs, and the gophers alone on stage. Bugs tugs off his Santa hat looking somewhat exhausted while the others come closer. Tosh then carefully asks “Is it just me, or is this play bad? Like, really, really bad?” When he finishes his line a basketball comes rolling by them as a means of punctuating how terrible this play is.
What Daffy thinks happened at the North Pole.
We return to the North Pole where Daffy seems to think their journey has reached its end. A cave up ahead could be Santa’s workshop, but Foghorn Leghorn tells the duck he has hypothermia and is hallucinating as he digs through his backpack for a first aid kit. Daffy refuses the suggestion and grabs the plug and heads for the cave. Inside, he finds a warmly lit, festive, room that must belong to Santa! His suspicions are soon confirmed when a voice calls out to him. He turns and sees the fat man himself, Santa (Barry Corbin), who beckons him to come sit on his lap by the fire. In doing so, we also find out that Santa has been the one narrating this episode. Daffy then sets his helmet down and does as suggested remarking how Santa is so snuggly. He delightfully sips on some hot chocolate provided by an elf and the scene dissolves to another back at the press conference room.
And here we see what really happened at the North Pole. It’s not explained how Daffy survived this encounter unscathed.
Foghorn Leghorn has just finished recounting their journey and a reporter confirms that the two went up to the North Pole and plugged in a giant fan that will bring cool air to their town. Foghorn Leghorn just says “Yup,” to the worn out looking reporter and Daffy takes it from there. He tells the audience they had a little help from the big man and tells them it’s all on film. He picks up the helmet he had been wearing with the camera on it and plugs it into the monitor positioned behind the podium, only the video he plays does not feature Santa. We see Daffy entering a cave inhabited by a massive polar bear and its two cubs. Daffy sits on the polar bear’s lap and embraces it as he did Santa before. Foghorn Leghorn looks on with a smile and tells him he told him he was hallucinating. Daffy then has the realization that he must not have actually plugged the fan in and Foghorn confirms as much, but then says next time he’ll make it battery operated. Daffy can only stand there with a horrid expression on his face as he asks, “Next time?” I have to feel for the writers and staff at this point if any of them saw the Sponge-Bob Christmas special that aired less than two weeks before this one which featured the exact same bit with the Santa hallucination into a polar bear.
Well, Elmer sure seems to be enjoying it. That other dude who’s smiling is definitely high.
It’s opening night of Lola’s play and it looks like the turnout is going to be pretty robust. Lola is excited, naturally, and gives her cast a little pep talk before the play begins. As she welcomes them all in for a group hug, they unfortunately do so on the trapdoor Lola just installed and they all fall below the stage. Lola, ever cheerful, explains how the trapdoor will make their entrances and exits that much more dramatic. Porky is concerned that they’re trapped now and will suffocate causing Tosh to continue the runner for this episode of saying “Oh, I’ve heard that’s the most pleasant way to go.” Lola says she’s heard the same, but then tells them they’ll be fine since Bugs can get them out. As they all shout for Bugs, he comes walking onto the stage asking where they are? When he finds out they’re behind a trapdoor, Lola relays the unfortunate piece of information that she may have neglected the “door” functions of the device over the trap. It makes no sense since we saw the thing swing open to welcome them all inside, but whatever. Lola declares they’ll have to cancel the play forcing Bugs to remark “But you worked so hard on it.” Our narrator returns to inform us that this is the moment that Bugs realized the true meaning of Christmas. The play then begins with Bugs in the role of Carol seated in the large chair talking to her pet pig. When it’s Hambone’s turn to oink, Bugs slides out of the dress and to the floor to play the part of the pig as well while the audience looks on with confusion. Remember, they’re all there for A Christmas Carol, after all, so it’s not even the rabbit playing two roles that’s truly confusing them here.
And the trapdoor claims another victim.
Outside the theater, Foghorn and Daffy come upon the play. Foghorn is pretty enthused to see a production of A Christmas Carol in town and informs Daffy that this is the best way to get the Christmas spirit. Daffy just responds that he’s never heard of it. The pair enter and we find Bugs playing the part of Manu Ginóbili and dribbling a basketball on stage. He then vanishes and reappears as Carol calling out for Santa before turning into the Rick Evans character and then back to Carol. After delivering the line about wondering where Santa could be if Evans didn’t kidnap him, the trapdoor springs open and sucks Bugs in. He lands on everyone else and Lola points out he wasn’t supposed to use the trapdoor. Speedy wonders what they’ll do now since they don’t have an ending, but it appears someone is going to bail them out.
All right, he didn’t exactly come out of no where since Daffy and Foghorn did journey to the North Pole, but it’s close.
The audience looks on with stunned expressions on their faces before the theater doors burst open and in comes Santa Claus! He soars in on his sleigh pulled by eight, pretty small, reindeer and lands on the stage. He then addresses the crowd, “I know what you’re all thinking, this is the worst Christmas play ever, and I can’t say I disagree. But it took a lot of effort to put on a play this bad, and if there’s one thing that’s worth the effort, it’s Christmas.” As he says this, the camera lingers on Lola and Bugs in the trapdoor looking up at the stage both dressed as Carol. Lola cups her hands together with a contented expression on her face at Santa’s declaration and the jolly, old, elf continues, “Look, I know it’s a lot of work tying the tree to the roof of your car and then dragging it inside – pine needles going everywhere! Packing up the car and driving six hours to grandma’s house, but these are the things that bring us all together. Even this utterly unrecognizable version of A Christmas Carol. I mean, look around you! The whole town is here! Yes, I know that Christmas isn’t easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.” As he says that part, Foghorn Leghorn gives Daffy a nudge who had been looking on with rapt attention.
I bet Santa kind of enjoys sitting on others for a change.
Santa then finishes, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to deliver presents to every boy and girl on Earth! You think that doesn’t take a lot of effort? Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas, everyone!” As Santa picks up his sack and goes to get back in his sleigh, the trapdoor claims another victim and he falls inside to land on top of the others. The audience rises and gives Santa a standing ovation and we see Santa laying on everyone at the bottom of the trap. He looks to Lola and remarks, “Nice trap door.” He then turns to his sack and pulls out some gifts and starts handing them out. He addresses the Goofy Gophers as just “Gophers,” and tells them to sort out who gets what. Sam is told “Better luck next year,” as the scene fades out with Santa handing out more gifts.
Oh yeah, we’re getting in a moon shot!
The crowd is then shown dispersing and Daffy and Foghorn Leghorn are shocked to find it’s snowing outside! As they look around, a jolly greeting from the sky prompts them to look up. It’s Santa, who tells the two he plugged their fan in for them. As he belts out his signature laugh one more time, we get a delightful Santa moon shot! Bugs then walks into frame sporting a festive scarf and starts singing. It’s an original song and this musical outro is basically a chance to see the rest of the regular cast if only for a moment. It’s also an opportunity to get in some more slapstick styled humor like Daffy freezing his ass to a bench and Lola throwing up in a sack. We get to see Elmer in his underwear afflicted with seasonal depression and also get a look at Daffy’s girlfriend in the show, an original creation named Tina (Annie Mumolo). Taz is briefly shown and it’s weird to see him seated on all fours as the pet of Bugs and Gossamer is also featured and he’s apparently voiced by a kid (Kwesi Boakye) which is a bit jarring. There’s a fun bit where Daffy mentions a Christmas wraith and when Bugs asks if he meant “wreath” he says no and gestures to a horrifying wraith flying through the sky on an undead dragon.
