Tiny Toon Adventures, the complicated history, and why the reboot may not be the worst situation

Okay, so I've gotta get this out of the way immediately....

TRIGGER WARNING: the discussion of this topic will involve a brief discussion of two people from the animation industry who should never, ever work again, and a lot of questionable "jokes" throughout involving minors.


Tiny Toon Adventures. The beginning of it all. What started as a way to resurrect Warner Bros. Animation in the wake of Roger Rabbit turned into multiple series with the same team running until the early-to-mid 2000s. But..... why? Well, I kinda gotta start at the very beginning.

During the production cycle of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the films executive producer, Steven Spielberg, was approached by the studio to similarly produce what was going to be pretty much A Pup Named Scooby Doo but with the Looney Tunes. And also possibly a movie. But that was thrown out the window pretty quickly when Spielberg made a few suggestions.

The big one was for it to be on television. Since the earliest an airing could be done was in 1990 for Bugs Bunny's 50th anniversary, it felt like the best fit. And the second one.... make it original characters based around the Looney Tunes archtypes rather than just Baby Bugs and Baby Daffy. And with it, Series co-creator Tom Ruegger and his team came up with a concept of a high school run by the original stable of Warner cartoon characters educating a new generation of cartoon characters. After that, the pieces were in place for the characters.

Buster Bunny and his original associate and love interest, Babs Bunny, were the Bugs stand-ins. Buster, the male blue rabbit, was supposed to be like Chuck Jones' cool, collected Bugs who was ready with a quip but would lose it at a moment's notice if something didn't quite sit right with him. Originally voiced by Charlie Adler (we'll get to that later), he was Bugs Bunny's prized student for a reason.

Babs Bunny, the pink girl rabbit who has bows on her ears, was based around the Bob Clampett and Tex Avery manic heckler iteration of Bugs. An impressionist by trade and easily annoying people who deserve it and voiced excellently by Tress Macneille in the original, she was the yang to Buster's yin, and they were the hosts of the show by default.

Plucky Duck, the prized pupil of Daffy, is literally green with envy. Sharing his progenitor's hyperactivity, massive ego, greed and need to be the constant center of attention, he became a fan favorite to the point where he got multiple episodes and an extremely brief spin-off with a theme that has no right being as good as it is. Voiced by the late Joe Alaskey (again, we're gonna get back to this) and using a differently spaced lisp than Daffy, he's honestly my favorite of the cast.

Hamton J. Pig, Porky's student and Plucky's handy punching bag, is an innocent, neurotic neat freak who usually tries to keep out of the chaos but it always comes knocking in a world of cartoons. Played by the late, great Don Messick (Boo-Boo on Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo), he was the straight man of the team, and usually Plucky's foil in the same way that Porky and Daffy teamed up.

Elmyra Duff, the by default fifth main character in the original and Elmer Fudd's prized pupil. Voiced by Cree Summer in both the original and the upcoming reboot, she is Elmer Fudd in the fact that she goes after animals. She is unlike Elmer, however, in the fact that she loves animals and would never hunt them with rifles. She just hugs them to death to the point where her bow is topped with the skull of a hamster. Often kidnapping her classmates and loving fellow antagonist Montana Max, she's considered to be far, far more dangerous than her progenitor... just not in the same ways. She ended up getting the peak for those characters, becoming the one to get multiple spinoffs, including getting teamed up with Pinky and The Brain and appearing alongside The Warner Siblings in an episode of Animaniacs.

There were so many other characters, ranging from more based on previous characters (Gogo Dodo being my personal favorites of those), some original ones (Arnold the Pit Bull), and even parodies of other studio's characters (Rodrick Rat, Danforth Drake, Blart Simpleton). And it's truly because they tried to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. And that's a blessing and a curse.

At the same time, the staff had a who's who of 'toons in that era. Tom Ruegger (A Pup Named Scooby Doo), Len Janson and Chuck Menville (Real Ghostbusters), Dan Haskett (Little Mermaid, The Simpsons) and...... okay, here's where it gets bad.

