Once Again, They're All A Little Looney

April 19, 2023 10:49 PM

Cartoon Network has dropped a trailer for Tiny Toons Looniversity, the modern reboot/remake of Tiny Toon Adventures.
posted by NoxAeternum (33 comments total)

Hmmmmm.
posted by slater at 10:58 PM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

So, looking through the trailer, a few things to note:
* It's pretty clear that they're up aging this series and making ACME Looniversity a proper college, rather than the messy high school/college hybrid of the original.
* Wait, was that a Cool Cat expy as a student?
* Wait, was that Merlin the Magic Mouse as faculty?
* There's a shot of Hampton strapped to a rocket that is just all squish and stretch in all the right ways.
* One of the two more problematic Tiny Toons - Fifi - appears in the background of one of the shots, which makes me wonder how her and Elmyra will be handled (as their core gags just will not fly today.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:02 PM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is this something I would need a TV to be invaded?
posted by aubilenon at 1:27 AM on April 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm interested, but cautious.

1. There was some controversy with the Animaniacs reboot when they didn't invite any of the original writers to help write it, when their personalities were a large part of what made the originals work. I wonder if they thought to bring any of them on board for this one, even if just in an advisory role?

2. A lot of what made Tiny Toons work originally was that everyone was hugely familiar with the classic Looney Tunes that inspired them, which despite being over thirty years old even at that point had been airing almost continuously on Saturday mornings. But they have less cultural ubiquity now; the only official places to see them I think are Boomerang and HBO Go Max. Kids today may actually be more familiar with the classic characters from reimaginings than the originals.
posted by JHarris at 2:05 AM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

which makes me wonder how [Fifi] and Elmyra will be handled (as their core gags just will not fly today.)

I barely remember Fifi, she wasn't the most-used character? I thought her gimmick was more "looks kinda like Pepe LePew," than "actually was like Pepe LePew." I'm sure Elmyra is still rolling in those Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain residuals to need to have any part of this.

Also, how many episodes will it be before they make a Baby Plucky "water go down the hole" reference?
posted by JHarris at 2:10 AM on April 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

(okay one more comment: holds a candle aloft for wendell/oneswellfoop, who would have loved participating this thread)
posted by JHarris at 2:11 AM on April 20, 2023 [15 favorites]

I thought her gimmick was more "looks kinda like Pepe LePew," than "actually was like Pepe LePew."

Her gimmick was, quite bluntly, "sexual harassment/assault is funny when it's female on male." Which was still getting pushed in the 90s, but is unacceptable now.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:37 AM on April 20, 2023

Too many tropes, not enough jokes. "A library probably" worked.
posted by Hogshead at 4:37 AM on April 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

Why are the lines so thin?
posted by signal at 5:18 AM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

JHarris: Also, how many episodes will it be before they make a Baby Plucky "water go down the hole" reference?

I’m going to stock up on toilet painter in anticipation.
posted by dr_dank at 5:18 AM on April 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

A lot of what made Tiny Toons work originally was that everyone was hugely familiar with the classic Looney Tunes that inspired them, which despite being over thirty years old even at that point had been airing almost continuously on Saturday mornings.

Maybe it's good that classic Looney Tunes has been out of circulation for a while? They're classics for a reason, but keep running the same ones often enough (like every single afternoon plus Saturdays on the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show) and even they can get tiring. Warner Bros has always leaned heavily on the legacy of their back catalogue. The original Tiny Toons always felt like a half-step towards branching out into something new (which they would eventually do with Animaniacs) while still being able to fall back and reference the same "tried and true" material from shorts that everyone already knew. I wouldn't be surprised if the WB is positioning this new series to work in the other direction by providing a new platform through which they can reintroduce a lot of old cartoons that kids probably haven't had any exposure to.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:42 AM on April 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was just going to say that it's interesting that they're going with an anime style thin line drawing style.
posted by lordrunningclam at 5:55 AM on April 20, 2023

>Why are the lines so thin?

'Cause it's made with software instead of being drawn with real physical materials.

Or, more broadly, for the same reason the humor and charm are so thin: it is ersatz.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:59 AM on April 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

I always have mixed feelings about Looney Tunes. On the one hand, there are a lot of great cartoons, but on the other hand, being of a certain age I've seen them dozens and dozens of times in many, many repackaged anthologies often as part of a bait-and-switch that promised new content. Prior to Space Jam in the 1990s, it really felt as though Warner Bros was trying to squeeze blood from a stone, and their marketing campaign to put Bugs and Daffy on all sorts of merchandise didn't really help.

I probably would have wanted a Tiny Toons reboot to go off in it's own direction and forget about its most overt connections to Loony Tunes. The best bits from the original series didn't have anything to do with ACME Looniversity or the legacy characters and it should be allowed to do it's own thing instead of being yet another vehicle for keeping Warner's back catalogue culturally relevant.

