The Extras - Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 4 Review

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Send us a textEver wondered how classic cartoons continue to capture our hearts and minds? Join us as we sit down with animation historian Jerry Beck and George Feltenstein from the Warner Archive to uncover the magic behind the 27 cartoons in the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Volume 4 Blu-ray.  Discover how these timeless cartoons, from the 1930s to the 1960s, have been preserved for both collectors and casual fans, ensuring that the spirit of Looney Tunes remains vibrant and cherished.PLUS, George provides information on the Warner Archive's plans for future Looney Tunes releases.Looney Tunes Collectors Choice: Vol. 4 (BD)Looney Tunes Collectors Choice Coll: V1-4 BDLOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOL. 3!Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice Vol.2 Blu-rayLooney Tunes Collector’s Choice Vol.1 Blu-ray The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, Tim Millard here and since we're in November, I want to take a minute to thank you for listening to the Extras podcast and supporting our show. I did want to share a couple of features that you may not be aware of that are now available with our podcast. One is if you scroll down on the show notes, there is a transcript option. So look for that if that might interest you. And a brand new feature is send us a text that's right below the play button on most players If you selected it will open up a text option and you can send us a message

You can have suggestions for the show a question or a comment of how much you enjoyed the episode Those are always appreciated Now a text is nice But we also appreciate any actual reviews that you want to post at your podcast provider as that always helps the show And helps others who may be exploring and finding new shows to find the extras. Thanks for listening. Hello and welcome to The Extras. I'm Tim, a larger host and joining me today to talk about the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice volume four Blu-ray release,

our animation historian Jerry Beck and George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive. Hi, George and Jerry. Hello. Hey there, gentlemen. How are you today? Good, good. I always love it when there's an excuse that we can get you guys on together

because the fans absolutely love it when you're talking together, especially when you're talking Lo, especially when you're talking Looney Tunes or animation in general. So this is always a good thing. And this is, you know, we're getting kind of late in the year, so it's terrific to end up toward the end of the year with this Looney Tunes volume four discussion. I just watched it last night and as I told you, Jerry, I went through and I started watching and I realized, holy smokes, this is 188 minutes.

It's over three hours of beautiful, wonderful looking cartoons, but it did take me a while to get through it all. And that's a really good thing because I think it's the longest of the volumes by just a few minutes. Yeah. We have some bonus material on here, some extra cartoons that fans have been wanting. George can talk to that actually, because the bonus, we can get that out of the way, the bonus material is essentially two cartoons that have been released on DVD before, but never on Blu-ray and never this way. George?

Yeah, they were released on DVD in a theatrical aspect ratio, which was not what the fans wanted. The fans wanted to see the open mat, 137 aspect ratio that they were used to from television and from VHS and they were missing animation. Right. So we added these as a correction. purpose of this series has been to release cartoons that have not been on Blu-ray or DVD in remastered form. I add the latter comment to clarify because

there were decisions made and I've spoke about this before where unremastered cartoons were added to previous golden or platinum collections as bonuses, which was tremendously confusing to the unenlightened consumer. There are a lot of people out there that don't care about mastered, remastered, they just care about the cartoons. So they say, hey, this has been out before. The goal of this series has been to bring cartoons that were never in remastered form

on DVD or Blu-ray. And we've got 95 cartoons between the four volumes plus the two bonus cartoons which I just spoke about. Yeah, and the one question I think that everybody has when we talk about all of these and you're kind of, I'm envisioning you going through the vaults to do this, but are there any being released kind of like for the first time ever or at least first time on Blu-ray, right? All of these are. I think there may be one cartoon that never had any kind of home video in any format release at all, but I can't swear to that.