John Kricfalusi and Eddie Fitzgerald. Now, to get this out of the way now, John K. HATES Tiny Toons. And I've come to the conclusion that it's due to most of his ideas being rejected from the show. He got one design onto the show, a villain parodying UPA's Sidney the Elephant. Eddie Fitzgerald, however, got a storyboarder, writer and animation department gig on Tiny Toons, and later storyboarder on Animaniacs and Freakazoid while also inspiring Pinky. And all while enabling John K's predatory behavior towards teenage girls.

Moving on from the peanut gallery, let's discuss the other elephant in the room. Charlie Adler was fired from Tiny Toons after an argument with Tom Ruegger and the other producers over not being hired on for Animaniacs while a few of the other cast members like Frank Welker (Gogo Dodo, Byron Basset, Barky Marky and whatever other characters/animal sounds they needed), Tress MacNeille (Babs and really any celebrity impressions they needed, usually done by Babs), Maurice LaMarche (Dizzy Devil, Yosemite Sam and various impressions) and Rob Paulsen (Concord Condor, Fowlmouth, Arnold the Pitbull and really anything they needed) were. In the midst of this, the character of Buster Bunny was recast by John Kassir (famously known as The Cryptkeeper on Tales from The Crypt). Kassir's Buster is..... something. It's more his own thing rather than copying Charlie, but it's just not quite there. In a similar situation, Joe Alaskey was briefly let go from the series following asking for a raise and was rehired, with Maurice LaMarche doing temp tracks for Plucky that were never used. Jeff Bergman and Noel Blanc were also let go from the show, but for very different reasons. In short, Noel is the son of Mel Blanc, and his father was genuinely wanting his son to take over his characters when he dies because he was worried about WB recasting immediately. And he tried. He was nowhere near his father in any kind of talent and he did a few things on the show, mainly the Oz-like Principal disguise Bugs had in an episode and a bit of Porky Pig. But they didn't think he was working out so they recast Porky with Bob Bergen for the first time ever, and certainly not the last. Jeff Bergman's reasoning, however, is gonna sound insane considering he's voicing Bugs in the reboot. But he was kinda considering himself the new Mel, possibly as a joke and WB got cold feet due to it because of the hassle dealing with Mel in his old age became. He got canned and didn't work with the Tunes until The Looney Tunes Show.

And let's get into the show itself. I think it's the most hit and miss of the Amblin shows for sure. It's also the most dated for certain. References to Bill Cosby aside, there was nods to stuff like the song "Me So Horny", In Living Color, Field of Dreams, Pee-wee's Playhouse and so much more stuff that never really carried over in the zeitgeist nearly 40 years on. And a lot of it unfortunately centers around a lot more sexual jokes about the characters. Now, I am not a prude by any means. One of my favorite cartoons ever is Red Hot Riding Hood, after all. But there's a difference between that and putting pretty brutal innuendo about a character like Fifi LaFume, who's supposed to be fourteen. Animaniacs wasn't exactly spotless on this either, but it at least got the excuse of The Warners being living embodiments of chaotic, Tex Avery style cartoon characters. The Tiny Toons don't have that justification.

But when the show hit, it was still pretty good.

Running for about 98 episodes with two holiday specials, a direct to video movie, video games, spinoffs and more, the show definitely lasted longer than its contemporaries. So, where does the reboot fit into this?

In actuality, they attempted something like this a long sooner than you'd think. In the early 2000s, there was an attempt to revive the series, with it going nowhere in favor of Duck Dodgers instead. But this upcoming one? It's a full do-over of the original concept, with Buster and Babs (Eric Bauza and Ashleigh Crystal Hairston respectively) being fraternal twins accepted into the college of Acme Looniversity, with the other characters appearing throughout. There was controversy with Buster and Babs becoming related when the original gag was "no relation", but considering it was a full retooling it's not my problem. After that, it's pretty much fair game, with new characters apparently being introduced (including a student for lesser known Tune Cool Cat), so this could be interesting. And it certainly can't be worse than some episodes of the original.