This is apparently who Daffy worships in place of Santa.
The whole sequence ends with the gang atop a bus designated the Karaoke Bus driven by Foghorn Leghorn. It’s covered in lights and there’s a Rudolph head for a hood ornament. The song ends with the bus apparently driving out of town and we cut to credits. I definitely didn’t ticket this as the sort of holiday special that would end with a song, but it did. And it wasn’t bad and probably featured some of the funnier moments in the whole thing. Unfortunately, it also serves as a reminder of what most people like about Looney Tunes thus shining a light on the fact that this show doesn’t have much of that in it.
Things that do work for me are Bugs and Lola. They have a fun dynamic where Lola is just an exhausting sort of girlfriend and Bugs is kind of just going with it. I enjoyed Wiig’s performance as Lola and she was an easy character to poke fun at as she’s also made of Teflon apparently and nothing phases her. She’s still unlikable, so it’s impossible to actually care about her play getting cancelled. Bugs works for me as a foil to that, but it is a bit of a bummer to see him so neutered. He carries himself as if he’s above everything that’s going on around him, but without his usual cleverness. He’s just resigned to this position and such a passive attitude from him is so out of character. Daffy is also similarly neutered with his anger basically cut out from his personality. It’s understandable that he’d be toned down to fit into this setting, but it was hard to feel like I’m watching a Daffy Duck performance. About the only characters seemingly unaffected were Foghorn Leghorn, who despite being fabulously wealthy now, is still mostly the same though also reeled in a bit. Porky is also very much still Chuck Jones era Porky where he was often Daffy’s sidekick. He’s meek and just sort of there which honestly feels like the right place for him.
Taz as a pet probably takes some getting used to.
Everyone else is mostly underserved, but I can’t critique the show for not having enough time to flesh out the cast in one episode in the middle of the second season. As such, I don’t feel like I can really comment on Speedy, who is present for much of this one, but has no actual presence. Yosemite Sam is sort of hinted at, but this episode doesn’t do anything to illustrate why he’s on the dreaded Naughty List. I don’t know if he behaves more villainous in other episodes, or if we’re supposed to just know him as classic era Sam who would absolutely be on said list.
Similar to how I can’t judge the characters too much based on one episode, I can’t really judge the performance of the voice cast either. They’re asked to be so toned down compared with how these characters are normally portrayed that I have to basically put any criticism on the direction and producers. Subjectively, I kind of hate the performance of Maurice LaMarche as Yosemite Sam, for example, but I don’t think it has anything to do with LaMarche who most know as a terrific voice actor. The tone of the character, as likely dictated by the creative staff, is just so bland compared with the raving mad version of Mel Blanc.
It all brings me back to what I was basically wondering at the start of all of this: Is there any point to doing a sitcom starring the Looney Tunes that basically omits most of the looney business? Sure, the plot of this one involves some stuff they wouldn’t have done on Friends or Home Improvement, but I don’t know if this thing even goes beyond The Simpsons as far as breaking reality goes. It’s not laughably bad, like Lola’s play, and I’m sure a lot of people worked hard on it, like Lola’s play, but this show didn’t land for me and I don’t know if watching more is in the cards.
This show is more interesting on paper than in reality.
As a Christmas episode of a sitcom, it’s at least passable. We get a clever enough plot and I like that the show did acknowledge the existence of Santa Claus. I wasn’t sure if this more “grounded” reality would do such a thing especially since the show is apparently aimed at an adult audience and didn’t need to pander to children. Sort of like every animated sitcom though, children are a reality of the audience so I guess they didn’t want to alienate them in the process. The parts featuring Daffy and Foghorn were probably my favorite and it was a bit tighter of an experience. The play scenes were a bit repetitive and featured jokes that didn’t get funny with repetition, like Lola’s constant flubbing of her lines and the bit at the end with the trapdoor. Speaking of which, how did they get out of that thing? Must have been Christmas magic. The big guy’s speech also went on way too long, and yet when the thing ended there was still time to tack on a song. This is a slow watch, definitely something foreign to the traditional Looney Tunes experience, though I wouldn’t call it torturous. You’re just likely to be ready for it to end.
If you would like to catch this holiday themed episode of The Looney Tunes Show then the easiest way to do so is via HBO Max which has the entire series streaming as of this writing. With that platform, you never know when something may vanish, but if it does I’ll try to make sure I update this for 2023. If you’re reading this after 2023 then you’re on your own.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
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The show got its 52 episode order and occupied some air space in the 90s without sucking. It did its job.
This isn’t our first dance with the show as we covered the episode “Feather Christmas” a few years back. For that reason, I don’t feel a long preamble is needed this time around. We’ll just jump right into today’s episode which is a parody of It’s a Wonderful Life, but not in the way you think. Many shows have gone that route over the years and they almost exclusively run with the plot of George Bailey who has to learn a lesson about how much the world would suck without him. Or suck more, anyway. This time, we’re rolling with the Uncle Billy character. You remember him, right? He’s the idiot who mistakenly lost two thousand dollars when trying to one-up old man Potter. It was his screw-up that nearly drove George to suicide since losing that amount of money back then could cripple a business like a savings and loan. Now, I’m not a huge fan of the film. It’s fine and a genuine classic, I just don’t feel the need to watch it on an annual basis like my parents and probably most boomers. One thing though that always bothered me when I did watch it is that Potter never gets his comeuppance. Uncle Billy mistakenly hands over that two grand to the old man and he just pockets it, basically. This episode of a cartoon starring a canary and a cat is going to try to make Potter answer for his deceit by solving the mystery of what happened to the money.
He’s the spitting image of Thomas Mitchell’s Uncle Billy.
The episode begins with a cold open. Sylvester is narrating the story and it takes us to the town of Bedspread Falls, instead of Bedford Falls. Sylvester begins his narration as-if he’s going to tell us about Paul Revere’s midnight ride, but corrects himself and switches to a ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas styled rhyme. A gray-haired man of generous proportions is currently fretting about a missing sum of money in the Daily Bros. Loan & Building Building. It was established in 1946, which even if you were unaware could probably guess is the year It’s a Wonderful Life was released. This older fellow has apparently misplaced eight thousand dollars, because we need to up the amount here to make it a little more painful. While he tosses papers aside from the floor a familiar duo looks on. That would be the mice Hubie (Jim Cummings) and Bertie (Jeff Bennett). They feel for the poor guy who is just throwing himself on the floor in despair and want to do something to help him. A Christmas card gets their attention and it would appear it has an answer for them. The old man has since taken a seat at his desk with his head in his arms and the mice place the card in front of him. When he looks at it, we get to see it’s a card from Granny, who signs her cards Granny because that’s just her name apparently. Overjoyed, the fellow grabs his old-timey phone and makes a call!
This seems very unnecessary, Granny. And who is her hook-up for this stuff? Bruce Wayne?!
The opening title then enters and it’s underwhelming considering how good the WB shows on Fox were at the time, but not terrible. When it ends, we find Granny riding through the street in a car with giant, metal, legs. It’s like an AT-ST from The Return of the Jedi. Her animal companions are riding in the car with her and everyone is decked out in some holiday attire. Sylvester continues his narration to inform us that they’re heading to Bedspread Falls and shouts out to Donna Reed. When Granny slams on the breaks to this contraption, the occupants (except her) all go flying out of it because it’s a topless vehicle which makes so much sense to ride around in during the winter. They smash into a snowman so we get a tiered look at all three occupying one of the three segments of the snow creature while Granny admonishes them for playing in the snow and wasting time. Someone needs to narc on Granny for animal cruelty.
