There’s going to be a lot of toys in these ones. And some are very familiar looking.
I mentioned yesterday that my rankings of Christmas specials are by quality and personal preference, but also by genre. When it makes sense, I’m trying to keep similar specials together when it comes to the general vibe and the vibe today is public domain shorts. The domain of the short used to be the movie theater and seemingly every major studio had a series of cartoon shorts. Some were bigger than others and a lot of the less popular ones have slipped into the public domain. Most of these shorts fall into that category, but not all. And most of these are going to have a very similar plot. A lot of these shorts liked bringing Christmas to poor kids. And almost all of them have something racist in them which is just incredible from a modern perspective. It got to the point over the years of doing this where it stopped being surprising. Even Mickey gets in on the action. It’s nuts. Anyway, let’s get to it.
Little Audrey and a diverse group of kids want to leave a surprise for Santa.
This is a Little Audrey cartoon who was a rip-off of Little Lulu and probably less successful. Maybe I’m being a little tough on this one by ranking it last because it does have a unique premise. Audrey and her friends decide Santa deserves some presents of his own on Christmas so they sneak into his sleigh and try to do something nice for him. It’s cute. I just don’t care at all about Little Audrey. The group of multi-cultural children that accompany her on this quest are also not the most sensitive depictions of such one is going to find. Usually, stuff like that is what helps get cartoons into the public domain because the companies that owned them originally don’t want to re-release them and if they’re not going to re-release them then they’re worthless.
He may not look like much, but this toy soldier is pretty special.
Here’s our first one where a poor kid gets a visit from Santa Claus. In this one, it’s a kid who lives alone in a shack with his cat. On the way back to his home, he finds a discarded toy soldier in the street and brings it home. When he goes to bed, the toy becomes sentient and uses the radio to call for Santa who shows up and does his thing. Most of the short is just toys doing stuff, the sort of thing we’re going to see a lot of. The kid eventually wakes up, is happy to have toys (and food) and that’s pretty much it. The short looks okay and it is in color. It’s also been re-released since my entry and there is a much better looking version out there now. It’s still a pretty boring short, but at least it will look nice.
Another one that would probably rank a little higher if I cared about the property. The Captain and the Kids is a series I don’t know much about, but it had a brief run of shorts and among them is a Christmas one. It’s basically a Captain character who takes care of some orphans and he’s harassed by the pirate John Silver and his crew. This one is interesting because the Captain is going to dress as Santa to surprise his boys, but John Silver and his crew get to him first. Silver takes the Santa suit for himself and they proceed to enter the dwelling and mess everything up. Because it’s Christmas, the bad guys feel terrible about what they did and eventually make it right. A large portion of the short is dedicated to a song that’s not very good performed by the pirates. It’s not terrible or anything, and the version I was able to find actually looked great, so there are worse ways to kill 8 minutes.
Mickey has had many goes at this whole Christmas thing.
Mickey Mouse’s first Christmas cartoon is among his worst. I rank this ahead of Mickey’s Christmas Chaos mostly out of respect, but that mediocre short might actually be more entertaining than this one. Mickey and Minnie wind up with some orphans in their care and try to give them a decent Christmas, but they’re also jerks. The little orphan cats just destroy the place and don’t seem to care that Mickey made the effort to give them a decent Christmas by playing Santa. There’s no real message here, no lesson to be learned, the kids just destroy everything until the short is over. It’s very bizarre in that aspect. It is in black and white, but the animation is pretty smooth, so it has that going for it.
This is an early Merrie Melodies short. It’s very similar to Gifts from the Air in that it’s another poor boy who seemingly lives alone. It begins almost exactly the same way with the poor kid walking through the snow on Christmas Eve getting progressively more upset over the sounds of other people enjoying Christmas. Only with this one, when the kid gets back to his shack he gets a visit from Santa before he goes to sleep! And not only is Santa there to bring Christmas cheer, he actually takes the kid back to the workshop and that’s where the toy antics come into play. It’s pretty crazy how similar the toy antics are from one short to another, and not just this and Gifts from the Air, but this and other shorts we’ll talk about shortly. This is another that ends abruptly, a fire breaks out and the kid is able to put it out and that’s it. Did he stay at the North Pole? Did he become the next Santa? Is he Santa’s slave? Is this where elves come from?! No one knows.
