Comments on: Animaniacs Volume 4, at last!!!

Animaniacs Volume 4, at last!!!

hippybear — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:24:06 -0800

The long wait is ending! On February 5, 2013, Animaniacs Volume 4 will finally be released on DVD. This set will contain the final 24 episodes from the 1993-1998 cartoon, including the remaining thus-far unreleased episodes from Season 3 and all the episodes from the truncated 4th and 5th seasons.

Included in this set, for the first time on DVD, will be film noir send-up This Pun For Hire, Star Truck (wherein our heroes boldly go where no Warners have gone before), fan favorite A Very Very Very Very Special Episode, art-house delight Ten Short Films About Wakko Warner, the Fantasia-astic The Brain's Apprentice (notable, as Pinky & The Brain already had their own series at this point), and their final cartoon ever, The Animaniacs Suite, a celebration of all that had come before.

By: Old'n'Busted

Old'n'Busted — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:27:47 -0800

Begone, pests, and give me the bird!

By: KingEdRa

KingEdRa — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:38:28 -0800

I think my favorite short was when Chicken-Boo pretended to be the most popular boy at Katy Kaboom's high school.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:39:44 -0800

Oh good god, I loved that show. Has it held up? Something tells me it has.

By: BiggerJ

BiggerJ — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:42:39 -0800

Have any fandoms claims that members of them have died waiting for long-delayed releases like this? I don't know of any examples, but this is the internet. No holds are barred.

By: delfin

delfin — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:42:55 -0800

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmwah! Good night, everybody!

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:44:02 -0800

I think my favorite short was when Chicken-Boo pretended to be the most popular boy at Katy Kaboom's high school. You are referring to Katie Ka Boo.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:44:48 -0800

(I've always read Chicken Boo as being a metaphor for living in the closet. Seriously. It works.)

By: deezil

deezil — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:46:14 -0800

Wheel of Morality, turn turn turn, show us the lesson that we should learn.

By: Hey Dean Yeager!

Hey Dean Yeager! — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:50:53 -0800

Oh good god, I loved that show. Has it held up? Something tells me it has. Yes, always.

By: oneswellfoop

oneswellfoop — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:03:43 -0800

...while some of continue waiting, quietly, patiently and semi-vegetatively, for Season 3 of "The Tick" (animated version, of course).

By: tzikeh

tzikeh — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:05:49 -0800

Nothing is better than the Animaniacs. Really.

By: hopeless romantique

hopeless romantique — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:07:14 -0800

Sweet! I'm just rewatching my DVDs of Pinky and the Brain now - never got around to buying the 3rd season (of that or Animaniacs), but I definitely need to complete my collection.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:10:11 -0800

Animaniacs is truly the greatest thing Steven Spielberg was ever even remotely involved with.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:12:29 -0800

"and then the camera did a long pan of the room that never really paid off." IT DOES PAY OFF IT FILLS THE BEAT AND SHOWCASES HOW CRAZY WEALTHY SHE IS, GOD ANIMANIACS WAY TO DROP THE BALL. I've been waiting YEARS to get that off my chest.

By: Ghostride The Whip

Ghostride The Whip — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:18:56 -0800

My favorite episode is still the almost ten minute long Apocalypse Now parody/extended riff on Jerry Lewis including an oblique reference to The Day The Clown Cried.

By: Malor

Malor — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:23:11 -0800

I was always a little mixed on this show -- so much of it was brilliant, but then they wasted such gigantic amounts of screen time on Rita and Runt. Yeah, I know it was Bernadette Peters. Yeah, I know she sings well. But there's only a half hour in that show, and I hated it when ten of those precious minutes were taken up with that stupid cat's self-obsessed warbling. That was Slappy or Yakko time we were losing, and I found it intensely annoying. It rang false in that context. It did not belong. They were trying to shove art down kids' throats, and I bitterly resented it. The funny bits, though... when Animaniacs was 'on', they were absolutely as good as Looney Tunes, probably better. I don't think Bugs ever once reduced me to tears from laughter, where Animaniacs did it several times.

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:31:21 -0800

Animaniacs! That means it's almost time for Tazmania and after that the glory that is Batman! /excitedly eats cereal. /Saturday morning cartoon were a real big deal to me.

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:37:43 -0800

"No no no...fingerprints!" "Uh, I don't think so!"

By: TSOL

TSOL — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:41:43 -0800

Meh. They completely misunderstood the dynamics of Chuck Jones et al's pacing and delivery. The result: half baked and overblown attempt at old school WB animated comedy.

By: Rev. Syung Myung Me

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:49:12 -0800

Wait... gay people are giant chickens? AWESOME

By: mephron

mephron — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:07:48 -0800

Yah, I have to admit, some of the stuff on Animaniacs was brilliant. But when those hippos came out, I lost interest faster than Mitt Romney talking to an economist.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:10:35 -0800

they wasted such gigantic amounts of screen time on Rita and Runt. I'm willing to bet there are fewer than 15 Rita & Runt segments across the 99 episodes of the show. Seriously. This episode list shows there were 13 of them in total.