An early indicator that Willy isn’t too bright.
We then head into the Daily Bros. and meet the old guy again. It turns out his name is Willy (instead of Billy, naturally) and he’s Granny’s brother (his voice is also uncredited, but I think it’s Bennett). That explains why he got a Christmas card from the old gal. She happily introduces him to her pet canary, Tweety, but he slams the door on poor Sylvester and Hector. He hears the door contact them and mistakes it for a knock, opens it, and the two waddle in flat as a pancake. Granny introduces the pair and Sylvester has to blow himself back up to return to his normal shape. Willy then introduces them to his pets, Hubie and Bertie, and Sylvester is happy to meet them as he gobbles them up immediately. Seriously Willy, why are you waving your pet rodents in the face of a cat? Granny turns him upside down and smacks his bottom until the two mice are set free all the while admonishing Sylvester for trying to eat family. The mice roll over to Tweety’s cage where the little bird chirps, “Been there, done that.”
The Minah bird is a memorable gag from classic era Looney Tunes in that once you see it you’ll immediately recall seeing it before, but maybe without specifics. His routine in this episode is basically exactly the same as it was back then.
Granny wants to get down to business and asks Willy what’s wrong? He tells her he misplaced the weekly deposit, which happened to be 8 grand. He explains he put it in a yellow envelope and brought it to the bank, but when he got there, the money was gone! She basically just pats him on the shoulder to comfort him. Meanwhile, Hector is nosing around and comes to a file cabinet. It jiggles, then opens, and he barks a whole bunch until a disinterested crow pops out (Uncle Billy had a pet crow in the film). It just casually hops with its head down like it’s not paying attention to much of anything until it reaches a waste basket which it hops into. Hector barks some more and then inspects the waste basket only to find the crow is gone! I call it a crow, but it’s actually the Minah bird and this routine is straight out of classic Looney Tunes. The character first appeared in the short The Little Lion Hunter. Elsewhere, Hubie and Bertie question Tweety about the intelligence of Sylvester. Tweety shares his very low opinion of Sylvester, which just riles the cat up. He charges, but the mice jump out of the way and onto a window sill. When Sylvester pounces again, he goes out the window. Poor, stupid, kitty. He lands in the street and leaves behind a Sylvester-shaped crater in the snow. When he pops out, Granny and Willy are there to praise him for finding Willy’s tracks in the snow. Sylvester doesn’t seem to feel much pride in his “discovery.”
This guy hates Willy, and I’m kind of the same mind.
We then cut to the gang following the footprints and Sylvester narrates some more to inform us that old Willy’s memory is apparently failing him in his old age. Despite telling Granny he went straight to the bank, the footsteps lead them to a drug store. Bower is the name, and he’s not happy to see Willy. Mr. Bower (Cummings) complains (in what sounds like a drunken stupor) that Willy came in and ruffled through all of his magazines getting subscription cards all over his floor. He didn’t buy any of them, but he did buy a sasparilla and a newspaper which Bower notes he placed a yellow envelope inside. Granny thanks him for the info while he continues to just rant wildly. Upon leaving the store, the shopkeep follows them to tell Willy he has his keys which he apparently forgot earlier. During the rant, we are also treated to Hector teaming up with Hubie and Bertie to pulverize Sylvester. When Willy and Granny walk off, the others follow with Sylvester taking up the rear in a clearly concussed state. Bower also lets us know he hates keys for some reason. That’s sort of his thing, he hates everything. He’s also loosely based on the alcoholic drug store clerk from It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Gower, hence why he sounds vaguely intoxicated.
It’s a slightly off-model Cool Cat that arguably more resembles the Pink Panther. I’m going to stick with the assumption it’s Cool Cat, though it’s a bit odd that anyone would make the effort to try to find the lamest of the Looney Tunes characters.
Sylvester stumbles in the street and informs us the search continued “While visions of burly dogs danced in my head.” He slips on an icy sidewalk and finally goes down. Meanwhile, Willy is shown walking directly into a pole and it would appear a missing person sign on the pole contains an image of Cool Cat. It’s been there awhile, which makes sense since no one would actually look for Cool Cat. Granny tells her brother he needs to watch where he’s going. Sylvester chimes in to tell us that Granny’s patience is wearing thin while Willy dusts himself off. Out from his coat floats a piece of paper. It’s a ticket for a movie theater and Granny waves it in his face since he never mentioned anything about seeing a movie before the bank. Willy corrects her to say it wasn’t just a movie he saw, but a whole film festival! The subject of which was apparently Curly of The Three Stooges and Willy does his best Curly impression. Granny seems to be growing tired and demands to know if he went to the bank next or not. He didn’t. Instead, he mailed out his Christmas cards and gets mildly defensive about it when Granny shoots an angry glare his way as if it’s the cards she’s mad about.
Why does Granny insist on bringing her pets everywhere? It’s clear that Sylvester only cares about eating Tweety. Seems like it would just be easier to leave the cat at home.
The gang then heads to the mailbox that Willy apparently utilized to send out his cards. A mailman is there and is opening the base of the mailbox and out pops the Minah bird from earlier. He does his little walk-hop-shuffle once again and Hector follows. The bird disappears behind a lamp post leaving Hector more confused than ever. Willy and Granny were apparently granted permission to sort through the mail and Willy gets excited for a moment. Did he find his missing yellow envelope? No, he just found the Christmas card intended for Granny. She seems disappointed, but before she can say anything a passing cab stops to say “Hi” to Willy. The driver (sounds like Bennett again) thanks Willy for the tip he gave him this morning. Granny is once again angry with her brother for leaving out more important information and then asks the cabbie if it happened to be an eight-thousand dollar tip? He laughs and says “More like 8 cents,” before sharing with Granny that he drove Willy over to Rossi’s.
This horse thinks its hilarious.
We then cut to Rossi’s (I guess a play on Martini’s from the film) after Granny angrily demands they get in the cab. This time, the driver gets a twenty cent tip and sarcastically remarks how these two are going to spoil him. The fare was only $1.80 so twenty cents is honestly not that bad. I wouldn’t know what to tip on such a fare, though I can’t imagine $1.80 would get you very far in 2023. The cabbie then tells Willy he nearly forgot to remind him that he left something in his cab earlier. Willy is hopeful it’s his missing money, but it’s actually his horse. Yes, you read that right, he forgot a horse. And to add a little extra comedy to the whole thing, no one apparently noticed the horse during their most recent ride. The horse just a gives us all a good laugh and apparently no one has any reaction to this gag because we’re heading inside. Now let’s never speak of the horse again.
At least those feet are clean.
Rossi’s is an italian restaurant and Willy and Granny are greeted by the manager. He’s a tiny, italian, stereotype voiced by Jim Cummings and he asks Willy if he’s back for another hot chocolate. He’s not, but while the humans chat, Sylvester sets his sights on revenge. Hubie and Bertie see it coming though and they fling some sugar cubes at the cat which get lodged in his eyes. Rossi then remarks that Willy left something there earlier and gestures to it: a full, hot, steaming, bath tub. This guy has some tremendously deep pockets. The bath tub also has a rubber ducky floating in it and Hector pops up to get a closer look. The ducky then pops out of the water to reveal that the Minah bird was in there taking a bath. Hector finds this rather shocking and just sits there looking dumb-struck as the bird hops onto the edge of the tub, walks over Hector’s head, and off the screen to the right.