We'd have to triple check, but I know which cartoon you mean. There's none of these cartoons have been out on Blu-ray. None of them have been out looking the way they look now. And there's at least one, like George said, there might even be two or three even that have never been out at all. I almost have to go through the list. I didn't come here with a marked list of which ones. I know that peck up your trouble. I mean, George, remind me, what is

it called? Road to Andalus? Was that ever on video? I honestly don't know. Not, I really can't speak to that. You know, that's one of those 1964 releases that have never been favored in our selecting process before. But with this series, as we've probably said before, it's called Collector's Choice. We are definitely nose diving into what the collectors who are trying to amass the collection of the entire Looney Tunes library and that we still have many, many more to go to do that. But we're trying to restore that library completely.

We want the fans that are purchasing, the consumer, to be able to keep collecting their collection. I think George and I are doing this kind of selfishly because I know we want to do that. We want these remastered. We want to own every Looney Tune and Mary Melody cartoon. And so that's our goal. Yeah. Well, were there, in terms of the restoration and stuff, were there any that were in worse shape than the others or that have kind of a unique restoration story? George, do you want to talk about Pick Up Your Troubles? Yeah. Pick Up Your Troubles is one of

those cartoons that always looked awful. Yeah. We were able to get the original negative and scan that at 4K and do a full remaster. The results speak for themselves. The cartoon looks better than it ever has before. Similarly, what was the story on Holiday for Drumsticks, I think, was another issue. Same exact. We have three cartoons here that were remastered specially for this release.

Yeah. What's great is, as I, guys, don't want to sound like a broken record. What's great is, is that, you know, this really covers the whole breadth and scope of the Looney Tunes. That's the cool thing about this. Let's say you're not a major collector and you were just picking up this volume, you know, you want a bunch of funny cartoons, you want to, you know, get the whole, you want to maybe get the whole feel for the Looney Tunes library. You know, from the mid

thirties when Avery and Tashlin and those guys started doing and changing the cartoons from kind of black and white Disney clones to funny color cartoons, you know, culminating with Bugs Bunny going through the, going through the, all the great characters are on here. And we even end up, as I said before, in the mid sixties. So you really get the full scope. You get all the characters in their prime. You get some cartoons maybe you never heard of, all of them delightful and all of them looking amazing. And I mean, it's just, I'm very proud of these sets. I even, we came across the idea,

I think in the second volume, to just put them on in alphabetical order. You know, normally we do a little more curation than that. We'll put all the Bugs Bunnies together and things like that. But man, these work so well that way. I couldn't start it better than Along Came Daffy, which is Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck. And it's a classic from the mid-40s. and ending up with one of the great, you know,

merry melodies from the 1930s. It's actually a great ending for it. It just, it curates itself. It's so funny. It just works just perfectly. And the alphabetical approach I thought would not only make it easier for people to, on a linear fashion, find things, but if you're going to sit down in one three-hour sitting and watch all 27 counting the two bonuses, cartoons in one sitting, that's almost three hours.

It's amazing that, I mean, I can't say this 100% without rereading this, but a lot of times you get like a daffy or a porky or a foghorn and in between them is a miscellaneous one. It just seemed to work out that way. You don't have like this stretch of no characters, just miscellaneous ones, which would be fine as far as I'm concerned, but you really do get the jumble, the mix of everything, the great characters, the funny cartoons, the obscure cartoons. I mean, it's just, it's, and they all look fantastic.

Brand new day one condition. I mean, this for me is, that's my idea of heaven. This is a dream come true to see these things back as they should be. You know, what's interesting is you did that and yet there's this interesting situation where you get two like Jekyll and Hyde back together, which is perfect. Hide and go tweet and then I think we'll have to impatient patient back to back, which is fun. I never even thought of it like that because I see them as one's a black and white cartoon and one's a later 50s color. I didn't even think of it in that way, but then you're right. That does work. Yeah, I felt like you had done that on purpose to hear that you did

not. It's interesting. And maybe we could talk about those cartoons. I really like both of those. Well, you're both great. You know, when Warner Brothers, here's a thing that I teach in my class, but like I always say, I said this before on these podcasts, they were never meant to be seen again. When they made these cartoons, especially in the 30s and in the 40s and into the early 50s, they were ephemeral. They were like a peanuts comic strip. You read it, you laughed at it, they were ephemeral. They were like a peanuts comic strip. You read it, you laughed at it, you threw the paper away. That's the way the cartoons were in movie theaters

back in those days. They really didn't think there was an afterlife. They didn't start reissuing them until I think the mid to late 40s. That's when the blue ribbons started. So there was no thought of reissuing. There was no thought of the future that you'd ever see them again. And so some studios realized that, and that's why a studio, I'll name names, a studio like Famous Studios, Paramount, where they would make a Casper cartoon. And yeah, a lot of them are the same. Mighty Mouse, they're kind of the same over and over. Fans today are like, why did they do that?