By: Rev. Syung Myung Me

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:12:07 -0800

Yeah -- the Hip Hippos were awful. Luckily, they only appeared in a few episodes. I think they quickly realized they were awful and phased 'em out. I also hated the Buttons & Mindy shorts (though I still find myself thinking and saying "OK I LOVE YOU BYE BYE") -- I just felt way too bad for Buttons. Loved most of the rest, though, but my favorite non-Warners, non-Pinky & The Brain (just as those two are obvious favorites that go without saying) was Slappy Squirrel. She was hilarious.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:12:42 -0800

Wait... gay people are giant chickens? It's a metaphor. Met. A. Phor. Talk to your middle school language arts teacher if you don't know what that is.

By: Rev. Syung Myung Me

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:13:37 -0800

I think with Rita & Runt, it probably stands out more, just because their cartoons were typically a) really long (comparatively) and b) so very different than the rest of Animaniacs. At the time, I didn't really like R&R -- though I'd be interested to come back to them as an adult. Seeing as I get all "EEEE" when, say, My Little Pony parodies Sondheim.

By: Rev. Syung Myung Me

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:15:16 -0800

Yeah, that joke kinda failed. I was going for the image of basically just a lot of Chicken Boos going around in the real world.... ...but then forgot that "Giant Chicken" meant other things too. I MEANT IT LITERALLY! LITERALLY! (but yeah, sorry for inadvertent douchebaggery)

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:18:37 -0800

Nah, you weren't being douchebaggish. It's one of those things, though... Every cartoon has Chicken Boo passing convincingly to everyone except one or two people, who keep pointing out that he is not who everyone thinks he is. And then something happens and he is outed and subsequently is cast out of his previously accepted roles. If you were an out gay in the mid 1990s, it was pretty obvious. (My partner and I even used the phrase "he's a bit boo" for a while when talking about people who were obviously queer but living in the closet.)

By: Rev. Syung Myung Me

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:20:02 -0800

That's a cool point that I never picked up on, but seems pretty obvious in retrospect. I think I was too busy laughing at Boo's blank expression. (seriously, that just cracks me up.) That said, I always wanted to be Chicken Boo's friend. If nothing else, it seems like it'd be fun to have a giant chicken around.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:24:14 -0800

At the time, I didn't really like R&R -- though I'd be interested to come back to them as an adult. Here's most of them on this first page of this search, probably the rest appear on subsequent pages. I always liked the R&R bits. But I'm a musical theater queen at heart, and Bernadette Peters could sing the yellow pages and I'd listen with rapt attention.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:36:15 -0800

I don't think the Animaniacs were as good as classic Warners, but literally nothing is. They're better than both classic Disney and classic MGM on the average (with exceptions like Tex Avery). And there are a few other cartoons that are better overall: from that era I'd offer The Tick, and (also from Kids WB) Freakazoid. For every Warner Bros. episode, good Pinky and the Brain or Slappy Squirrel there's probably at least one matching bad Pinky and the Brain (there were more than a few misses), Rita and Runt, Mindy and Buttons or Hip Hippos. Goodfeathers also weren't great often, and once in a while you got a terribly mawkish cartoon like that one in an early episode with the talking candle flame witnessing the birth of the United States; that one rang hollow even then. And the animation was sometimes great sometimes awful, as all TV animation was at that time. (Some of the best animation in the series is from that oft-repeated Yakko's World bit; if you can find that on the internet somewhere, watch it and note how perfectly the [probably Japanese] animators depicted Yakko's dance.) But when Animaniacs was working, it was extremely good. They learned many lessons from the (greatly overrated IMO) Tiny Toons Adventures, and even the bad cartoons have a much stronger thematic unity than Tiny Toons did. And the hit rate increased greatly, I think, as the show continued. BTW, it pains me to note how Pinky and the Brain wasn't always terrific, because the premise is brilliant, still one of the strongest ever put to animation. I just want to like it. The theme song and how it leaves up in the air which is the genius and which is the insane one, the introduction to the characters, how they bounce off each other, the many running gags, the setting of Acme Labs, the idea that each story is one attempt to take over the world (ideally taking just one night, although in practice that's rare), how the stories (ideally) should always end with the same lines (actually, probably 90% of them try to make a joke off of it by presenting alternate ending lines, which falls flat because it hadn't been well established before then that the show should almost always end with the same lines), and the perfect voices. But the writing is not always up to the premise.

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:44:02 -0800

I don't know about ya'll but I just can't get enough of that Bubba Bo Bob Brain, let's hear it again...

By: ewan

ewan — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:34:46 -0800

"The theme song and how it leaves up in the air which is the genius and which is the insane one..." So it does... damn you mefi!!!! :-)

By: TheWhiteSkull

TheWhiteSkull — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 04:38:44 -0800

DANA DELANY

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 05:12:56 -0800

Have any fandoms claims that members of them have died waiting for long-delayed releases like this? Pretty sure I'm gonna die before the rest of Sergeant Bilko gets released.