But this show isn't for me and hasn't even aired yet, so my criticism shouldn't be taken seriously.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:17 AM on April 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Also, Duck Amuck was 37 years old when Tiny Toons first aired in 1990 which was 33 years ago.

If you need me I'll be in the corner collapsing into a pile of dust.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:26 AM on April 20, 2023 [17 favorites]

WBs leadership is the most visionless, most corporate, moneybrained people possible. The Termite Terrace shorts are the best cartoons ever made, so they hoard them, which means they pass out of cultural relevance, meaning there much less valuable as properties than they used to be. Some generosity is necessary to keep aging pop culture prominent, and Warner Bros has none. The Looney Tunes may have been overexposed once, but they're rapidly passing out of cultural memory now.
posted by JHarris at 6:33 AM on April 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

Am I the only one who's a little turned off by the absence of most of the original voice actors?
posted by DiscountDeity at 6:36 AM on April 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

Am I the only one who's a little turned off by the absence of most of the original voice actors?

Mel Blanc rolls his eyes in heaven.
posted by briank at 7:02 AM on April 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's not for me. But then again, nothing is nowadays. I hope it encourages kids to seek out the real thing.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:21 AM on April 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

MetaFilter: It's not for me. But then again, nothing is nowadays.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:34 AM on April 20, 2023 [13 favorites]

Any indication of new They Might Be Giants music videos?
posted by gc at 10:26 AM on April 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

So, there actually ARE new Looney Tunes cartoons sitting right now on HBO Max, or whatever it's named now. If you search Looney Tunes you'll find a bunch of listings for older cartoons but if you look specifically for "Looney Tunes Cartoons", you'll find the new 5-7 minute long shorts. Here's Pest Coaster [5m30s], featuring Bugs and Yosemite Sam.
posted by hippybear at 11:38 AM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mel Blanc rolls his eyes in heaven.

According to my old boss's father, who was a voice over recording engineer for WB for decades including the entire run of Tiny Toons, everyone involved at the time probably wishes Billy West was also rolling his eyes, but in hell.

Although, he was apparently drinking a lot back then, maybe he is now sober and easier to work with.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 12:21 PM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fifi as a sex-positive feminist who is as unlucky in love as she enthusiastic for it is an easy fix.

Elmyra as a clumsy, guileless, hapless pet lover who, again, is as inept as she is enthusiastic is also a pretty easy reboot.
posted by oddman at 1:02 PM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

The joke behind the classic Road Runner cartoons is that the Coyote is fixated on bringing new innovations without testing them (as a parody of modernity) and he fails, and fails, and fails, because his ego is bigger than his aptitude, and because he doesn’t care. That’s either not funny as a premise any more, or it could be very funny and very pointed…
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:06 PM on April 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Maybe the E in Wile E. Coyote stands for Elon....
posted by JHarris at 4:31 PM on April 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here are scenes from a Coyote/Roadrunner from 2021... [2m50s] The timing is very classic Chuck Jones.
posted by hippybear at 5:03 PM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

IIRC, the Tiny Toon Coyote/Road Runner variant was that Lil Beeper was a pizza delivery bird, and Calamity was determined to steal said pizza, with hilarious karmic results.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:17 PM on April 20, 2023

I feel like you could fix Elmyra even easier by dropping the pet angle and just making her a sociopath - in the 90s, you couldn't have an 8-year-old female Elmer Fudd because it was believed that girls were too sweet for that. We hold no such illusions now.

Fifi is a more difficult one, but I think you could probably make her get obsessed with things and get way too extra about her obsessions, transferring what's supposed to be "funny" about Fifi and also Pepe Le Pew onto an inanimate object that isn't supposed to have agency.
posted by Merus at 5:36 PM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

So like Fifi fixes her entire empathy on a potted fern? Not an item in a shop window but the window itself? A sad, neglected empty doghouse?
Late in the season, we see the fern she has named Fernilla, crooked and rumpled in the corner of Fifi’s dorm room, not dried out but clearly hugged too much, and while Fifi has clearly found the next new obsession (and the next, and the next), she’s not neglecting Fernilla because she’s not a total monster.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 7:43 PM on April 20, 2023

But they have less cultural ubiquity now; the only official places to see them I think are Boomerang and HBO Go Max.

As YouTuber poparena pointed out on their episode about Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon, WB has actually been quietly opening the old shorts to syndication in recent years. The problem is more that there just aren't the venues for them to be culturally ubiquitous like there were even into the 90s, just because the media landscape is so diverse today.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:03 PM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wonder how they'll depict student debt. Ball and chain? Bottomless pit?
posted by doctornemo at 7:52 AM on April 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you want a vision of the future, imagine an anvil flattening a student's body - forever.
posted by JHarris at 6:16 PM on April 21, 2023 [1 favorite]