WHV Announcement: The Essential Bugs Bunny (1 Viewer)

[Timothy E]

I concede that "What's Opera, Doc?" is a great cartoon, even if it is not one of my favorites.
Still, I have to ask how many times I am going to be forced to purchase "What's Opera, Doc?" in a collection just to get another cartoon or 2 that I do not already have.


I remember when the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were released on VHS that most of the same cartoons kept being released under different titles. "What's Opera, Doc" was released on more than one VHS title.
It was the same story with laserdisc.

DVD was around for a long time before ANY of these cartoons were released. The Golden Collections were not perfect but at least there was not repetition of the same cartoons in every set.


I have more versions of "What's Opera, Doc?" than I know what to do with. Even though it is a great cartoon, I honestly do not care if I ever see "What's Opera, Doc?" again in my lifetime. In the meantime, there is a long list of really terrific Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies that have never been released on VHS, laser, or DVD (or Blu-ray).


I was born in 1968 at which point the great Warner Brothers cartoons had ceased production. I am now 42 years old and I despair that a complete set of these classic cartoons will be released even in my lifetime, much less the lifetime of anyone who was around to see these cartoons in their heyday in theatrical release.


Sony eventually stopped irritating fans of the 3 Stooges and finally got it right by releasing a complete set in chronological order. I have hoped for years that Warner Brothers will see the error of its ways and release these classics in some manner that will allow fans to obtain a complete set. It is disappointing and frustrating for fans and consumers who want to see these great unreleased cartoons and do not have the opportunity.


Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies deserve a complete chronological release and I despair that it will ever happen.

 

[TimJS]

Talked to someone "who should know" and was informed that three early Bugs toons were restored for this collection but were subsequently removed from the collection. This person admitted that HOW BUGS BUNNY WON THE WEST, BUGS BUNNY'S WILD WORLD OF SPORTS and HARE AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS might be what the marketing literature is referencing.

 

[Traveling Matt]

Don't forget that the plan (as we've heard it from Jerry Beck) is to restore and release four single-disc Super Stars a year, with fifteen cartoons each. That's the equivalent of one annual Golden Collection.


Beck has stated that getting them all restored and released is his number one home video goal, and he's the one who can conceivably get WB to do it.


I'm much more concerned about not getting the remaining classic animation through the Walt Disney Treasures line. With so little left to release, that's the tougher pill.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Originally Posted by Traveling Matt

[SIZE= 12px]According to Wikipedia, there were 1,003 shorts released from the 1930s through the 1960s. Far more than any of those other series you list. The chances of them making it through all of them in chronological order, with the associated costs of remastering each film, are remarkably slim. They might have possibly ended such a series before even reaching the color films (as it seems they have with Popeye for the time being).[/SIZE]

[SIZE= 12px] [/SIZE]

I don't think it makes any difference that there were 1,003 of them. In terms of running time, that's approximately the equivalent of a TV series that had 250 episodes. To name one example, because it's coming out tomorrow, "Leave It to Beaver" had 234 episodes, and the entire series is coming out, fully restored, at a retail price of $200.


I believe they could have done The Complete Looney Tunes in maybe ten sets - 100 six-to-seven minute cartoons is the equivalent of a TV season with about 25 half-hour episodes - hardly a big deal!


I insist that they really blew this one. If nothing else, they certainly should have released the 1940s and 1950s in their entirety (and I do mean entirety, including the politically incorrect ones.) It would have gone down in DVD history as one of the greatest sets of all time.

 

[LeoA]

1,003 sounds impressive, but these are cartoon shorts. We're talking about things that run 6-10 minutes. Say 8 minutes is average. That's just a bit over 130 hours of material. Doesn't sound impossible to me.


We've gotten over 140 hours of Little House on the Prairie, 60 or so hours of Get Smart on day 1, and many other examples.


It's just a number. In terms of quantity I don't see why it's impossible. Something like Gunsmoke, Bonanza, My Three Sons, Ozzie & Harriet, etc., in their entirety seems much more daunting then Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes.


