I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

LOONATICS: THE LOONEY TUNES GO "CHALLENGE AND FIGHTING AND FIGHTING AND CHALLENGE, TONIGHT"...

Warner Brothers is preparing a cartoon, set to air on Kids WB this fall, Loonatics, with radically re-imagined and razor-sharp new versions of the Looney Tunes characters set in the far future, where everything is now "extreme"!

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK - "Bugs Bunny and his pals are being updated for the future — way in the future. The WB network will take the famed Looney Tunes characters as models for a new children's series, "Loonatics," that will air on Saturday mornings starting this fall. The characters' descendants — Buzz Bunny and the like — will be superhero action figures for the cartoon set in the year 2772.

The network's animators have re-imagined Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote as sleek new figures for a modern age.

"We all flipped for it," David Janollari, president of the Kids' WB, said this week. "We just said, `Wow, what a great way to take the classic Looney Tunes franchise that has been huge with audiences for decades and bring it into the new millennium.'"

Janollari said both boys and girls enjoyed the new action figures in test runs of the show. Their parents may be a little surprised, however.

"I think the legacy is intact," he said. "If anything, it's an homage to the legacy instead of a destruction of the legacy.""

Hmm... take an existing American cartoon franchise... change the character desgins to make them more streamlined and Japanese anime-esque... add a bit of fighting... set it in the distant future? That idea sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place where I've seen that done before... maybe I'll remember in a minute or two?

Actually, most of those character designs look okay, so I wouldn't touch them, but I never liked Lola Bunny, the "Skeeter" of the Looney Tunes world created for Space Jam just to add a token female character. If a character doesn't have an unseen penis, it's not a true Looney Tunes character, damnit! So I suggest dumping the character based on Lola Bunny and adding another character who would bring a strong male presence to the show. And what kind of character would personify a "strong male presence" better than a "real wrestle man"? That's right, Stinkoman, the Strong Bad of the future, would fit in perfectly in the amazing year 2772, though what would make Loonatics even better would be if it was set in 20X6 (pronounced "Twenty-Exty-Six")!

If you couldn't follow the preceding paragraph, don't worry! I made a helpful Photoshop picture of my idea of how to improve Loonatics, or, as I like to call it, Looney Tunes 20X6!



Though, to be serious, I'm just having a little fun. I am not bashing a show sight unseen. I shall wait and see the cartoon before I have an opinion on it. I mean, Tiny Toons Adventures was also a re-imagining of the Looney Toons characters in a different way, and that show was fairly successful on its own merits.

On a tangent unrelated to Homestar Runner, will the makers of the Buzz Bunny vibrator/clitoral stimulator sue Warner Brothers for trademark infringement? The Figure Farm division of Dutch visual production company, Seven's Heaven, also already have a character named "Buzz Bunny", so Warner might have to pay them off too.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 7:25 PM