Stupid cat.
We now finally find ourselves at the bank where Willy supposedly lost his money. Again, no one is apparently going to address the crazy fact that this guy misplaced both a horse and a bath tub as well. They head into Totter Bank (instead of Potter Bank) while Granny insists that Willy tell her he’s sure that this was his last stop of the day. The two head inside and we’re introduced to old man Totter. He, rather predictably, resembles Potter from the movie. He’s small, bald, and wheelchair bound. Totter (Welker) races over to Willy, running over the foot of his handler in the process, to taunt Willy when he enters and asks if he’s back to try and score a free coaster without opening an account. Granny just declares he’s not a nice man which Totter seems to relish in. Outside, Sylvester goes back to chasing Hubie, Bertie, and Tweety referring to them as his little sugar plums. They duck into an alley and Sylvester races in to find snow depictions of the three. The stupid cat thinks the three are frozen with fear and gobbles them up, only to realize he was wrong. He looks at the camera with a pained expression, then reveals that all of his teeth have shattered. I’m not really sure why eating three snow versions of two mice and a canary would shatter his teeth, but okay. The camera pans up to show Tweety and the two mice enjoying Sylvester’s pain allowing Tweety to remark, “See? This is what happens when you don’t floss every day!”
Gasp! Totter had the money the whole time!
Back inside the bank, Willy shares with Totter the reason for their visit. If they think this man is truly one of wicked nature, I’m not sure telling him that eight-thousand dollars have been misplaced is really a good move. Totter just reacts angrily at the thought of Willy being in his bank to make a deposit with no money. He tells him it’s against the law and orders the two to leave immediately! Back outside, Sylvester is freezing while his foils look on. They apparently aren’t very interested in Sylvester’s misery and instead turn their attention to what’s behind the window they’re in front of. It’s an office, and Tweety notes a newspaper on the desk. In comes Totter being pushed in his wheelchair by some oversized goon even though we saw in the last scene that his wheelchair is motorized. He comes to the desk and opens the paper to reveal Willy’s missing envelope. He flashes the contents of it – a big wad of cash, then cheerfully places it in a desk drawer. Tweety and the others note that they have to do something about this and Tweety gives the camera a concerned look to serve as the act break. I’m assuming the animals can communicate with themselves, but not the humans. I didn’t watch enough of this show to know if it had rules or not, but those are pretty much the same rules as the classic shorts.
Totter is either not very bright or needs to see an optometrist.
We then cut to a rooftop at night and some individuals are making some serious grunting noises. It’s Tweety, Hubie, and Bertie and they’re holding onto a rope. The other end of which is in a chimney. At the end of that rope is Sylvester, and if you’re wondering where Hector is, he soon appears from between Sylvester’s robes. Robes? Yeah, they’re dressed as Santa Claus and Sylvester wonders aloud how they let the others talk them into this. The expression on Hector’s face would seem to indicate he feels the same way (he doesn’t talk, for some reason). The two get rather close to the fireplace, before the mice and canary predictably lose their grip. They crash to the ground in a heap of smoke, which gets the attention of old man Totter who is seated at his desk. He demands to know who is there, but upon seeing Sylvester’s disguise takes the bait. He asks “Santa” what he brought him and Sylvester looks a bit puzzled before apparently getting an idea. He reaches into his coat and comes out with a fitting gift: a dog collar. Totter is quite pleased with the kinky gift and even remarks that it matches his eyes. While he oggles the item, Hector reaches his hand out from the coat and grabs a stamp on the desk. The newspaper from earlier is still there, and the dog stamps it to indicate it came from the desk of Totter.
I had a feeling this bit would show up eventually.
Hector then grabs the paper and Sylvester gives out a “Ho ho ho” and a tug on the rope to indicate it’s time to go. On the roof, we see that the diminutive creatures have a plan for getting them back up the chimney: they’ve tied the rope to an anvil. They push it off the side of the building and it gets the job done, painfully so for Sylvester. As for Hector, he’s left behind in the office. He just smiles sheepishly at Totter, grabs his collar, and runs out the door. On the ground, Sylvester is shown with visions of Santa Claus flying circles around his head as he calls out the names of the reindeer, eventually getting them wrong because he’s suffered a pretty severe head injury. Hubie, Bertie, and Tweety come to check on him and when they open an eyelid we get the predictable “Do Not Open Till X-Mas” gag printed inside his eye. Tweety then scolds Sylvester for laying down on the job for they need to get that paper over to Granny and Willy. Hector then comes running by and grabs Sylvester by the tail and keeps on running forcing the little guys to chase after them. For such a big, beastly, dog, Hector sure seems scared of an old man in a wheelchair.
Well, I guess it is good that she brings all of the animals along since they’re the ones who cracked the case.
We find ourselves in the park where Willy and Granny are seated on a bench. Willy thinks the money is a lost cause while Granny tries to keep his spirits up telling him the answer isn’t going to just hit him in the face. It then does when Hector smacks him with the paper. Granny is happy to see them while Willy is confused since he’s looking at a story about aliens or something. Granny grabs it and notes a sarsaparilla stain, followed by cab grease, and more indicators that this paper belonged to Willy. They think they’re onto something, but when Willy spots the stamp with Totter’s name he just gets mopey again and assumes it’s not his paper. Granny, thankfully, isn’t so dumb.
And let us not forget the importance of the bird in all of this.
We then cut to Totter’s office and Granny is waving the paper in his face and accusing him of knowingly taking her brother’s money. Totter plays dumb at first, but then his desk bounces and shakes and a drawer opens. I bet you can guess who pops out: the Minah bird! He does his little walking routine as he hops onto the desk and marches over to Willy with an envelope in his beak. He hops onto Willy’s shoulder and he takes the envelope, the whole time everyone looks perplexed to see this bird. They then turn their angry gazes on Totter, who again tries to play dumb. Granny accuses him of taking the money to put Willy out of business and Totter cracks. Declaring “So what if I took the money?” He then goes into a rant about starting his own Totter-Ville and he’ll own everything. The cop that Granny and Willy apparently convinced to come along then starts wheeling the old man out as he starts wishing “Merry Christmas!” to everything he sees, George Bailey style, including the fireplace and Sylvester.
The second instance of something circling Sylvester’s head in this one. The gags just lack imagination.
With the old man wheeled off to jail, Willy goes to put the money away, only for Granny to wisely snatch it and promise to hold it for him. He then notices they still have time to make Christmas dinner at his nephew’s house, so he deposits the Minah bird under his hat and they make haste. Sylvester notes he’d like a drumstick or two and eyes Tweety who takes on the form of a roasted turkey to better illustrate what the cat is thinking. He takes off and Sylvester gives chase and the pair end up back in the alley. Sylvester dives and grabs ahold of the bird as they slide through the snow and end up in a pile of the white stuff. Sylvester pops his head out, then produces Tweety and goes to drop the bird in his mouth only to be met with a boulder-sized snowball. Somehow, Hubie managed to throw that thing at Sylvester and it looks like he added some bricks too since the dazed cat has one in his mouth. Tweety comes over with a tiny, silver, bell and rings it delivering the famous line “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.” Sylvester sits up and angel versions of himself are circling his head. He remarks, “Look at me, I’m giving out wings!” in a punch-drunk manner before collapsing once again as we close with an iris shot. Before the credits roll there’s an “In memory of Isadore “Friz” Freleng” which I believe appeared at the end of every episode in the show’s first season. Freleng was the originator of the Sylvester and Tweety shorts and passed away shortly before the premiere of the show at the ripe, old, age of 88. A fitting tribute for the animation legend.