If restoration is what is keeping it away, release it unrestored. I want the best looking/most complete prints available, it doesn't necessarily require expensive restoration if that's what is keeping it away.


Just the best available will suit me just fine.


Edit - And shoot, I didn't read the last post and was thinking this up in my head earlier after reading Traveling Matt's post earlier. Posted this before reading any new messages. Guess I'm in full agreement with Joe.

 

[Steve...O]

This is not apples to apples with a TV series due to the restoration costs, which have been reported as very high, for the Looney Tunes.


While I can see both sides of this argument (Best of vs chronological), I personally liked the "Best of" because of the variety and the fact we were getting the better 'toons rather than having to sit through some duds which would invariably slow down a strict year by year release. From a marketing perspective, mixing it up makes a lot more sense since it increases the target audience. A strict chrono release, especially for the B&W years, would only appeal to a limited number of folks.

 

[Joe Tor1]

Everyone seems to have their own “best version” of how Looney Tunes should have been handled on DVD. And, not surprisingly among this population, there is a great deal of support for “Chronological” (I’d have liked it myself!) However, unlike other series with successful chronological releases, here is the flaw in releasing “Chronological Looney Tunes”… Recall that people complained about the space devoted to Bosko in Golden Collection Volume Six, so why would they buy a “first set” that would have been dominated by him? And, if they didn’t start that way, it wouldn’t BE a “Chronological” set – and, if they didn’t include Bosko and other productions of the era, it wouldn’t be complete. Also, I doubt too many folks would be around for the Daffy/Speedy, Cool Cat, and Merlin the Magic Mouse laden sets near the end. (Yes, maybe WE would, but not the general public!) The reason that “Chronological” works for Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, Donald Duck, and The Three Stooges (all of which I have and enjoy) is that they are JUST Popeye, Woody Woodpecker (with only a small amount of better Lantz shorts thrown in), Donald Duck, and The Three Stooges… and not ALL Fleischer, Lantz, Disney, and Columbia Short Subjects as a whole. In other words, “Chronological” is good, IF it’s tightly focused on exactly what you want – and not so good if it encompasses what you don’t. If there were Chronological Bugs, Daffy, and Porky sets, THAT would be more akin to the other sets mentioned… but we would also have missed out on a lot of other great stuff. Consider, also, that SOME series (Pepe, Speedy, even Road Runner) are too repetitious for exclusively focused chronological release, and others (Sam Sheepdog, Ralph Phillips, Honey-Mousers, etc.) are too short-running to make it worthwhile. Warner was in a no-win situation on how to package Looney Tunes and I think they did it well in the Golden Collections (Especially with the wealth of extras included!) – but, if they had it all to do over again, this is how they should have done it. [SIZE= 14px][COLOR= #303030]Two discs per set… Chronological within each disc… with a “less popular year” and a “more popular year” packaged together. This is to say 1930-1931 with 1948, or 1952 with 1966. [/COLOR][/SIZE] Several years worth of this type of releases would give everyone what they want – a “Chronological” packaging of popular toons and lesser toons… and we’d all keep coming back for more! Too bad this couldn’t be accomplished now without extensive double dipping… and that would make many of us who bought those expensive Golden Collection sets very unhappy!

 

[ChrisALM]

Originally Posted by Joe Tor1 Warner was in a no-win situation on how to package Looney Tunes and I think they did it well in the Golden Collections (Especially with the wealth of extras included!) – but, if they had it all to do over again, this is how they should have done it. [SIZE= 14px][COLOR= #303030]Two discs per set… Chronological within each disc… with a “less popular year” and a “more popular year” packaged together. This is to say 1930-1931 with 1948, or 1952 with 1966. [/COLOR][/SIZE] Several years worth of this type of releases would give everyone what they want – a “Chronological” packaging of popular toons and lesser toons… and we’d all keep coming back for more! Too bad this couldn’t be accomplished now without extensive double dipping… and that would make many of us who bought those expensive Golden Collection sets very unhappy!