By: Mrs. Pterodactyl

Mrs. Pterodactyl — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 05:57:16 -0800

I also hated the Buttons & Mindy shorts (though I still find myself thinking and saying "OK I LOVE YOU BYE BYE") -- I just felt way too bad for Buttons. I agree with this EXCEPT I find it really useful to explain a certain type of person, such as my friend Megan from high school. She was a really sweet, kind person and stuff just worked out for her and she sort of floated through life. The thing is, the reason she could float through life is that she had friends (like me) running after her picking stuff up and making it work out. For example, the day before our Junior prom it turns out that although she was expecting to go to the prom but didn't have any plans for how to get there, get picked up, have dinner, ANYTHING. She lived an hour away and her mother couldn't drop her off or pick her up that evening. This meant that I rushed around making plans for her while she sort of floated around happily and expected everything to work out. Everything DID work out (because I enabled her, I guess) and she kept going on her happy, dreamy way. She was a good person but she was also basically Mindy. She's not the only Mindy I've met and sometimes I'm still naive/simple/whatever enough to be Buttons. I HATE those cartoons because I think I'll always be a natural Buttons; stuff doesn't really happen without me working hard at it and every so I often feel like I get hit by trains helping other people. Those segments are dumb and annoying but I still feel like they're useful for me in communicating with other Buttons.

By: Flannery Culp

Flannery Culp — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:47:39 -0800

I could swear they hit Bankrupt on the Wheel of Morality once, but the rest of the internet disagrees with me. Anyone?

By: jillithd

jillithd — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:48:29 -0800

I think I watched every single Animaniacs episode from the first couple of seasons multiple times. (Then it got too sing-songy and I didn't like it anymore.) But today I've already learned two new things about the show: hippybear's revelation about Chicken Boo and Mrs. Pterodactyl's revelation of Mindy and people like Mindy. (I think sometimes I am a Mindy and my husband is a Buttons. Uh oh.) Holy. Animaniacs is deep. Thanks MeFi!

By: njohnson23

njohnson23 — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:51:16 -0800

Speaking of that era of Saturday morning cartoons, I am waiting for Eek! The Cat.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:57:49 -0800

All small children are Mindys all of the time.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 08:07:02 -0800

Have any fandoms claims that members of them have died waiting for long-delayed releases like this? Well, Richard Stone, composer for the WB animation revival of the 1990s, died in 2001, before ANY of the Animaniacs episodes were released on DVD. Not sure that counts, however. (And I'm pretty sure the conductor shown briefly in The Animaniacs Suite is in fact Stone, and not Michael Kamen as I originally thought.)

By: grateful

grateful — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 10:17:35 -0800

You know what else happens that day? A new Eels album drops.

By: Strange Interlude

Strange Interlude — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:12:21 -0800

I'm grateful for this post, largely because it reminded me to check (for probably the 20th time in the last 5 years) to see if Upright Citizens Brigade season 3 will ever appear on DVD. This time I learned that a cast commentary was recorded sometime this year, so maybe something will finally happen...I don't get why Comedy Central are being so cagey about releasing it.

By: St. Alia of the Bunnies

St. Alia of the Bunnies — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:41:51 -0800

The theme song used to be on my old cell phone. I miss that ringtone.

By: radwolf76

radwolf76 — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:24:54 -0800

Flannery Culp: "I could swear they hit Bankrupt on the Wheel of Morality once, but the rest of the internet disagrees with me. Anyone?" They almost did, but got the Trip to Tahiti instead.

By: pupdog

pupdog — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:44:34 -0800

The theme song used to be on my old cell phone. I miss that ringtone. I have a couple of the albums. I set the theme as a ringtone for a particularly animated friend. Fits very well.

By: neilbert

neilbert — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:50:39 -0800

This is the best thing I've heard in a while. I've introduced my girls (6 and 3) to them and they love them. And now I have some more to share! And sometimes, when I have to create a customer account to test something at work, I put in the name Bubba Bo Bob Brain.

By: njohnson23

njohnson23 — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:40:14 -0800

Oh, oh, just remembered another one I am waiting for Earthworm Jim... same era... Someone tried to explain why the early 90s had such great animation for "kids," as it was the time when people who were raised on good cartoon shows were now making cartoon shows. Another one just popped into my head, Reboot. Sad to say those people seemed to have passed on.

By: mek

mek — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:15:07 -0800

But now kids get to watch enormous quantities of anime for free online. It's another golden age of cartoons. (I know this from the startling ease of babysitting jobs.)

By: JHarris

JHarris — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:33:32 -0800

Earthworm Jim rarely gets brought up in these discussions of good 90s cartoons, but it was very smart.

By: jillithd

jillithd — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 06:26:00 -0800

Earthworm Jim for Sega Genesis FTW!

By: ChipT

ChipT — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:17:23 -0800

@njohnson23 not afraid to admit that I asked for (and received) the Reboot series on DVD last year for Christmas