If you really like the characters pictured above, then have at it. There’s a lot worse out there, but there’s also a lot better.
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries is a bit of an unremarkable series. The animation is okay for the era, though not as good as Animaniacs or Tiny Toon Adventures. It’s fluid though, it just lacks some of the flourishes of those shows and the gags aren’t especially novel. There’s basically no shading on the characters and it looks especially bad when Totter gets wheeled off to jail as he passes by a lightsource, but nothing on his character model changes. The premise still strikes me as a bit forced, but it works okay and was used as a means of getting in some cameos as we saw here with Hubie and Bertie and the Minah bird. It’s a show that’s not bad enough to be memorable as some abomination brought to television, but it’s also not really good enough to be remembered fondly as a classic from the 90s. And as a Christmas special, it’s kind of the same. I do think it’s an interesting premise and a useful way to work in It’s a Wonderful Life. Other applications are basically hack at this point and this one manages to be unique nearly 30 years later. It just doesn’t do anything special beyond that. There were no laugh-out-loud moments, no truly witty remark from any of the characters, and there’s also no heart to make up for the lack of comedy. It just exists and in this day and age it’s the type of Christmas special one comes to after they’ve exhausted all of their favorites. I suppose the real question is do I prefer this one to the show’s other holiday episode? I guess so? I don’t know. They’re both rather unremarkable, but I suppose the parody nature of this one makes it slightly more enjoyable. They work in plenty of references to the film, including snippets from the soundtrack, so if you really love that movie there’s some added enjoyment here. If not, then it just becomes a pretty haphazard mystery that doesn’t ask much of its audience. I don’t think this was the type of show that tried to be thoughtful with the mystery component. It’s just sort of “there” as a framing device and nothing more.
You could obviously do far worse with your time this year than spend it with Sylvester and Tweety. I would say if you only need one holiday themed short from the duo then you’re better off seeking out Gift Wrapped. If you have more fond memories of this show from the 90s then sure, go for it. I didn’t watch this one as a kid so I don’t have any attachment to it which is definitely something that’s working against it. I just never found the show interesting and often there was something better on. The show can be streamed on Max, whatever is left of it come publication of this piece, and I think it’s a part of Boomerang as well. The first season was also released on DVD way back in 2008 so it’s no longer in print, but can be found secondhand. The prices are fairly reasonable should you want to go that route, but if Warner dumps this from Max then it could see a bump.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
Back in 1929 Walt Disney launched the Silly Symphonies series of cartoon shorts. Unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts that were growing popular at the time, Silly Symphonies did not center on just one character or even a group of characters, but rather were fairly self-contained. Some shorts that became popular, like The Three Little Pigs,…
Nickelodeon in the late 1980s was a network on the rise. Cable was expanding to more and more households each and every day and Nick was able to seize the youth market almost from the get-go. Prior to that, broadcast networks dominated children’s programming, but restricted it to certain parts of the broadcast schedule. And…
The Flintstones have a well-established relationship with Christmas at this point. There have been a few specials, some even prime time, and plenty of home video releases. For that reason it’s a bit interesting that the show actually waited until its fifth season for its first Christmas episode. At that point, the show had been…
He may be the greatest cartoon star of all time, but Bugs Bunny is surprisingly underrepresented when it comes to the world of action figures.
When I became a dad for the first time it made me get reacquainted with children’s television. I’m guessing all new parents go through this where they watch shows with their little one and find a great many of them intolerable. Perhaps that’s too strong a word, but it did cause me to reflect on what I was watching at a young age. And some of that was the same, namely Sesame Street which is like a rite of passage in the US. I watched a lot of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood which basically has a sequel series in the form of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood which my kids watched a little of. There was also a lot of new stuff which didn’t click with me, because why would it? I’m not the intended audience, but it did have the affect of making me want to share the stuff I liked with my own children.
That temptation is essentially a form of nostalgia and it’s also big business. Go to any kid’s clothing retailer and you’ll find clothing with 80s and 90s properties that children today are not exposed to unless it’s through their parents. That stuff is for the parents to clad their children in. And it’s fine, having kids is pretty fun and that’s part of it. You also only get so many years to dress your kids as you want before they develop their own tastes. For me, I wanted to show my kids the old cartoons I grew up with. This may come as a shock, but I wasn’t in a rush to show them Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Why? Because that cartoon sucks. I may have loved it as a kid, but it’s very much a relic of it’s time and not meant to cross the generational divide. Cartoon shorts from animation’s golden age? That stuff had already stood the test of time and it was those cartoons that I made sure to seek out. I already had a pretty large collection of Disney shorts via the Walt Disney Treasures line, but a gap in my collection was definitely the stuff from Warner Bros. Part of that was they just didn’t release their shorts in a manner that appealed to me. I love what Disney did by releasing character specific collections arranged in chronological order. Instead, Warner did the Golden Collection as well as a handful of spotlight releases that were either character specific or themed in some way. There were a lot of repeat cartoons across releases and it was all quite cumbersome. I wanted those shorts though, so I went out and got all 6 volumes of the Golden Collection and introduced them to my kids when they had the capacity to follow along with them.
Beast Kingdom is really good at boxes. I’m not sure if I’d consider them particularly good at action figures.
Looney Tunes, the show that aired on Nickelodeon, was an early favorite of mine. It was usually the last kid’s programming of the night on Nickelodeon and it was often the show I watched after getting ready for bed. I loved those cartoons and I’m happy to say my kids share that affection. My daughter, in particular, became a pretty big fan of Bugs Bunny and she even carried around a stuffed Bugs for a solid year and a half or so with her when we went most places. When we went to Disney World in 2021, it wasn’t a Mickey or a Minnie head poking out of her carry-on but good ‘ole Bugs. Showing these cartoons to my kids was a way for me to get reacquainted with them too as most of these I had not watched in over twenty years and it was great. I always intended to review the Golden Collection for this blog, but found it just too cumbersome to do. There’s just so much content, some of it great, and some of it not so great. It also suffers in that these shorts were meant to preempt a movie and be consumed in small doses, but when you arrange an entire disc of Road Runner cartoons it gets really repetitive. The characters are still great though, and it’s a shame that Warner Bros has allowed their profile to slip (and more recently, have removed the post 1950 shorts from HBO Max). The Looney Tunes, as they’re commonly referred to now, were still pretty huge in the 90s which is why we got a film like Space Jam.
This Bugs Bunny is obviously from the new Space Jam movie and the quality of the soft goods is probably its best feature.