I agree, WB would not be able to please everybody, but your suggestion above shows there are creative ways to get around the less popular years. And they could have still released Spotlight Collections to the casual fan, or character based collections, or whatever, to increase their return on investment. But we are at a stage where multiple Golden Collections sets have been released and I am concerned if WB releases future sets that force consumers into extensive double dipping, consumers will balk and Looney Tunes on DVD will be history. I do not want to see that happen.

 

[Joe Tor1]

Originally Posted by ChrisALM I agree, WB would not be able to please everybody, but your suggestion above shows there are creative ways to get around the less popular years. And they could have still released Spotlight Collections to the casual fan, or character based collections, or whatever, to increase their return on investment. But we are at a stage where multiple Golden Collections sets have been released and I am concerned if WB releases future sets that force consumers into extensive double dipping, consumers will balk and Looney Tunes on DVD will be history. I do not want to see that happen.

When being critical of Warner on its handling of Looney Tunes on DVD, as we (perhaps rightly) tend to do, let’s not loose sight of this perspective. The first Looney Tunes Golden Collection was released in 2003, and probably conceived long before that. At the time, there were no rules on how to best package properties on DVD. STAR TREK was still being offered in two-episode packages, as in the VHS days. THE FLINTSTONES appeared in a sort of “anthology” collection (“Cartoon Crack-Ups” – which includes the contents of an ENTIRE Huckleberry Hound Show that is still otherwise unavailable on DVD!) before FLINTSTONES Season Sets began. And, from this perspective, the Looney Tunes Golden Collection may have been the most ambitious packaging of a popular property of the “early DVD-era”. Had it continued annually, I think most of us hardcore fans would have nothing to grouse about, except maybe the price – which was well worth it for what we were getting, The real issue is, now that the Golden Collections have stopped, how does Warner CONTINUE in a way that pleases us? When all is said and done, I suspect their ultimate solution will be less than pleasing to us, considering their constant repackaging of Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo Where Are You into smaller, redundant chunks.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

We've had this discussion before, and there's no reason that they would have had to start at the beginning with Bosko.


In fact, there's no reason they ever had to do Bosko.


They could have called it The Complete Classic Looney Tunes, or something, and started in 1935, when Porky Pig made his debut. (For example, "The Little Rascals" started with the sound era, skipping many years of silents.)


I believe any sets with the faces of Porky, Bugs, Daffy, etc. staring out at customers -- with the words Complete Looney Tunes on the box -- would have been almost guaranteed best sellers.


Warners had more great cartoon characters than any other studio. If they did "character" sets, they'd need to do Bugs, Porky, Daffy, Tweety and Road Runner for sure -- and there are many fans of Foghorn, Pepe LePew and Speedy Gonzales.


Why bother with all of that, when every set would have many (if not most) of the characters, and make everyone happy? (I for one would be loath to plunk down money for a Pepe LePew set -- you've seen one, you've seen 'em all -- just to be a completist.)


Considering the great success Sony has had with the Complete Three Stooges, after years of random releases, it seems to me a total no-brainer that a Complete Classic Looney Tunes, 1935-1964, would have been a best seller.


They blew it!

 

[Joe Tor1]

Originally Posted by Joe Lugoff We've had this discussion before, and there's no reason that they would have had to start at the beginning with Bosko. In fact, there's no reason they ever had to do Bosko. They could have called it The Complete Classic Looney Tunes, or something, and started in 1935, when Porky Pig made his debut. (For example, "The Little Rascals" started with the sound era, skipping many years of silents.) I believe any sets with the faces of Porky, Bugs, Daffy, etc. staring out at customers -- with the words Complete Looney Tunes on the box -- would have been almost guaranteed best sellers. Warners had more great cartoon characters than any other studio. If they did "character" sets, they'd need to do Bugs, Porky, Daffy, Tweety and Road Runner for sure -- and there are many fans of Foghorn, Pepe LePew and Speedy Gonzales. Why bother with all of that, when every set would have many (if not most) of the characters, and make everyone happy? (I for one would be loath to plunk down money for a Pepe LePew set -- you've seen one, you've seen 'em all -- just to be a completist.) Considering the great success Sony has had with the Complete Three Stooges, after years of random releases, it seems to me a total no-brainer that a Complete Classic Looney Tunes, 1935-1964, would have been a best seller. They blew it!

