It took deep dives into characters' psychology, and it dealt with sex, and violence with a frankness that would have been unthinkable just a couple years earlier. They even featured a version of Robin called "Decoy, the Boy Hostage" - a joke that becomes a lot darker when you realize the same writers are behind Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, in which Robin isn't just held hostage but tortured until he loses his mind.Īs you might guess from that plot point, the creators continued applying the lessons they learned on Tiny Toons on Batman, which was even more adult. Knowing that, all the Tiny Toons episodes with Plucky as Bat-Duck look less like parodies and more like auditions. Goopy Geer was a little luckier, actually predating Goofy, but the Tiny Toons crew redesigned him anyway.Īnd they brought their old crewmates with them, including director Eric Radomski, producer Tom Ruegger, and casting director Andrea Romano, who continued casting the DC Universe Animated Original Movies well into the new millennium. Despite what the episode says, though, Foxy and Roxy weren't just forgotten - looking just like Mickey and Minnie Mouse with pointier ears, they were allegedly dropped after a less-than-pleased Walt Disney called the studio. In "Two-Tone Town," Babs and Buster rediscover some even more obscure black-and-white characters: Foxy, Roxy, Goopy Geer, and Big Bee, who had less than ten big-screen appearances between them. The crew got around that ugly history by redesigning Bosko and Honey as species-less cartoon critters with black noses and floppy ears who ended up looking like the stars of their next project, Animaniacs. They existed in an uncomfortable middle ground between cute cartoon animal and grotesque blackface minstrelsy. But despite their historical importance, these characters presented a serious problem for the animators. And "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny" includes a clapboard with the name "Tish Tash" - a pseudonym Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin used before he even started working there!īosko and Honey really did appear in the first Looney Tunes cartoons. The boxer who sparred with Bugs in Bunny Hugged was clobbered in a music video for They Might Be Giants' " Particle Man." The main cast spent a whole episode exploring a city of underground gremlins who all look like the one from Falling Hare. Concord Condor was based on Beaky Buzzard, the sad sack bird who appeared in just four classic shorts and then disappeared for decades. Even Gogo the Dodo, who was important enough to appear in the theme song, and his Wackyland home, came from a one-off appearance in Porky in Wackyland.īut you really see how much the Tiny Toons creators loved their source material with the wall-to-wall deep-cut references they snuck in at every opportunity. The main cast included updated versions of the most popular characters like Bugs, Daffy, and Porky, of course. With all that in mind, here's a look at all the things only adults notice in Tiny Toon Adventures. Half of it would fly right over kids' heads, and some would confuse most adults just as much, let alone 30 years down the line.
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It's a simple framework, but Ruegger and company filled it with a dense and complicated sense of humor full of obscure and sometimes even private jokes. Others, like Elmer Fudd's student Elmyra Duff, who'd rather hug wabbits than hunt them, followed their teachers more loosely. Some, like Bugs Bunny's students, Babs and Buster, were close to carbon copies. Set at Acme Looniversity, it follows a new generation of cartoon stars under the mentorship of the original Looney Tunes cast. He picked up a film script cowritten by Tom Ruegger, expanded it into a series, and the result was Tiny Toon Adventures. In 1990, two years after bringing dozens of Golden Age cartoon characters back to the big screen when he produced Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Steven Spielberg looked to do the same thing on TV. And the writers seemed at least as concerned with entertaining themselves by seeing how many obscure references and inappropriate jokes they could smuggle in without getting fired.
But the Tiny Toons crew understood that a lot of adults would be watching too (including parents, who didn't really have much choice) and included plenty to keep them entertained. Until then, most cartoons were strictly for kids, and most creators saw them strictly as a paycheck job.
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Tiny Toon Adventures marked the beginning of a new era for TV animation.