Warner seemed interested in reviving these characters, or maybe it was more that Lebron James wanted to match Michael Jordon in yet another way. Regardless, it lead to Space Jam: A New Legacy in 2021 that just paired James with the same characters Jordan starred with back in 1994 only now it was less interesting. I saw the movie and was so entertained that I fell asleep. The original Space Jam is hardly what I would consider high art. Jordan is as wooden as a basketball court and the plot is pretty stupid, but the character animation holds up pretty well and it has its moments. It’s entertaining, and my kids love it. I don’t think they ever asked to watch the new one again. It tries too hard to find more of a heart at its center and falls on its face as a result. It’s also too long and the characters in 3D CG just lack the same charm that they possess in 2D. The only good thing I can say about it is it lead to new toys. The Looney Tunes are severely underrepresented in the world of toys and collectibles. The best ones might be the McDonald’s super hero toys featuring Bugs, Daffy, Petunia, and Taz with snap-on DC super hero costumes. DC Direct also had a line of more diorama styled toys a few years ago that were pretty neat for what they were. The toys that showed up at big box retailers for the new film though weren’t of any interest to me, but I was hoping we might get something flashier in the collector realm.
The paint applications aren’t exactly pristine and Beast Kingdom seemed to have a hard time matching the paint on the face to the paint used on the rear. Remember, this is an 80 dollar figure.
Enter Beast Kingdom, holders of many licenses and makers of interesting toys. I’ve looked at one Beast Kingdom figure in the past, a Donald Duck figure from their Dynamic Action Hero line, and found it to be…okay? It presents pretty well, but the quality did not really justify the cost. Beast Kingdom is very good at the presentation of collectibles, but at the expense of the actual figure inside the fancy box. I question if they price their figures at a certain level to add prestige because it doesn’t look like the construction of the figure inside justifies it. At any rate, the experience was positive enough that I was willing to give them another look when they unveiled a Bugs Bunny from Space Jam: A New Legacy. Now, I personally just want a Bugs Bunny figure as seen in the classic shorts. I’d love a line of the character with various artists’ interpretations, but I was willing to settle for this one because the basketball uniform was done with soft goods that could be removed. The sculpt is still Space Jam, but I think the model is also pretty stock for Bugs. I just wasn’t in love with the price which was $80, so I waited. Once I could get it for almost half off did I finally roll the dice and now I can tell you all about the experience.
The neck on my figure won’t stay together leading to a very floppy head and shoulders situation when it comes to posing.
Bugs Bunny arrived in his fancy box, as expected. It’s very glossy and a pain to photograph, but it’s very much themed to match the film the character is taken from. On the front, we get a shot of the figure that’s probably a digital render and on the side is some artwork. It’s a fairly thick cardstock that lifts off of the box like a board game box. Inside is another image of Bugs on a slip cover that just lifts off to reveal a tray underneath that contains the figure and all of its accessories. Behind the tray is where they hid the figure stand. The tray is black with a clear cover that’s taped down. Once you get that off you can finally get at the figure. Immediately upon lifting Bugs out of his plastic coffin his left leg fell off so we weren’t off to a great start. His tail and feet are wrapped in plastic and it’s kind of a pain to get off. I assumed they were worried about plastic transfer or something, but once I got the plastic off I realized they were bagged because those parts are flocked – interesting.
The flocked tail and feet are certainly a choice.
Once out and de-plasticked, Bugs stands at approximately 6.25″ to the top of his head and nearly 8.75″ to the top of his tallest ears. He’s in his own scale, and even though it’s not the same license, I thought he would scale a bit with the Donald Duck I have, but it’s not even close. No matter, since I envision him being displayed solo, but that might bother some folks. Bugs is mostly colored plastic. The gray on his head, the pink of his nose, and the black for his pupils and inner mouth make up the bulk of the paint on the figure. Even though it’s not much, it’s not especially clean. The gray around the eyes doesn’t quite reach the edge of the white portions and it’s off enough that it’s visible from afar. It’s also noticeably darker than the gray paint on the back of his head which is awfully distracting. The pink inside the ears has the same issue and one can see why Beast Kingdom avoids painting its figures since it kind of sucks at doing it. I’m also not a fan of just painting the inner mouth black. There should at least be a tongue, and most images of Bugs would paint the inner mouth a dark red. The white portions are also begging for some paint too since the buck teeth get lost in the white fur. At least a black outline, or a black line down the center, would solve that. He has dimples for his whiskers, but since they’re not outlined you’d never know they’re there. Oh and speaking of, he’s also missing his whiskers! Maybe they weren’t in the movie? They’re on the artwork so that’s a bit bizarre. The flocked feet strike me as an attempt to make the figure better resemble the 3D model in the film. It works, but it’s really odd that they only did it on the feet. It’s just as odd with the tail, but since it’s on the back of the figure I don’t care as much, but the feet look silly.
This expression, including the posing of the ears, is pretty much lifted directly from the movie.
For a largely unpainted figure, I will say that the plastic doesn’t have an overtly shiny appearance. The hands feel like a soft vinyl so they don’t reflect the light as much as the white on the face. The eyes and the mouth are the only real shiny areas which will vary from face to face and we’ll talk about in the accessory section. Where Beast Kingdom seems to spend the most money is on the soft goods. The basketball jersey is textured like an actual jersey and the printing is very clean. It’s not a decal and the stitching is really well done. I mentioned I have no plans to display the figure with the jersey on, but it’s done so well that it did make me reconsider. If it was the Space Jam jersey of my youth, I may have given in, but I just have no affection for this one. It’s not as loose-fitting as the jersey appears to be in the film and I’m actually surprised it’s not very stretchy. Getting it off will require removing the figure’s arms, which shouldn’t be hard since the right arm fell off shortly after the left leg when I initially picked the figure up, and I’ll likely have to remove the head. Getting the trunks over the tail will likely be the hardest part of the process. His belly is painted white underneath, about as well as the face and ears, and there’s no other sculpting. He can definitely be displayed naked, and I’m surprised that Beast Kingdom didn’t make it easier to get the jersey off without cutting it.
This is about as close to a “What’s up, doc?” face as you’re going to get from this one.
The look of the figure is certainly a mixed bag. The paint is poor and the flocked feet bizarre, and then there’s also the face. It’s definitely based on the film, but it’s like a low detail version. I can’t fault a figure based on the new Space Jam movie for looking like its source, but it could be better at actually looking like the source. Mostly though, the figure just feels cheap. Really cheap. The shoulders are very loose and floppy and it seems part of the problem is the torso isn’t held together very well. It keeps splitting at the neck, which makes the head extremely floppy. I have to keep pinching it to get the head to stay in place, but manipulating the figure causes the joints to get loose once more. The only fix would be to try to glue the piece together, but I’d be afraid of the glue seeping out or getting into a joint and screwing it up there. This is absolutely not a premium collectible despite its price.
Naked, as nature intended.
We may as well go right into the articulation since it plays into the looseness. The head is on a single ball peg and he can rotate, look up, look down, and gets some nice nuance posing. Manipulating it will loosen the neck and create a bobble head, but pinching the neck back together solves that to a point, but the gap never stays closed so it’s going to get loose again real quick. The shoulders are on a hinged ball peg so they can raise out to the side a touch past horizontal and get a little forward and back movement at the ball. The bicep pegs into another ball hinge at the elbow which in turn pegs into the forearm. This gives the figure a swivel point above and below the ball-joint plus a bend at the elbow that goes past 90 degrees. It functions well, and it’s at least nice and tight, but ball elbows are the type of joint that look a bit unsightly to me when the arm is out straight. When the elbow is bent it looks fine. The wrists are on another ball-hinge so they rotate and move up and down on that hinge and they work fine. There’s no articulation in the torso at all or at the waist. Our next point is at the hips which uses another ball and socket joint like the shoulder. Bugs can kick forward almost to horizontal and he kicks back a little. Bugs can’t do splits, but his legs go out to the side past 45 degrees. The knees are just like the elbows, so we get rotation above and below and a bend that goes past 90. The ankles are the same setup as the wrists but with a forward-facing pin for an ankle rocker. The hinge goes forward pretty far, but they cut the shin at an angle so the range back isn’t as far as it should be. The rocker works fine. The tail is the last spot and it just swivels.