Ah, but WITHOUT Bosko, any Looney Tunes Collection would not be COMPLETE! And, if there’s two things we seem to want as a group, it’s “Chronological AND Complete”! The “Complete Three Stooges” is exactly that -- COMPLETE! And that includes Joe Besser, regardless of what some fans may think of his pictures. It’s a wonderful thing Sony did with The Three Stooges. It’s probably too late – and maybe even unworkable, given Warner’s present strategies – for this to happen with Looney Tunes, and that’s just too bad for us all. Let’s decide what we want. If we want the “complete anything”, that would include Bosko, Buddy, Merlin the Magic Mouse, Rudy Larriva Road Runners, Joe Besser, The Great Gazoo, and even Scrappy-Doo – depending on the franchise. If we want “Classic”, that opens the debate to personal taste (even if it is a decided majority preference), and is a “whole ‘nother kettle o’ fish”.

 

[Traveling Matt]

Originally Posted by LeoAmes
1,003 sounds impressive, but these are cartoon shorts. We're talking about things that run 6-10 minutes. Say 8 minutes is average. That's just a bit over 130 hours of material. Doesn't sound impossible to me...


If restoration is what is keeping it away, release it unrestored. I want the best looking/most complete prints available, it doesn't necessarily require expensive restoration if that's what is keeping it away.

Steve...O is correct. What WB does with the Looney Tunes is not the same as what is done by other studios to other classic series.


I don't think it's impossible to do all 1,003 of them either, but it will take a lot of time and resources. A full calendar year was supposedly needed to restore 60 films for each annual Golden Collection. Sony, at one point, was releasing three or four Stooges volumes in roughly the same timeframe.


And restoration is precisely where they should not skimp. No subpar LTs have been released yet and it would be a shame to start. This was the reported reason for the Super Stars delay, and is one area I'll be keeping a close eye on when this first wave comes in August. Too much classic animation has already been released in poor form (Chronological Donald Volume 2 still sticks out like a sore thumb some five years later). If it requires extra careful planning and/or reconfiguration to get it done, so be it. But the level of restoration given the GCs should be maintained.

 

[Traveling Matt]

Limited editions are another familiar effort. It encouraged collectors to act quickly on the Disney Treasures each year, with the more popular titles gone in just a few months. WB could employ a similar tactic to get a more immediate return from the collector base, while adding to their double-dip catalog for general consumer releases.

 

[dana martin]

a lot of the repackage is the econemy, basicly go with what will sale.


but there is serious unfinishe business that one day i hope will be resolved, and i wont mention my biggest gripe, but originaly WB stated that they had a deal with king features to do all the popeye's . ALL The POPEYES!. ok so it has been some time and i am waiting on volume 4, the famous studios era. i loved the set up for the gold collections


LT is a hard mix, because the toons cross over into other toons cross over into other toons, but maybe they can return to something like that

 

[Steve...O]

There has been some great discussion here. The varied nature of the opinions is why WHV is never going to please everyone on this and is also why they went with the approach with the broadest appeal and highest marketability.

A prior post mentioned having chronological within a disc and having different years within a set. One of the major roadblocks to that is the sheer volume of shorts released within a year. Every year of the 40s except one had at least 20 titles released and half the years had 30+ and two had 40+. Half the years in the 50s also had 30+ and none were under 20.

Limiting the collection to "Classic" cartoons is fraught with risk. One person's classic is another's junk.


I absolutely agree with the posts above that say restoration efforts should be maintained and WHV needs to stay away from sub-par releases. The restorations they are doing are not just for home video but will also serve to keep these marketable for TV and perhaps even theatrical viewings not to mention preserving the historical importance of these cartoons.