This one is a sequel to the Silly Symphony short Santa’s Workshop. If you like the part of that one where Santa just demoes the toys and laughs at them then this is for you. Santa delivers some toys to a house and we get to see him play with them. There’s even a Mickey Mouse cameo! Santa just laughs at everything and it gets real obnoxious. Eventually, he has to run and the kids come down and find their stuff. One cute kid gets a puppy. There’s a blackface gag, which is probably why it’s never been added to Disney+ to join its predecessor. It’s fine.
We have a lot of cartoons of kids finding toys under the tree, but not many of puppies finding toys under the tree. We do have this one from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising and it’s about what you would expect. Santa has made his delivery and the children are up in the middle of the night to check it out. Among them are two puppies who get into all kinds of mischief when it comes to the toys. In particular, there’s a toy tank that apparently has a personality all its own and it battles it out with the puppies. No puppy is seriously harmed, and they are cute. It does run a little long, which is an odd thing to critique a short for doing, but if you’re a dog person then you’ll probably enjoy this on some level.
This is one of the oldest Christmas specials in color out there. And it was also recently restored to look as best as it possibly can. And it is a good looking short. It’s a Fleischer Studios production and there’s some use of live-action references including a spectacular Christmas tree spot at the end, but the cartoon itself is pretty similar to everything else here. Grampy wants to bring Christmas to an orphanage, but since he can’t just will a bunch of toys into existence, he uses household objects to make toys and distribute them. The kids have a good time, and it’s a reasonably merry Christmas. Worth a watch to appreciate the impressive restoration, if anything.
Mickey is going to experience some hardships in this one, but it works out in the end.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, a character wants to bring Christmas to some poor kids and so they do. In this case, it’s Mickey Mouse who is very poor as well. He wants to help a family of cats (again), but in order to do so he needs money and the only thing of value he owns is his dog, Pluto. Some rich asshole’s kid wants Pluto so Mickey reluctantly sells him thinking Pluto will have a better life with the wealthy man than he would on the streets with him. He takes the money, buys a bunch of stuff, and makes a Christmas delivery to the kids. Unfortunately, that spoiled, rich, kid really sucks and is abusive towards Pluto who eventually gets away, but not before he makes off with a turkey. He finds Mickey all alone in the snow and there’s a happy reunion in the end. Thankfully. I get the idea of having a character sacrifice to make Christmas better for the less fortunate, but I don’t want to see them give their dog away! At least it all works out, and the animation is really nice. It was made in black and white, but there is a color version out there if you’re adverse to that.
The more popular Christmas themed Silly Symphony short. This one takes place at the titular workshop where we see toys being made, inspected, and tested. That’s it. I just rank it this high because I think it looks just lovely. There’s a whole bunch of gags similar to other ones we’ve already seen and it also had its own racist gag (which the Disney+ version omits), but at least it doesn’t have any orphans! Seriously, I’m getting a little sick of that trope. And seeing Santa prepare for Christmas is just more interesting to me than the process of infiltrating homes and the aftermath.
That concludes the public domain theatrical shorts category. Not all of those are in the public domain, but they all have a very similar feel to them, and as we saw, similar plots. There isn’t much separating the worst from the best in this case, I mostly ranked them on visual quality as that’s what appeals to me most. And not just how well it’s animated, but the emotive aspect of the characters since we get a lot of inanimate objects doing interesting things. They are all indeed short though and also pretty damn old. The historical aspect makes them worth watching, in my opinion. And they won’t take up much of your time. I bet they’re all on YouTube or Daily Motion too so they should be easy to find. It will give you something to do until tomorrow when we move onto the next group of 10. In looking ahead, there isn’t much of a theme in our next group other than it’s all stuff made for kids and almost all of it is comedic in nature. There might be one surprise in there, but we’re still firmly in the realm of mediocre and not quite to the point where we’re hitting on some essential viewing type stuff.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
It feels like it has been a minute since we took a look at an American Dad! Christmas episode. The show can be counted on to produce such an episode almost annually and often times the Christmas episode is among the best of the season. 2024 is also the year we had to say goodbye…
Children’s cartoons often take to Christmas when the season rolls around. The holiday is usually ripe for parody or just direct adaptations so it’s easy for the writers to kind of phone it in. What’s not customary is for a cartoon series to feature two dedicated Christmas episodes in a single season! That’s what Animaniacs…
Last year for the Christmas Spot we took a look at the 1960’s TV series Popeye the Sailor and its Christmas episode “Spinach Greetings.” There are a lot of Popeye fans in the world and my assumption is that most would not put Popeye the Sailor above the theatrical shorts that helped catapult Popeye to…
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?