Or it's the same, you've seen one, you've seen them all. They didn't do that at Warner Brothers. Tech Save Read MGM didn't do that. Tom and Jerry could have done that. They didn't do that. These guys really were geniuses. They were making them for themselves. And where I'm going on this is that you mentioned that there are two cartoons with a similar theme, and the Jekyll and Hyde theme. And you're absolutely right. And they are so completely different as films. I mean, not just black and white and color, I mean, just completely different,

and yet it's the same parody. And that's what was great about these cartoons. They're all unique films that stand alone on their own. They're gems. I always say they're gems of the Warner Brothers studio. I was going to say there's real diversity here in the kind of comedy. You know, it's you get different sensibilities from the different directors who all had their own unique approach.

Right. And I think that's another factor that makes these so entertaining. But most importantly, this is basically within an 18-month period, we've brought 100 cartoons to collector's shelves. 97, we're three short of 100. but that's a big chunk of. Filling in the holes in the blanks and as i mentioned earlier before we intend to ramp up the filling up of the holes in the blanks and make more available. more available as we look to the future. So people don't have to fear that this is the end. It's only the beginning. Oh yeah, we're just getting started.

Well, one thing you, I wanna kind of go back to the impatient patient. One thing that I noticed was the director on this one is Norm McCabe. And I try and remember if I saw his name on any of the previous volumes, what can you tell us about him? You know, I don't know if his name was on any of the previous volumes. As in director, he was one of their top animators at that time in the late 30s and early 40s.

And he took over, I believe he took over Freeling's unit for like two years. Freeling, long story short, moved over to MGM and worked on those Captain and the Kids cartoons, George, as you recall. And while he was there, they had to have somebody in that place. And they had a schedule they had to fulfill. And he normally directed black and white, mainly porky pig cartoons and occasional one like this, where it was just solo Daffy Duck. His cartoons are pretty good. Strangely enough, almost all of them have something that's very, very much of the period when he was making them in the in the forties. He was still directing them into the early forties. They're very much of that period with rationing and the war was coming

on and they're very much of their time in a way that some of the other directors didn't do that. That's all I can really say. He made some good cartoons. I guess he went back into the animation ranks. That had happened before and later. Arthur Davis was another one who came in as an animator. He was a director at Columbia. He was an animator at Warners. He then got up the ranks to being a director at Warners. And then when things, when they started to cut budgets back and things like that, he went right back into being an animator for Freelink. Similar with Norm McCabe. They were just kind of filling in, so to speak. That sort of thing does happen.

I can't really, he did a couple of great cartoons that I really like that I'm not sure if we've put them out or not. I think we put them on the old Golden Collections. Things like the Ducktators was one of his that I really, really like. But that's a real, real harsh World War II cartoon, you know. But it's great. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's great. I'll give you that.

No, and he did some great stuff, but mostly because he did black and whites. He was stuck in the black and white unit, and then other things came up that his career just didn't go beyond that. He was a director, I mean, excuse me, an animator for the studio for years and years and years. You'll see his name as an animator in the 1960s cartoons.

I even think he worked even later than that into the I know he did. He worked. He worked at Tiny Tunes, actually. He was he lived a long time and he was just a journeyman, great animator and ended up doing a lot of television animation in the 60s and 70s. So Norma Cabe, we salute you. And Norma Cabe, we salute you. Hail Norma Cabe. Well, you just mentioned the reference to the war and stuff, and that made me think of Meatless Fly Day. Because if you don't know what era it's from, it's like, why is there Meatless Day?