In my opinion, I don't want WHV to "Disneyize" these releases with limited editions followed by countless reissues over time. They should make these available to the mass market. There should be enough public support for this to happen. Their own publicity indicates 1.3mm units shipped for the 6 volumes so far or over 200k per volume. That's pretty good given the higher price tag associated with them.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

By "classic," I meant the "classic years," i.e., after Porky Pig was invented. Those years -- 1935-64 -- should be released complete, in chronological order, and to hell with Bosko!


I don't know why people always get hung up on an "all or nothing" way of thinking. They didn't have to start "at the beginning." In the first years, they were just finding their way. We all know that Porky Pig was their first superstar, so they could have started with the year he made his debut.


As I said, "The Little Rascals" started at the sound era, even though there were about seven years of silents that preceded it!

 

[dana martin]

First off, we have to look at animation history at WB, two lines, Merry Melodies and Loony Tunes, some of this is interchangeable, as to the way cartoons were released, as for doing them in a chronological order, I am absolutely all for that, which stated it does need Bosco!! Leaving him out would be a disservice to the correctness of that set. If you think that a cartoon character, isn’t that important, I will bring up one of the biggest swaps in history, that fact that the Disney Company traded Al Michaels for the Oswald toons that Disney did, instead of having Universal have all of them. As for the first superstar, Porky started with a partner, but Beans fell along the wayside and with the advances along the way, people are discussing years and amount of cartoons. But what e hasn’t been discussed is that a Blu ray will hold 50 G of info, so the possibility does exist for this to be done in a reasonable amount of sets. Make it another two tier set up like they had when releasing the Golden Collections. Missed out on the lasers, but I can remember when the vhs sets of the gold carrot collections came out. Loony Tunes has always done well for WB. And the fact that they have so much more to work with, the rest of the Popeye sets, the complete MGM toon library, just amazing stuff, that I want to see done correctly, restored, and unedited. As I would like to see Universal complete the rest of the Walter Lance Woody Woodpecker sets, and if Lionsgate/CBS/Paramount would get off of there ass and do a Complete Betty Boop set. As for a statement someone made earlier, what Sony did with the Stooges sets, was perfect, after many years of lackluster disappointments, yes they got it right, and to tell the truth, as I have watched the Bessers, while not as great as there heyday, it is an older group of Stooges, more verbal and less physical, and still works for them. As for the “The Little Rascals” well that isn’t complete, at least not from one source, the Roach comedies that RHI/Genius did was not a perfect set, a few flaws here and there, but given the age and condition of the material, it was acceptable. The MGM “Our Gang” is a MOD at WB archive, and Laughsmith Entertainment has been trying for years to get the silents into a package and I am waiting on it. So while not complete, it is what it is and only time will tell how these things will pan out. The biggest issue is what said company can do to mass market the product, how well it is going to sale to Joe Six-pack and Mary Minivan at Wal-Mart, while at the same time make the film / animation a[COLOR= black]ficionado[/COLOR] happy with the set.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

So if they don't give us Bosko, but every single cartoon from Porky Pig's debut to the end, the whole thing is ruined for you?


It's like those Stooge fanatics who are bent out of shape that the Stooge pre-Columbia stuff isn't all available.


"Completists" can be hard to deal with. I collect many things, and I never have, and never will, have a "complete" collection of anything, in any category.


If Warner decided not to go "chronological" because they knew Bosko sets wouldn't fly off the shelves, then the whole thing is a terrible shame. There's no earthly reason they couldn't have started with Looney Tunes 1935-1936, and gone on from there -- and if they never went back to the Bosko-infested early '30s, that's life! But look at what we would have had. That glass would have been way more than half full.


If you ended up owning every Looney Tunes cartoon, except the Bosko years, you'd just have to pick up the shattered pieces of your life and struggle on.

 

[Traveling Matt]

I don't consider myself a Stooge fanatic, but I really want to see those pre-Columbia films. The ones with Ted Healy need a definitive collection. WB should really make an effort now that Sony's paved the way with their awesome series.

