Tacodidra

@Samurai Equine For me, there were still quite a few cartoons I hadn't seen, since the TV channels here mostly showed the post-1948 package. But there are more cartoons I've seen before every year, a trend that will probably continue until the mid-60s.

In Bugs' case, a simpler color scheme does look a lot better – I found the yellow gloves a bit strange myself (they'll become white on his very next appearance).

At first I thought I wouldn't get any of them, but 7 is Pomni.

Despite not having seen Digital Circus yet and probably having seen some of the others.

*hugs* I hope everything turns out well in the end, my friend!

Not the easiest ones at first look... But I think 2 is Bluey.

@Octavia Heartstrings Pretty much every year has been better than the one before – I hope that continues to be the case for many more years! It goes without saying that 1939 will be another interesting one, though 1940 will certainly outdo it.

Those kinds of characters are one reason why I love Clampett's cartoons so much – in most of them, there's not a single boring second. As the ratings show, Avery and Clampett have been responsible for most of my favorites – it's surprising how they immediately started making such great cartoons, some of the other directors took a little longer to really hit their stride.

@Octavia Heartstrings The Porky cartoons have easily been the standout for me so far. Daffy was Porky's best co-star, of course, but I never expected to like Gabby Goat as much as I did.

Michael Barrier posted a release sheet from "Cinderella Meets Fella" that mentioned "Egghead's brother as Prince Charming". Before that was found, the two characters were assumed to have been the same – though the "Egghead became Elmer" theory might still kind of be true. Avery used Egghead twice, but only once after Elmer's introduction, Cal Dalton and his co-directors were the only ones to use Egghead after that. Maybe the two being brothers was to explain why two characters with similar (but not completely the same) designs but different names both kept appearing in cartoons. The two appearing together would have been awesome – so many great ideas that were never used.

@Samurai Equine I've always found the origins of the characters interesting, and many of them took a while to reach their final form. It's weird how Porky would occasionally hunt Daffy while another cartoon would have the two as friends (while Bugs and Porky rarely appeared together later on).

I'm finding it hard to even think of the two Elmers as the same character, though the connection would soon become more obvious.

The Do-Do should have appeared more, he only got two cartoons (with the second being a remake of the first one). "Porky in Wackyland" is one of the cartoons where I can remember every scene, which is impressive considering how random it is.

3 hours ago, Woohoo said:

9. She helps her girlfriend run a hotel way down south... and her name is kinda ina-pro-pro.  

How did I not recognize Vaggie? This is surprisingly difficult, even for familiar characters.

I think 2 has to be

@Fluttershutter I have about half of them on DVD, but as there's still a lot missing (especially from the early years), I'm using online sources for this project. I'm glad that's possible now, as a lot of shorts used to be completely unavailable.

@Octavia Heartstrings No 10s until 1935, and now I'm giving three in a row (even a King cartoon getting one right before he left). It's an interesting story, and not the last time this would happen at the studio – Schlesinger would later claim everyone immediately realized the star potential of Porky, but we can see it wasn't quite that fast. That would have been great – I'm wondering why that never happened. "I Love to Singa" was such a clear standout, and musical shorts still hadn't been phased out...

@Octavia Heartstrings It won't take long. Especially with a certain new director having a clear preference for Porky. Even in spite of Jack King trying his best to make Beans a thing.

@Samurai Equine "I Love to Singa" is an absolute classic! The cartoons from this era haven't been shown much on TV here, but I always liked seeing these early cartoons on the DVDs.

Indeed! There were a few shorts around this time that did have an obvious moral, but that was dropped pretty soon.

@Woohoo I was certainly reminded of that one, both focus on flowers and have a fire being a major plot point. WB's "It's Got Me Again!" was also nominated that year, but as I mentioned earlier, even as a Looney Tunes fan, I feel the right film won.

Most studios were still trying to copy Disney at this point – the Looney Tunes were finally starting to get away from that, but the Merrie Melodies were a different story.

@Iforgotmybrain Both Bugs and Daffy will debut in the next few parts, but indeed, Porky was the first of the famous Looney Tunes characters to appear.

It will take a couple of years for him to get his final design. The one in "Gold Diggers of '49" is probably the one that least resembles the final one (his voice is also a lot deeper in that one, as they usually sped up the voice of Joe Dougherty and later Mel Blanc).

The crew was obviously experimenting a lot with the characters at this point – Porky could be a kid in one short, then an adult in the next one and then go back to being a kid.

@Octavia Heartstrings The one thing I appreciate is that they made a full song segment with Henery Hawk. I didn't like the song at all, but at least they gave best bird a rare appearance. And I've heard their version of Lola Bunny was funnier than the one in Space Jam, though that's not very difficult to achieve.