Yeah, I know. I've been writing these little interstitials for MeTV Tunes, a new cable channel that's on showing all the classic cartoons. And one of the things I've been doing on there is these little interstitials called Cartoon College. And I spent a lot of time on a lot of them just explaining the titles of the cartoons. Because there's a lot of cartoons that, what does that mean? What is Meatless Fly Day? And it's a reference to the meat rationing during World War II. And they urged the home front to not eat meat on a particular day and just to save for our soldiers.

There are a lot of titles in the cartoons that went over the heads of people even at the time. One of the cartoons on this collection that I happen to like a lot, and I know a lot of other people do too, is Muzzle Tough. Oh, yeah. people do too, is muzzle tough. Oh yeah. And nobody, or not nobody, but a great deal of people didn't know that the creators were making a pun

out of a translation, if you will, or a reiteration, if you will, of the expression muzel tov, which is good luck in, I guess it would be Hebrew if I'm guessing. But that, just the name of the cartoon is very funny. And a lot of people wouldn't necessarily know that if they weren't familiar with the pun.

A lot of the younger fans may not realize, not only not know the title, but not realize the entire cartoon of the defyton ones. Right. Which is a parody of the defiant ones. Defiant, exactly. And which the cartoon itself is actually a parody of, you know, with a Sylvester and a bulldog are handcuffed together. Which is the plot of that, the real movie, if you go see it.

But most fans don't even know that. Right. It is a really good cartoon. That's the beauty of putting these things out at this time. The amount of context that one can find, given that there is so much discussion around these cartoons on the internet at the present time from various enlightened individuals as well as people that aren't,

the fact that they're being discussed just perpetuates their popularity, keeps them front and center. And that's the goal. I know that I don't think I'm not speaking for Jerry when we both feel passionately that it's so important that these cartoons be available. I even like to say these American short animated films because cartoons sometimes take on oh it's a for kids moniker and these films need to be recognized

for the works of art that most of them are. I will give you that some of them probably don't fall into the category of works of art. They were commercial releases, but most of them are works of art, in my opinion. And they're part of the Warner Brothers cartoon department, whether it was the original Leon Schlesinger studio and then starting in 1944, Warner Brothers took that studio over and it was part of the studio, it was part of the movie studio system. over and it was part of the studio, it was part of the movie studio system. You know, when you think of the history of sound movies, you know, from 1930, let's just stop in 1969 or 70, the thing is this was part of Warner Brothers and all the great things that were done at that studio at that time.

And they were popular. They were extremely popular and their popularity still persists today. These are American classics, you know, not just funny classic comic strips, so to speak. They are great film. The impact as time goes on, we learn more and more how many live action filmmakers were influenced by Looney Tunes. I mean, we've succeeded in doing it and we're continuing to do it and we're almost there with the whole library, but there's some other libraries at other studios where the stuff is untouched. It's in the vaults, nobody's touching it. It's a crime that some other classics are still locked up and you can't see them, you can't get them, you can't...

We've been working for a long time to get these out just to have them available. Anyway, I'm just proud of that. I'm proud of the fact that you can own these now. George and I grew up, we talk about it often, with Channel 5 in New York and the copies that we watched these cartoons and loved them. Even though they were 16 millimeter, once in a while a print would be out of sync. Do you remember that, George? Every once in a while a cartoon would be out of sync and they'd run it that way all the time.

That was probably the print game that way to them. And you know, they'd start to fade, they'd get the scratches. This is what we grew up and we saw through that all. We loved these films and to have finally gotten, as we got older, to still be involved with them and to have something to do with restoring them to the way they looked in theaters when they were first made is an honor.