Part of the issue with Bosko and the early LTs are that they're in black and white. WB likes to avoid B&W as much as possible, which wasn't as big a problem with the Golden Collections because they were part of a set.

If there is any hope of seeing the less popular films - be they B&W, miscellaneous one-shots, etc - there needs to be proper balancing within a series, even one aimed at collectors. My suggestion of two-disc sets, with one character disc and one miscellaneous disc, would serve this well.

 

[Mark Y]

With a catalog as massive as this one, there really is no pleasing everyone.


Personally, I was overjoyed with the Golden Collections. Was it the "perfect" approach to releasing these cartoons on DVD? No. But I appreciate the care and effort that was made to produce a quality product -- WB went back to the original color separations to restore so many of the cartoons -- remember how the color pre-1948 shorts used to look in the pre-home video days? (The a.a.p. ones, or as I used to call them, the "Turner Brothers" cartoons.) Tell me WB's restorations of cartoons like "Baseball Bugs" and "The Wacky Wabbit" didn't blow you away the first time you saw them!


It kind of surprises me that someone would just want a complete Bugs Bunny set (or indeed, any specific character) and nothing else. But from many postings here and elsewhere -- well, you learn something new every day, and we all have our own preferences. Indeed, it might have been interesting had WB done something similar to the "Disney Treasures" and done chronological collections for each character -- I suppose, though, one issue might be the many cartoons which paired (for instance) Daffy Duck and Porky Pig; Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny; Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd; Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd; Elmer Fudd and Sylvester; Porky Pig and Sylvester, etc. etc. That would make it a little trickier. (Though the Disney cartoons often featured two or more star characters together, I think the WB cartoons did it more often and with more different combinations of characters. Whose set should certain ones go into, or should they "double dip," like the Disney Treasures sets did to some extent?)


As I understand it, WB initially went with the Golden Collection format (which originally was a one-shot deal, with the possibility of future volumes dependent on sales) based on an already-in-progress restoration project being done with the cartoons. Several titles were being restored for international theatrical and video releases already, so Jerry Beck was (in some cases) handed a list of titles and had to work those into the release schedule, since they were already set to go. And there is no pleasing everybody -- some people only like the Bob Clampett cartoons, some only wanted the pre-1948s, some only wanted the ones they remember seeing on Saturday morning television when they were kids. And so on. And the content doesn't end with 1,003 cartoons -- there are also numerous TV specials, new animation produced for "The Bugs Bunny Show," later cartoons produced after WB started making contemporary cartoons again in the late 1980s, etc. etc.


WB's reaquiring of the pre-1948s from Turner was a double-edged sword. On the plus side, WB had all the color separations, so they were able to do some wonderful restorations on those titles. But when they were under different ownership, it gave each entity a more finite and manageable number of cartoons to work with -- I'm pretty sure Turner released very close to (but not quite) all its Warner Bros. cartoons as part of their laserdisc collections -- they had less than 350 cartoons to choose from. Still, both companies constantly "double-dipped" on their past Beta, VHS and Laserdisc releases.


Maybe a limited edition, online or burn-on-demand program could be the answer for certain parts of the catalog -- say, the B&W cartoons, or the later 1960s pairings of Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales. (Actually, if they did "complete set" releases for Speedy and the Road Runner, that would take care of a good chunk of the 1960s shorts that would probably be received with scorn and disdain otherwise.) If they did a collection like that of Bosko and the other early B&W Looney Tunes characters, I would hope they'd add the MGM Harman-Ising Bosko cartoons as extras. But that would probably never see the light of day as a mainstream release.


Anyway, bring it on...if it's true that they have decided against the three "new-to-DVD" shorts on this new Bugs Bunny set, maybe it's because they've been listening to the feedback here and elsewhere. It seems they've been marketing these cartoons to two separate and distinct audiences -- casual fans/kids (who got the Spotlight Collections) and collectors (who got the Golden Collections). It must be working, if they're going ahead with more releases.