He sort of looks like classic Bugs. Right?
Bugs moves well enough for the source material. He’s easy to stand since his feet are so large and most of the joints are plenty tight. It’s the shoulders and head that are loose and a pain to pose as a result. I’m a little surprised at the lack of posing for the ears, but since Beast Kingdom loves the ball-hinge joint I’m glad we don’t have ears on ball-hinges. Bugs works best going for basketball poses like running, jumping, and shooting. He struggles with more traditional Bugs Bunny poses as he can’t really get his hands onto his hips, and trying to do so means fighting with the loose shoulders. I would have loved to get him to lay down as he appears on top of the Warner logo in many a cartoon, but he really can’t do that either. He can basically stand and his big feet mean you can pose him on one foot with the other more relaxed, but he could be better. The lack of any articulation in the torso is a killer there. It’s surprising to me that they didn’t try something there since he’s intended to wear clothes, but at least the solid torso means he has a cleaner appearance when not in the costume.
It looks like Beast Kingdom may have initially planned on the eyes being swappable, but these things don’t budge and the feature isn’t advertised or mentioned in the instructions. Bummer.
For accessories, Bugs has a spread of hands and faceplates to go with a couple of props. For faces, Bugs gets three portraits: smile, worried, and carrot chomping. Interestingly, it looks like the eyes were going to be removable as they just slide over some pegs, but they’re totally fused. My guess is it wasn’t working in the testing phase so they just cut that feature. There’s zero looseness so I don’t think they could be removed now, but it would have been nice as he has wide open eyes, upward looking eyes, and partially closed eyes. The gray on the faces are all painted poorly, but at least the eyelids look fine. Every face has the same issue with the gray on the face being slightly darker than the gray painted onto the head of the figure which is distracting when viewing the figure from the side or when his head is positioned at an angle. Both are white pieces painted gray so I don’t know how they messed that up. The worried face has a little extra pink paint for the gumline and that is surprisingly sharply painted. The bare teeth though really draw attention to the lack of detail paint there. He needs some shading or something because the teeth are practically lost in the white fur. For hands, Bugs comes with a set of fists, open hands, and a set of hands that are open and slightly curved for palming a basketball. There’s also an additional left, gripping, hand with the pinky finger raised for holding a carrot. For ears, we get two relatively straight-up ears that have a gentle curve to them as well as a right ear bent past 90s degrees and a left ear with a less severe bend to it. The hands slide off and on the wrist pegs fairly easily and the ears key-in to the head in designated spots making it virtually impossible to mix-up the right and left ears. The faceplates are also easy enough to swap and they stay on just fine as well.
Even Jordan can’t fly like this.
As for props, Bugs comes with his signature carrot. The tip has been bitten off and it has a long, green, leaf coming out of the back of it. It slides into the gripping hand easily and is the accessory likely to get the most use from me. I just wish the side-mouth carrot chomping head featured a puffed out cheek to simulate a mouthful of carrot. His signature accessory from the film is the silver basketball. It has a very shiny, silver, paint job and the lines on the ball are sculpted in and painted black. It’s done surprisingly well and it also has a magnet in one spot. The magnet goes with his palming hands which also feature magnets in them so he can effortlessly hold the ball. The last item included is a display stand. It is quite interesting. The base is translucent, blue, plastic with “Tune Squad” printed on the top and “Bugs Bunny” on the front. The actual arm that pegs in is black and it’s articulated like a wire. It’s coated in black plastic so it feels like an old payphone cord (how’s that for a dated reference?) only it holds its shape. It’s about 7.25″ tall and it holds whatever shape you want to put it into. It’s very different, but also quite useful. The hinged claw at the end can grasp the figure just fine and you can even try to get the clothing over it to better hide it. It’s plenty strong enough to support the figure, though the base is light so if you try to go too far forward it will tip. It’s primary function is probably to pose Bugs as if he’s going for a dunk and it works just fine for that. Too bad he lacks a hoop to really convey that action.
We need to get some shots for scale in here before we end this one since he’s such an oddball scale. On the left is Homer from Super7 and on the right we have a toon Shredder from NECA.
The accessory loadout is plenty good for a Bugs Bunny from Space Jam. He’s got a ball and a carrot plus some different expressions. As a more evergreen Bugs Bunny, it still works okay, though I think that version of Bugs would maybe have some gag effects and probably different expressions. A basketball hoop, even if it was just the backboard that could be stuck to a surface, is about the only thing missing. And if they insists on doing the flocked feet, I think they should have included a set of unflocked feet for those that didn’t care for the look. The feet don’t even look flocked in the promo images and it wasn’t a listed feature so I’m right to be surprised by the inclusion.
And in this one, we have a Marvel Legends Cyclops and a fellow rabbity thing in Max from Boss Fight Studio’s Sam and Max line.
Let’s cut to the chase: as an 80 dollar collectible figure this release from Beast Kingdom stinks. There’s no way the quality is there to support that price. Even at nearly half off, I still think the quality is suspect. This feels more like a $30 figure with issues that can be overlooked because it was only 30 bucks. At the $45 I paid, those problems can’t be dismissed as minor. And if I’m reviewing it at the $80 it was released at it’s junk. The looseness is aggravating and even ignoring that the figure just feels cheap. Even so, when you get him posed and on a shelf, the figure looks okay. For its source material, it looks good enough. I still think the flocked feet are dumb and just distract more than anything, but the soft goods are really well done and he’s plenty expressive. Especially if you want him in a basketball pose as the stand works well and the ball turned out great. As a more traditional Bugs, it’s fine, but represents a compromise. To most people who look at it, they’ll just recognize the character for what he is. For people who are bigger fans of Bugs Bunny and the classic shorts, they’ll probably be able to tell that this is a Space Jam release trying to get by as a Golden Age Bugs. If you’re okay with that and think the figure looks good enough for your display then I can tepidly recommend this figure for purchase provided it’s found at a deep discount. I’d say $40 is the absolute most one should consider, but even less is preferable especially if you’re like me and have no interest in the Space Jam branding. Otherwise, it’s just not worth it.
“And that’s the end!”
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They set out to make a cute character and it would appear they succeeded.
Sniffles debuted in the 1939 short Naughty but Mice and would go on to star in 12 additional short films, all but one released under the Merrie Melodies umbrella. He was an unassuming character that often stumbled into, and out of, danger in his cartoons or he just went on a little adventure with low stakes. Eventually, Jones seemed to become disinterested in “cute” and moved towards comedy. Towards the end of his run, Sniffles underwent a change in personality in which he became a chatterbox who often annoyed other characters with his incessant questions and explanations. It’s that version of the character some may remember since that was the persona he possessed for a brief cameo in the movie Space Jam.
Sniffles was conceived as a Merrie Melodies star since he wasn’t looney enough for Looney Tunes.