Love the Looney Tunes? Then we have some more reviews of things that may interest you:
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…
It feels like, at this point in time, we have hit peek 90s nostalgia. I can recall when it felt like 70s nostalgia hit pretty hard and then the 80s arrived not too far after. It’s inevitable whenever a generation that spent much of their adolescence in a given decade hits adulthood. And by adulthood…
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:
It was around Labor Day of this year that Will Sloan (@WillSloanEsq) took to Twitter to uncover the origins of an image that had confounded his girlfriend and him for the past five years. It was actually a return plea as he had posted the same image 3 years prior. The image in question was…
It was just last year that we finally broke the seal on American Dad!. It surprised me how long I was able to avoid American Dad! year in and year out since it has a wealth of Christmas episodes at its disposal. Last year, the featured Christmas episode was the very first one the show…
When someone hears the title TV Funhouse they probably first go to Saturday Night Live and The Ambiguously Gay Duo, a cartoon Batman and Robin parody that hypothesizes the relationship between the two heroes is more than just friendship. What many aren’t aware of is that the comedic short starring Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert…
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!”
If you liked this post then maybe you will want to check out these ones as well:
Few brands are as immensely popular as Disney, which is why it’s a bit surprising that the company’s presence in the world of action figures has always felt a little lacking. It’s thought (and maybe even confirmed by the company) that Disney’s interest in properties like Marvel and Star Wars stemmed from them being unable…
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…
Once upon a time, Bugs Bunny was a big enough star to land numerous television specials. He’s still a recognizable character across the world, but I sometimes feel as if Bugs isn’t as loved as he should be. I can’t recall the last time I saw him standing next to a Warner Bros. logo in…
Not every Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies star had to be inherently funny. Sure, most of them were and that’s often what many cartoon enthusiasts will point to the Warner catalog of cartoons as having over Disney, but it wasn’t some hard and fast rule. That’s why when a guy by the name of Chuck Jones was getting into directing cartoon shorts he envisioned creating a star out of a character that was cute first, funny second. It was Jones along with Disney import Charles Thorson that created Sniffles, a little mouse character designed to make audiences go “aww!” The little guy was distinct from a more famous mouse, but was very much in-line with other Disney mice as Thorson basically ripped himself off when designing Sniffles as he looks an awful lot like the mice from The Country Cousin.
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.
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 British imports and the subject of bears is brought up, most probably immediately think of Paddington or Winnie the Pooh. Few probably recall SuperTed, the Welsh teddy bear brought to life by a spotted alien and given super powers by Mother Nature. SuperTed is similar to Mighty Mouse in that he…
Bob’s Burgers has somewhat quietly become the best animated show on the Fox Network. Better than the modern version of The Simpsons, and better than Family Guy. It might be the ugliest of the three, but it more than makes up for that with its characters and plots. Bob’s Burgers looks like just another…
After yesterday’s entry ran 3,000 words, it seems like a nice time to slip in one of the shorter specials we’ll be looking at this year. This one comes from the Cartoon Network original Dexter’s Laboratory. Created by Genndy Tartakovsky, Dexter’s Laboratory was one of the inaugural series to be spun-off from the Cartoon Cartoon/What…
Every year I do this I am reminded at how surprising it is that so few Christmas themed Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts exist. Disney put out several memorable ones over the years featuring their characters, but Warner Bros. mostly stayed away. Bugs Bunny would eventually get a Christmas television special in the 70s, but that was well past the age of the cartoon short.
