Looney Tunes

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"A-ba-dee aba-dee a-ba-dee, that's all folks!"

Looney Tunes is the collective title for a series of theatrical shorts, originally produced by Leon Schlesinger for Warner Bros., which first appeared in 1930. Schlesinger sold his assets to Warner Bros. in 1944, and the studio thus became sole owner of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and other characters The blanket term is often used to encompany the related series, Merrie Melodies, which shared the same artistic team and pool of characters, and more recently, many productions involving the characters.

In 1969, Chuck Jones, one of the Looney Tunes directors, wrote the following letter about Sesame Street to a television critic at the Los Angeles Times:

The major and most important phenomenon is that no commercial show will ever be quite the same...I have a feeling that Joan Ganz Cooney (Executive Director, Children's Television Workshop) and David Connell (Vice President and Executive Producer) have opened a Pandora's box that will scare the hell out of everybody in TV because the TV-watching child will devour Sesame Street to the last crumb. And if that is true, some network is going to realize that intelligence is just conceivably commercial, which is just so revolutionary, it just might be un-American.[1]

Muppet Mentions

Looney Tunes #47, the December 1998 issue of the comic book series published by DC Comics, included an 8-page story called "Puppet Regime." The plot involved Daffy Duck's jealousy over the fact that he's not been cast in the new children's film Cuddly Buddies: The Movie. The film stars spoof versions of various children's TV icons, most notably Barney the dinosaur, but also Bananas in Pajamas and, in a two page section, Sesame Street. The street, renamed ABC Sunflower Street, is populated by a collection of "Schmuppets," including a purple Big Bird analogue, an orange Kermit the Frog spoof (whose eye pupils change into different punctuation marks, according to mood), a purple Oscar the Grouch, and a cheerful green monster combining aspects of Elmo and Grover. The scheming Daffy, posing as a health inspector, sucks up the whole bunch into a vacuum cleaner, prompting "Kermit" to shout, "It's not easy being cle-e-a-an!" The collective puppets get their revenge in the tale's final panel.

Appearances

• Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck appeared in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, with members of the Muppet Babies and other characters.
• Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Tweety all made a cameo appearance in The Earth Day Special, which also featured a cameo by the Muppets.
• Bugs appeared in an anti-litter music video which aired on Sesame Street.

References

Baby Piggy encounters a scene from Puss N' Booty

• In a Season 14 Ernie and Bert sketch, the duo search for Dr. Livingstone, so Ernie can ask him, "What's up, Doc?" Ernie laughs uproariously and credits Bugs Bunny with the phrase.
• In episode 421 of The Muppet Show, a rabbit closes the show from Statler and Waldorf's box with Porky Pig's famous send-off line, "A-ba-dee aba-dee a-ba-dee, that's all folks!"
• The line "That's awful, folks!" was used by Kermit in The Muppets Go to the Movies, after the film breaks in Nephew of Frankenstein.
• In the Muppet Babies episode "Comic Capers," the song "The Sunday Funnies" incorporates footage from Puss N'Booty (1943), the final black and white Looney Tunes short.
• When Baby Gonzo goes to the imaginary hospital to check on Camilla in "Faster than a Speeding Weirdo," he looks for her in two rooms. The first one is occupied by a large chicken who speaks with a Southern accent about a dangerous chicken hawk (Foghorn Leghorn). In the second room is a bandaged bird who "tawt [he] taw a putty tat", a spoof of Tweety Bird.
• In the Muppet Babies episode "Eight Flags Over the Nursery," when the babies appear in the movie studio section of the theme park, somebody asks if Baby Piggy is Porky Pig's sister.
• In the Elmo's World episode on balls, the ending line of the TV cartoon is, "That's ball, folks!", a play on Porky Pig's line, "That's all folks!"
• In Bob Hope's World of Comedy, when Bob Hope asks Big Bird who his favorite movie stars are, one of the stars he mentions is the Road Runner.

Connections

• Bob Bergen is the official voice of Porky Pig and others.
• Mel Blanc was the voice of many of the characters in the Looney Tunes stable, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Road Runner, Speedy Gonzales, Foghorn Leghorn, and countless others.
• Bruce Lanoil puppeteered Daffy Duck in green-screen shots and voiced Pepe LePew in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

Sources

1. ↑ Old School: Volume 1 booklet