I mean, if it wasn't us, maybe someone else might have done it, but we're here. We're doing it. And it's like fulfilling the dream. I talked to Bob Clampett. Here's a personal thing. I met Bob Clampett. I got to be friends with him before he passed in the last five, six, seven years of his life. And I once went to lunch with him and I said to him sincerely, and I mean this, I really mean this, I don't think I could have gotten through high school without Bob Clampett cartoons. I would come home, you know, and do my homework and the cartoons would be on on Channel 5 and I'd be working and I'd stop and

there'd be another Clampit classic and I don't know I just they got me through the day and I thanked him and I remember as I was doing it. I still remember I still remember thinking I'm doing this for every other person who was not in a position to sit in front of Bob Clampit right now Thank you for what you did. You know, He just made cartoons that were funny for him, that he thought were great at the time. He didn't realize what an influence they'd have on future generations of animators and just people in general.

And to be able to restore those cartoons, so that hopefully future generations of animators and or people who like to laugh, watch cartoons, you know, are having a hard day at school, you know, can really, really enjoy and appreciate them. You know, wow, I feel like I, I feel like I accomplished something in my life by doing that, by carrying the torch and passing it on, you know, for Bob and for all of us. That's an awesome story.

Back to your point, George, about your excitement about bringing these two fans and everything in this list of, you know, 27 with the bonus. Were there one or two cartoons on here where you guys were like, oh I'm really excited that this volume includes this one or that one because it's been so requested or it's going to be just, I think we're going to get a great response? Well, the answer is a little bit obvious because they were remastered especially for this disc. Holiday for drumsticks and pick up your troubles because they had previously looked so awful. And now they look great and they're very funny cartoons. I just like to throw out the usual left field answer to that question, which is, I know this is going to sound, no

one out there will agree with me, but the Devil's Feud Cake, which is one of the last of the Bugs Bunnies that we never put out on disc through all the different sets. I was waiting for this one. I was waiting because it's a minor one in the canon of bugs because it's what they call a cheater. It's a stock footage cartoon. It has a wrap around with Sam has been killed and he's facing the devil and now he has to, the devil sends him back to get Bugs Bunny. And all those footage with Bugs Bunny is reuse footage from other cartoons. So that's kind of the reason we never really put it out before. So I just, to me, that was the absolute last cartoon we would ever put out with Bugs. I mean, there's still a few more, but this is one that really got no love before.

And I like that it's on here. I feel like, okay, we've covered everything. We've covered all the basics here now. Well, one cartoon that I wanted to mention just because it felt unique to me, I don't think you've had a Speedy Gonzales cartoon before on these volumes, have you? George, I don't recall. I don't think we have. And now you have Road to Andalus on here. What was the thinking or planning that went into that one?

Well, we were a bit constricted because the idea was for this series, cartoons that had never been released in remastered form on DVD or Blu-ray. That creates an inherent constriction. And there were Speedy Gonzales sections within previous compilations as well as I believe a standalone Speedy DVD. Yeah. So the bulk of the great speedy Gonzalez cartoons from the fifties and earlier sixties, a lot of those had a prior release, but not high definition, blu ray, you know, best possible quality, which is what they deserve. And that is part of our thinking as we expand our activities, is to find a home for those

cartoons that were only available in standard definition, albeit looking better than they had when they were coming off dreadful prints and faded awful looking, which even in those negative connotations at the time, Jerry and I were talking about this just last week, we remembered back to the time when all the pre-48 color cartoons had gotten transferred from 35mm prints onto videotape. And that was a huge step up from what we grew up with watching faded 16mm prints in syndication or the chopped up versions on the chopped up Bugs Bunny Saturday morning era. So you know, everything has been a step forward and we intend to continue moving forward and

making more of this available. And I think next year is going to bring people a great deal of joy. Right now it's this year and we have to celebrate the fact that this fourth volume really stands on its own, is tremendously entertaining and does justice to the studio's legacy, but the fact that we've also put all four volumes in a collection that presents a value proposition and a great gifting item right before the holiday season, we're very, very encouraged that many people will purchase either the collection or purchase volume four if they've already purchased volumes one through three. We always like to be able to give the consumers a choice.