That’s not to say Warner didn’t produce any Christmas cartoons under their two most popular banners, just that most didn’t feature the company’s most recognizable faces. The first of which, The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives, contained no recognizable faces even though this was during the heyday for Bosko. The Rudolf Ising directed short was the first Merrie Melodies cartoon released in 1933, missing the Christmas holiday by a couple of weeks. Even though the Merrie Melodies line of shorts is often distinguished from Looney Tunes due to the presence of color (that wouldn’t come until 1934), this is a black and white film that’s fallen into the public domain.
Possibly the nicest piece of animation in the short.
The short is a Depression-era cartoon, hence the name The Shanty Where Santy Claus lives. It’s not a particularly well known short as it wasn’t shown on television much given that it’s associated with a holiday and thus confined to a short window for release. Since it’s from 1933, it also doesn’t look particularly great compared with the more popular Warner cartoons and, as I already mentioned, it’s devoid of the characters the studio is known for. Despite that though, it did receive some play on Cartoon Network during the 1990s, but sometimes with alterations. I honestly can’t recall if I ever saw this one on the channel. I used to love falling asleep to the Christmas Eve programming on Cartoon Network which ran all night and mostly consisted of winter or Christmas themed cartoons. I could usually bank on seeing Peace on Earth at that time and only that time. This cartoon was probably shown as well, but I don’t remember it specifically. When viewing it now, it has an air of familiarity to it, but that could just be my imagination.
Our downtrodden protagonist.
The cartoon begins with bells ringing and they are gorgeously animated. It then heads for ground level where the animation is less gorgeous and is accompanied by “Silent Night,” something that will become a trope in Christmas specials to come. A disheveled looking kid is drearily stomping through the snow with a floppy hat and his hands stuffed into his pockets. His exaggerated feet practically look like snowshoes. He hears singing coming from a church, but declines to enter. He perks up momentarily when he hears another commotion. Racing over to a window he looks in on a bunch of kids dancing around a Christmas tree. He then turns to the camera with a sad face as the wind howls.
Listen kids, normally it’s not okay to run off with an old guy promising toys.
The boy gets caught in the gust which tosses him into the side of his shanty. The snow falls off the roof and buries him momentarily. He pulls himself up and heads inside. It’s a one-room shack with hardly anything inside, including parents. He’s rather down, even weeping, until he hears something outside. Sleigh bells herald the arrival of Santa Claus who comes bursting in singing the short’s signature song. Santa offers to take the boy with him to his shanty where toys and wonderful things await. The kid is more than eager to take old Saint Nick up on his offer and the two head outside. Santa puts the boy on the back of his sleigh before climbing in himself. He orders the reindeer to “giddy-up” and as they take off the boy tumbles from the back of the sleigh. Malnutrition has apparently not affected the boy’s speed or conditioning as he races after the sleigh and essentially outruns the reindeer to get back into Santa’s arms. This time the old man is smart enough to put the kid in the sleigh proper and the two take off into the sky.
You are correct if you assumed Santa flew past that moon before landing in front of his shop. Maybe the first ever animated shot of Santa in front of a moon?
Santa and his team of two reindeer (the Depression even impacted Santa) make it to Santa’s shanty. And it’s hardly a shanty. The two head inside and the kid’s eyes widen to see all of the toys waiting to be delivered to new homes. Some of them are a bit…iffy looking, but we pan back to the kid pretty quickly who’s looking quite happy. He heads in further and starts playing with a kangaroo toy. When he squeezes a ball on the end of a tube it makes the little joey pop out of the pouch. Cute.
Well, this just went wrong very fast.
The boy then turns his attention to a musical toy and….oh no, here’s our reminder this is a cartoon from the 1930s. A toy of jazz musicians is displayed and they basically all look like they’re pulled from a minstrel show. We then see a baby doll crying out for it’s Mama before tumbling off the shelf into a box of soot. It then emerges, in blackface, crying for its “Mammy” who then shows up to retrieve the toy. And we’re not done! A rag doll starts dancing as the short’s song returns with two other dolls that also look like blackface dolls. She then ditches the pair to watch on the side cheering them on with some maracas.