That was a fun one, as were the other three shorts they did. And despite being a compilation, I think "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters" is the best movie that was ever made with the LT characters.

@Octavia Heartstrings I still haven't seen it (just a couple of short clips), but it seems to me they were trying to make the Looney Tunes something they're not (a sitcom instead of a slapstick comedy). And apparently Gossamer was made into a kid for some reason – I'd understand doing crazy stuff like that for one episode, but as a recurring thing, it would be just weird. I still think Greg Ford and Terry Lennon made the best post-classic Looney Tunes, they got the characters' personalities right (and were still able to have Mel Blanc as the voice for their first ones) and came up with fun new ideas for them without straying too far.

If they brought back Bosko and Buddy in a new Looney Tunes project, I'd absolutely have to check it out. They may not be as funny as the later characters, but they're still a crucial part of the cartoons' history.

@Octavia Heartstrings Definitely! I remember as a kid when a Finnish channel always showed a Looney Tunes cartoon in the morning and I never knew what it would be in advance. Usually it was one of the popular characters, of course, but there were even some one-shots in the bunch. I know a lot of people clearly prefer one or two characters, but they're missing out on so much!

That's something the revivals miss out on – I understand why they're focusing on Bugs and Daffy, for example, but there are so many greats. Not asking for a Buddy revival, but I guess even that could work if it was more Freleng or Hardaway Buddy than the Palmer one.

@Octavia Heartstrings That cartoon and "Honeymoon Hotel" are why I'd have liked to see Earl Duvall stick around a little longer. Obviously they're not the best in the series, but compared to some others at the time, they're masterpieces. Apparently Palmer was a nice guy, but just not cut out to be a director.

I always loved the variety when the Looney Tunes were shown on TV, though we rarely got shows mixing the pre-1948 and later cartoons here. And there's another reason why I love the Golden Collections – you could have a 30s cartoon and one from the 60s on the same disc. Now I'm obviously going through them chronologically, but it's still true in one way: after the very early days with Bosko, there are rarely more than two with the same character in a row.

@Octavia Heartstrings It definitely has – the 30s art style is still obvious in a lot of the cartoons, but there's more detail than in most of the Harman-Ising cartoons. If I had to pick the cartoon with the most impressive animation so far, I'd choose "Sittin' on a Backyard Fence" from late 1933. There's a chase sequence in that one with amazing camera angles – and that was just a few cartoons after the extremely messy "Buddy's Day Out".

It's one of the oldest cartoons I've seen on TV too (on a Latvian channel we got for some reason). "Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee" and "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" are the only older ones I remember seeing there.

@Octavia Heartstrings The Golden Collections were the first place where I really got to see the pre-48 shorts (instead of just a few here and there).

The fact that there was a disc dedicated to the early 30s cartoons may not have appealed to everyone, but I was glad to see them (and looking at it now, I think the cartoons they picked from that era were good choices for the most part).  The Frank Tashlin (another underrated director) disc was one of my favorites too.

@Octavia Heartstrings Besides dogs, cats and mice (the usual cartoon animals), pigs are probably the most represented animals in the series.

He directed the first Bugs cartoon (not counting the prototypes), the first with Daffy, and also the first solo Porky – quite the résumé. I think Avery has suffered a little from the same thing as Clampett: their cartoons weren't in the post-1948 package that has been shown the most on TV, so their best aren't as familiar to people as those by Jones, for example. And as much as I love Jones' cartoons, I find it a bit unfair that he has the 13 best rated WB cartoons (and 19 out of the top 20) on IMDb. He was great, but so were the others.

@Octavia Heartstrings Most likely. Piggy is also a pretty obvious alteration of Foxy, supposedly "You Don't Know What You're Doin'!" was originally going to be another Foxy cartoon before they changed their minds.

I'll have to check that one out – I've finally reached Avery's first WB cartoons, and I don't think I've ever truly realized his impact on the studio's output before.

@Octavia Heartstrings Thanks, my friend!

For some reason, foxes never really got the chance to shine in the Looney Tunes – I can think of a few, but they were one-shot characters. Here's the mischievous one from "Bosko's Fox Hunt":

He looks like a less anthropomorphic version of Foxy to me. I've heard claims that Disney asked Harman and Ising to stop using Foxy, but I'm not sure if that's true, as some of their later cartoons have mice that are possibly even more Mickey-like.

@Iforgotmybrain Wait until you see his successor Buddy! A true animation legend.

Thanks, my friend! I already have the next couple of parts written, though I'll edit them a little more. I'll probably publish two each week until I catch up.