I'd like to quickly mention on Road to Andalus and Speedy Gonzales. I just want to say that that was the second one of the new, they closed the studio in 19, actually it was 1962 when they closed it, but when they started releasing the cartoons, Warner Brothers almost immediately realized, oh my God, what did we do? We closed their studio,

but we still are releasing theatrical cartoons. People forget that the theatrical cartoon in a movie theater was a mainstay. It was what they call a staple of going to the movies. The way we go to the movies today is 100% different. But the way it was back then, people wanted to see a cartoon, again, from 1930 up. And so Warner's luckily had a lot stockpiled. They were able to get through 1963 into 1964.

They immediately rehired Fritz Freling, who had now set up his DePatti Freling studio, basically doing Pink Panther cartoons and things like that. And they immediately rehired them to give us more, give us more Daffy Duck, give us more Speedy Gonzales and Road Runner. And so this particular one was the second one. And then those very first ones released in 64 of this later batch, this one was directed by Fritz Freling. He didn't direct many of these, but he directed the first batch of them just so that they'd get off on good foot it's it's a good cartoon it's not. They got out of say they got progressively worse later but but this one is a very good one.

I also want to mention i was just looking at the credits and norma cave is the animator of this cartoon so there you go i'm wrapping it'm going full circle here. And there's another quality that's really important when you look at this objectively from up top, and that is that there is a real strength in nostalgia for people who love these films and if they grew up watching those later 1960s to Patty Frilling produced by Warner Brothers cartoons and they were a part of their childhood, they have an affection for those. They may not be and they aren't in the same class as the cartoons that were produced during the studio's golden age, but to certain people, they have a nostalgic, emotional connection to them. And that's why it's important that everything be released. Tanner Iskra Yeah. And I think a, you know, great example, I'll mention a couple, is that you made sure to put in

a Road Runner and Coyote hop-along casualty. And then also you have the two little gophers. The goofy gophers. Yeah. Mac and Tosh. Right. Yeah. And then you've got the little hawk guy. I mean, there's just so many great little characters in here that you get to see. And they're not maybe the best known, but they're just nostalgic for you when you see these characters again.

Yeah. We always, I always try to get a road runner in there because I personally, I always think that I forget, I forget about the road and I take, we take the road runner for granted. Chuck Jones road runners are there. They're so great. I've seen them with audiences too. If you ever have a crowd of people over to watch the Blu-ray do that, you're going to

get a lot of laughs out of that cartoon. They're built for audiences. That's the only way I can put it. And he doesn't repeat anything. I don't want to do this. There has been in the past a Roadrunner collection. I think there was a superstar Roadrunner thing we did a few years ago. That doesn't sound entertaining personally to me to sit through a whole bunch of them.

But the thing is you could. Except for the basic premise, they're not really repetitious. They're just endless in the gags and how they're directed. That's what makes all the difference in the world because we've seen some roadrunners directed by other people. And Jones, these were his characters. He knew how to do this. It's just fantastic watching those. I always want to make sure we get one on there. And we do have a lot of demand from people. There were a few of them that hadn't been released before and that's what we try to

do here. Exactly. And it's a, I mean, I really enjoyed that one because it has the earthquake pills, right? The whole last sequence, maybe the last third of it, where he's just the after effects of the shake. Like it's, it's kind of brilliant. Really is a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, these aren't throwaways. A lot of times, even in the animation circles, they talk about how Jones knew how to do those quickly.

That allowed him to have more time and spend more time on cartoons like What's Opera Doc, because he could just kind of do a roadrunner before and after and he can zap those out of the way. But my God, they are brilliantly directed and art directed, usually by Maurice Noble, the stylized backgrounds in the desert. It's fantastic. We neglect them is the way I put it.

And I don't mean we don't. We don't neglect them. But in general, you know, people have that attitude. Have you seen one? You've seen them all. Not true here. They could have gotten away with that back in those days. They people didn't have them on Blu Ray. People didn't have them on television broadcast. So they they literally, you know, they may have released one, maybe two

Roadrunners a year. They could have done repeat gags and they never did that. They never did it. Well, speaking of nostalgia, I know you guys have been on the podcast just to talk about Tex Avery and the releases that you guys did. And there's some nice Tex Avery ones. They're pretty early in his career, right? The late 1930s. The dangerous Stan McFu, which has got a lot of this kind of Robert Service style of dialogue, which I thought was fantastic. And then the other one is the Sneezing Weasel.