Oh my god, it just got worse!
More toys are spotlighted including a doll that tries to blow up a balloon. She sucks in the air and turns into a woman of generous proportions who begins to sing “Shine on Harvest Moon” in what is undoubtedly a caricature of singer Kate Smith. There’s also a toy soldier on a baby bank. When the register pops open it’s, get this, full of babies. A teddy bear is shown playing a trombone and a jack-in-the-box beside it pops out and it’s thankfully not racist. The trombone keeps hitting it into a drum which is mildly amusing.
Make it stop!
We then end up at the Christmas tree which has a lit candle on it. One of the toys knocks it over and soon the tree catches on fire (and you thought those giant bulbs from the 40s and 50s were a fire hazard) forcing the fire brigade into action. The toy fire brigade, that is. A fire engine races over and tries to put out the flames, but it is just a toy. We then see the boy again, the supposed main character who has apparently just been watching this whole thing and is possibly willing to let the racist toys burn, who decides he should take some action. A hose is conveniently at his feet and hooked up to a sink. He inserts the other end into some bagpipes which are just laying on the floor and runs over to the tree. He squeezes the bagpipes spraying water out of the various pipes which douse the flames. The toys cheer triumphantly and the short comes to an abrupt end.
Kid, maybe you should just let this place burn.
I suppose when I saw this cartoon was in the public domain I should have expected some racism. Cartoonists, for whatever reason, loved these blackface gags in the 20s and 30s and really seemed to like the black figures seen here. Maybe it’s a benign reason, since these cartoons are in black and white it was an easy gag to get over, but it is what it is. When Cartoon Network aired this one it eventually edited out those parts, though I think at one point in time they were left in. Considering the short is a little over 7 minutes with that stuff intact, it must have been incredibly short without it. If you watch a lot of old cartoons, there’s nothing in here you haven’t seen before. I don’t think those images would keep this from being released as part of a collection of Warner cartoons, but it sure would earn it a disclaimer.
Well, the fire’s out and…it’s over? Okay then.
Visually, this is an old cartoon and it shows. The backgrounds aren’t very detailed and certainly pale in comparison to what Disney was doing at the time. The characters have noodle-like limbs and their mouth movements are a bit odd. There are some twin characters that were probably just doubles of the film cells or possibly traces from one image to another as they move in perfect unison. The kid main character also doesn’t look particularly good, but a lot of effort was put into Santa who has a nice, jolly, demeanor.
As a Christmas toon, this is essentially a piece of wish fulfillment. A poor kid is not going to get to enjoy Christmas like the more well-off children will, so Santa shows up to whisk him away. It probably wasn’t something a poor kid needed to see as it would have felt patronizing. Santa is also barely in it as he just shows up to take the kid and then basically disappears once we get to his work shop. I kept waiting for him to come in and put out the fire (or destroy those racist toys), but he must have left to go find some other poor kid. There’s a lot of public domain Christmas music at play though, and the one original song works well enough.
He’s certainly not as charismatic as Porky.
The Shanty Where Santy ClausLives is a public domain cartoon that is quite easy to come by. Just typing the name into a search engine should produce plenty of results, or you can even just go straight to YouTube. There are various public domain Christmas VHS and DVDs that include it, and Warner even featured it on a laser disc release of shorts back in the day, but I doubt you want to go that route. Because it’s free, the quality can vary. Some claim to be upscaled to HD, but they get a blurry, smear, effect as a result. Some are very gray in appearance and there’s even some that are practically yellow. Still, you don’t have to look too hard to find one with nice enough contrast levels. I don’t really recommend it, but it is only 7 minutes so it’s not exactly much of a time commitment. It’s a shame the few gags present are mostly racist humor. The only memorable non racist gag was the baby bank, which wasn’t particularly funny either. As the first Christmas-themed Merrie Melodies short, it at least has some historical significance. Just beware of the racist stuff.
The Nostalgia Spot 