In 1940, Sniffles was still very much in his cute phase and he was handpicked to star in a Christmas short that year. Bedtime for Sniffles is a simple little cartoon about trying to stay up late on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus in the act. Sniffles seems a bit like a child, but he’s actually an adult mouse who lives alone. This short relies on his cuteness and the capabilities of Jones to put the viewer in Sniffles’ shoes. It’s definitely short on laughs, but it’s also not going for them.
A solid looking house for a mouse.
The cartoon begins with “Joy to the World” being sung. It’s implied the song is coming from carolers as we see a snowy cityscape illustrated in just a still. As the camera pans the animation comes in and the song fades and is replaced by Sniffles (Margaret Hill-Talbot, probably, as it’s uncredited) singing “Jingle Bells.” The camera pans to a rooftop and a little, wooden, barrel on its side with warm light escaping from it. A door has been fashioned out of the bottom of the barrel and it’s adorned with a Christmas wreath. Sniffles pops out to brush snow away from his welcome mat before heading back inside.
Gotta make sure Santa can see your welcome mat.
Once in the cozy confines of his little home, Sniffles takes note of the time. It’s Christmas Eve, and Santa is due to arrive in about an hour and a half. He decides if he’s going to stay awake for Santa he’ll need to brew some coffee. He heads over to a large container of Haxwell Mouse (this sort of pun-based humor is basically it for comedy in this one) and fills up a little coffee percolator positioned over a lighter. Most of the home of Sniffles is cleverly designed with every day items repurposed into something a mouse could use, but the coffee percolator just looks like a mini coffee percolator.
I hope you enjoy the sight of a yawning mouse, because you’re going to get a lot of it in this one.
Sniffles continues to sing “Jingle Bells” to himself as he waits for his coffee to brew. He heads over to a radio, which is massive in his house, and turns it on. He appears to be dozing off as his voice kind of trails a bit, but then some classical music comes on the radio and he decides to dance with himself. He waltzes over to a makeup compact setup like a dresser on top of some matchstick boxes and looks himself over in the mirror. He then starts talking to himself and even flirting with himself (poor guy must be pretty lonely) before going into a shadow boxing routine. A sleepy song (“Sleep Baby Sleep”) comes on the radio and seems to instantly tire him out as he turns towards the mirror and starts to nod off. His head comes to rest on a little brush as he drifts into sleep.
If he pulls out a bottle of lotion I’m turning this one off.
The sleepy song ends and a lively rendition of “Jingle Bells” comes on to rouse Sniffles from his brief slumber. As he pops his head up, the brush has left a bunch of dot marks on his cheek. He exclaims “Measles!” at the sight, and it sure must have sucked to not have a vaccine for them back in the day! As he rubs his face, he soon figures out the culprit and smiles to himself. He then saunters over to the radio and slumps against it. He’s in bad shape now as sleep is making a hard play for him. The animation takes over as we close in on the face of Sniffles as his eyes grow heavy and his posture slumps, only for him to snap himself back awake with a big smile. He can’t convince himself he’s wide awake though as his face quickly starts to sag once more.
Pictured: not measles.
Sniffles stumbles over to his makeshift sink, two eyedroppers over some cup-like structure. He washes his face to try to and wake himself up and reaches for a box of cigarette paper on the wall to use as a towel. He discards it in an empty walnut shell he uses as a trash receptacle then walks over to his door to get a blast of cold air and probably search the sky for Santa. As he mumbles to himself about the need to stay awake, his posture slumps and he leans against the frame of the door for support. By now, I’m already thinking about that open flame under the coffee percolator and wondering what that will mean for Sniffles should he fall asleep, thankfully the thing whistles like a tea kettle though and Sniffles wakes up. He turns to the camera and his face is covered in white snow and he looks like…well, I could make a filthy joke right now, but this is a Sniffles cartoon!
Here you go Internet, do your worst!
Sniffles heads over to retrieve his coffee with a little bit of pep in his step. He tries to convince himself a thimble of coffee is just what he needs and he sits in a chair to nurse it. We pan over to the radio and a chime comes on to indicate this is the end of the broadcast day. It’s now 11:30, and the departing DJ doesn’t even wish the listeners a “Merry Christmas,” which just seems wrong. The camera then pans back over to Sniffles. The coffee is all over the floor in a puddle, he’s slumped forward in his chair barely clinging to the thimble he used as a mug, as he barely clings to semi-consciousness. Sniffles then lifts his head and turns to a magazine to keep him awake. It’s titled Good Mousekeeping, and he immediately spies another visual pun encouraging him to go sleep, this one a cartoon of a yawning baby carrying a tire with the caption “Time to Re-tire.” He then looks up from his magazine and spies his bed. It looks so inviting, but he turns his head with a frown to avoid it. Only his eyes then rest on his mirror, and the bed is reflected in it. He turns again, but now he can see the shadow of the bed on the wall!
It’s time to give in, Sniffles.
Sniffles then returns to his sink and plunges his head into the bowl of water. He can see through the side of the sink his bed once again, only now it’s inhabited by Sniffles! Now, my head cannon is Sniffles drowned himself in the sink, and the rest of the cartoon is his ghost trying to call out to his body. Sniffles lifts his head out of the sink, and the Sniffles in the bed is semi-transparent, like a ghost! It sits up and beckons for him to come to bed. Sniffles is resistant at first, but soon he starts to head that way. He starts with a couple steps, then floats across the floor as the ghost Sniffles gets out of the way allowing for tangible Sniffles to get into bed. The ghost pulls the covers over him and climbs in beside him, their bodies merging. The ghost then pops back up to blow out the candle because this mouse seems determined to start a major fire. Good thing he has ghosts looking out for him.
This is how he died.
We then pan over to a window as “Joy to the World” returns. The sound of sleigh bells soon fill the air and we see the silhouette of Santa pass by a chunk of the moon. He has six reindeer, because eight are just too hard to draw, and the short comes to an end before he can pay old Sniffles a visit. Or pull his corpse from the sink.
If you’re relying on a hallucination to keep you safe then you probably shouldn’t be living alone.
And that’s all folks! A simple, little, situational Christmas cartoon starring a cute little mouse. Sniffles doesn’t really get to do or say enough in this one to become annoying, and while this cartoon is short on laughs, it’s pretty involving from an animation point of view. Jones and his staff do a terrific job of just animating the slowly deteriorating condition of Sniffles. I liked how he battled his fatigue, and I especially thought introducing the bed as an antagonist was a nice touch towards the end. The way the character frowns as he spins away from even looking at his bed is done well, though the ghost Sniffles was a little weird. I do wish we saw a little more of Santa, but I guess it would have been a challenge to try and draw a human character interacting with this miniature world crafted by the short. Even just a little gift dropping onto Sniffles’ welcome mat would have been appreciated though.
Gotta get that moon-shot in!
Bedtime for Sniffles, being a cartoon that stars one of the lesser Warner stars, is pretty easy to come by today. I believe it’s officially streaming on HBO Max and it’s been included on various VHS, DVD, and even Blu Ray releases over the years, most notably the Chuck Jones focused Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles: The Chuck Jones Collection. And if you don’t think it’s worth paying for, you can find it easily enough online streaming for free in various places, though I do recommend that Blu Ray if you’re still into physical media (like I am). This is a solid, low energy, Christmas short you could sandwich in between something like Gift Wrapped and The Night Before Christmas. It’s probably no one’s favorite Christmas short, but it’s a hard one to truly dislike.
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