Yeah. I mean, Avery left the studio in, I think it was 41? Yeah, 41, yeah, 41. And I went over to MGM and made some classics there. But he did a lot at Warner. He really was one of the movers and drivers. I think Frank Tashling was the other one that really pushed the Warner Brothers cartoon

from the rinky dink, I call it, of 1935 to Bugs Bunny and the Warner Brothers Style of Humor by 1940. He was developing it all along and he was always pushing the envelope. In fact, unfortunately, I think it's his pushing the envelope that got him in a little trouble with Leon, the producer, and led to him leaving. But it's because he kept thinking of new ideas and new things we could do with these cartoons. And so, you know, these two particular cartoons that you mentioned, the Dangerous Dan McFoo, both of these I think are a little bit later in his run.

Dangerous Dan McFoo in particular is a real forerunner of the kind of thing you do even further at MGM. Just taking a classic property of some sort in this case that poem and pushing it's like Mad Magazine. There was no Mad Magazine when they did this. There was no national lampoon or with today we have Saturday Night Live. There was nothing that lampooned what was going on around. Avery was that. Avery at the Warner cartoons.

He was the original Mad Magazine in my opinion with the films that he did. Making fun of fairy tales, making fun of the other cartoons from other studios, making fun of travelogues. That's what he did. He did all these little parodies. That's what that one is. That one you might notice had the Arthur Q. Bryan, who's the voice of Elmer Fudd. I think he's Dan McFoo, I think, in that one.

That's an early use of his voice in that cartoon. A lot of good stuff in there. Well, I asked you guys last time this question, but it's a good question from my perspective because I'm just interested, but can you each tell us your personal favorite in this group of 25, 27 and why? And again, I think you mentioned last time, Jerry, that it wasn't necessarily because it was a great cartoon. Well, I already said that Devil's Shoot K. but that's not a great cartoon. Well, I already said that Devil's Shew came, but that's not a great cartoon, but I'm glad it's on here.

That was the answer for that question. There's so many good ones. I'm looking at the list again to look for that one that'll really, really pop out at me. And closest to that, I think, is, I don't know, it's between Peck Up Your Troubles, but it's also Along Came Daffy, which we have leading off the set, because it's a great Daffy Duck. It features two Yosemite Sams. It's got great frizz-frieling direction, a lot of great timing direction, I call it,

in that one. The music, everything about it is perfect Warner cartoon. And again, because of its title, it's the first one on here. So it's a perfect opener. So for me, I mean, that one is one I still remember that was from the pre-48 AAP package. To me, in my mind's eye, I still remember it looking lousy on Channel 5. So I always get a tool and I look at that I have all these reasons why I like that one in particular as one as maybe my favorite on that

So I took it's hard to pick a favorite, you know, it's a Sophie's choice Okay. Well, you know, it was worth asking just in case it was one that that was how about for you, George? Well, I mean I'm kind of on the same page as Jerry is, because I love so many of them so much. But one that I'm particularly fond of is the Sneezing Weasel, which is a great Avery cartoon from 1938. You see the seedlings of where Avery will be going in subsequent years, especially when he got to MGM. That is a very funny cartoon.

Yeah. Here's one I want to mention that I forgot, but again, it's such a toss-up. The mouse-smarized cat. The cartoon with the, you know, Babbitt and Catstello as mice, you know, with the hypnosis thing and they, you know, he has the character doing Bing Crosby and, you know, and I mean, it's just fantastic. It's some great animation. One of the earliest, without looking, it's one of the earliest of the McKimson directed cartoons and those, the first year or two of McKimson is fantastic. He gets a bum rap for a lot of his later ones, but his first couple of years,

almost knockout after knockout, he was great in the very, very beginning. And this is one of those. Yeah, just so many good ones. There's a lot of good Daffy in this collection, I think. It's like, wow, Daffy gets treated very well in this collection, I think. Well, you know, what we do is we've, you know, honestly, we've talked about it before. We favored Bugs and, you know, there's no question about it. He's popular. We, you know, we have to.

But we, so we've basically covered 99% of the Bugs Bunny cartoons are pretty much out there. Whereas with Daffy, which everybody loves too, but he made just as many cartoons. We have a few more left over from Daffy that we're able to put on here and have for future volumes. That's a situation we don't really have with bugs. But we have a few tricks up our sleeve with Bugs Bunny. So hopefully in 2025, you'll be seeing more bugs and more bugs never on Blu-ray before. I hope. Well, volume four is the standalone. And I think you might have mentioned, George, that

you are also releasing the collected volumes of one through four. How has the fan response been in terms of that collection? It's been really terrific. People like having a choice. I've seen comments on our social media pages where people were saying they were grateful to be able to have a choice. So some people

that had bought the individual volumes wanted to buy the four disc collection, I should say, as a holiday gift. And that's kind of the, you want to spread the gospel of Looney Toons and Merry Melodies. That's the way I look at it. And I think this does a great job of doing that. Well, I know you've been talking throughout that there's a lot of reason to continue to be excited for next year and what you're going to be bringing. Is there anything else you wanted to mention about that before we wrap up here? Because we're not going to talk about every cartoon in this, though we've kind of touched on everything a little bit.

Is it going to be a little bit later in the year or is it going to have some interspersed throughout the year? Is there anything you can share? I don't want to, you know, I could say something now and then find out in the meeting this afternoon that our schedule has changed. So I don't want to make any promises that we can't deliver because that disappoints people.

I just want to say that we're not moving away from our priorities. We're enhancing them. Take that as a hint. Well, I think it's been the last two years has been like this amazing time for animation. Just from my perspective, I like, wow, I've had Jerry on quite a few times, which means there's been a lot of animation we've talked about for films between the TV series and Looney Tunes and everything. So it's been a lot of fun. talked about for films between the TV series and Looney Tunes and everything.

So it's been a lot of fun. As a fan of animation, as all three of us are really looking forward to the future. I just love the volume four coming out for Christmas and the collection. I just think that's a great way to get more people into the knowledge of what you've been releasing over the last year and a half. And- As a warning to everybody, these are addictive. Yes.

But this most healthy addiction one could have is Warner Brothers cartoons. And I'm always amazed that you guys were able to find and bring out more cartoons that somehow haven't been released, but the quality is just so amazing, just in terms of enjoyment. Well, we're just getting started. That's fantastic. Well thanks as always for coming on the podcast

George, Jerry. Okay well we'll probably see you again. Thank you Tim and thank you to everybody that listens to the extras where they know they can find out what's going on at Warner Archive Collection. It's always great to have George and Jerry on to talk Looney Tunes. I always love these episodes. They're far ranging and I love the fact that these volumes have films from the 30s all the way up to the 60s and after. But these releases are a real, real gem for collectors and everybody who loves Looney Tunes. And I don't really know too many people who don't love Looney Tunes. So I hope you enjoyed that podcast. We do have the purchase links in the show notes so that if you haven't ordered them yet, you can order all the individual volumes or the collection of volumes one through four. If you want to do a quick catch up and purchase

that it's priced fantastically for a gift for somebody or for yourself if you have not bought the individual ones. And it's great to hear about the continuation next year. There isn't much that Jordan and Jerry can say about it but but their enthusiasm, I think, in our discussion was pretty obvious that they're gonna continue to get more and more and more cartoons out to collectors. And what a thrill that is to hear. Hey, if you're enjoying these podcasts, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening from your favorite podcast provider,

appreciate if you subscribe or follow us that will expand our audience and also will let you know when these updates or new podcasts come that you're going to enjoy. You can follow us on social media the links are in the show notes as well and we appreciate that. Until next time, I'm Tim stay slightly obsessed about animation. group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Bros. catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.