Baby Looney Tunes
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| ♥ | This article is dedicated to the voice actress of Granny, June Foray (September 18, 1917 - July 26, 2017). She will always have a Looneyful day every day, even in Heaven. |
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 It is a Looneyful day indeed!
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Baby Looney Tunes is an American animated television series depicting toddler versions of Looney Tunes characters. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The series focused on real world problems and morals that children may relate to, such as sharing, understanding emotions, and playing with others. The Looney Tunes babies first live with Granny, but starting in the second season, were cared for by babysitter Floyd, Granny's nephew.
Why It's a Looneyful Day
- The designs for the Loonies as babies are cute.
- Even if this show is for a preschool audience, it can be fun for some older kids too.
- It has some charm for the original Looney Tunes as well but those were shown briefly since it is a preschool show.
- Good episodes like:
- A Secret Tweet (which was the pilot episode, and a great way to start the series)
- I Strain (a clever parody of preschool shows)
- Who Said That? (an actually funny episode)
- Never Say Try
- Cat-Taz-Trophy
- Spin Out
- A Bully for Bugs (which puts bullies in their place)
- There's Nothing Like a Good Book
- A Pass Time for Petunia
- Firehouse Frolics (which was the series finale and a good way to wrap up the show on a high note)
- The animation looks great, especially in some episodes like "School Daze", "Things That Goes Bugs in the Night", and more.
- The backgrounds look lighter in Season 1; in Season 2, it got darker, making Granny's house look completely different from Season 1. But either way, it's still good.
- Season 2 also introduced to a new character Floyd who was also likable.
- The songs which are parodies of Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes are pretty good and can be catchy, despite being butchered.
- The theme song is also decent and pretty catchy.
- Good lessons to be taught.
- It doesn’t try to cash in on trends and treats the audience well.
- It's still better than Loonatics Unleashed, despite being somewhat unfaithful to the original Looney Tunes.
- This show is a 2000s example of a done-right Total DramaRama, making it even more enjoyable for fans who are interested in the Loonies.
Bad Qualities
- The education value can be grating at some points.
- They do have some mediocre episodes like:
- Takers Keepers
- Daffy Did It!
- Time Out! (Which, not everybody will agree on this, could be considered a torture episode for Bugs, Daffy, and Taz since they got in timeout for accidentally breaking a clock, so Granny has to extend their timeout even longer when they're trying to fix the clock for her)
- Flu the Coop (depending on your view)
- Some toilet humor here and there, but it's not as often.
- Taz (while likable) is portrayed as a complete crybaby, and his crying can get annoying.
- Handful of animation errors, especially in Season 1.
- While Season 2 was generally well-received, it may have been considered mediocre for some viewers and somewhat may have Jumped The Shark because it came three years after the original first season of the series, had darker animation, spent less time in the nursery, replaced Granny with Floyd (while still a decent character), pitched the babies' voices up and overall felt less endearing compared to the first season.
- For unknown reasons, Porky Pig, who is one of the main and most important characters in Looney Tunes as much as Bugs and Daffy, does not appear in any of the episodes.
- Melissa Duck and Petunia Pig were abruptly introduced midway through the first season with no introduction.
- Similar to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, this show may have misled some people into thinking that Looney Tunes is only for young children, which is totally not true considering it nearly started a century ago as of now.
- It isn’t really faithful to the original Looney Tunes as it mostly throws out its original premise in favor of a new one. Although the new idea isn’t terrible, but still.
- The live-action DTV specials Backyard Adventures and Musical Adventures (produced by Child Smart Inc.) are a massive downgrade, even more unfaithful to the Looney Tunes franchise and a huge slap in the face to cartoon fans.
Trivia
- This show ended the same day Super Columbine Massacre RPG! came out.
- Since every one of their attempts to create an entire block aimed at preschoolers prior to the American version of Cartoonito all bombed tremendously, Cartoon Network aired this show in its early morning timeslots as an easy way to compete against Nick Jr. and Playhouse Disney. Even when the show stopped producing new episodes in 2005, Cartoon Network continued airing it until 2009, even bringing it back to the schedule between 2015 and 2016.
- Its sibling channel Boomerang later started giving Baby Looney Tunes the same treatment for its 2015 rebrand, airing the series every morning around the 6:00-8:00 AM timespan (and even outside of that timeslot on ceratin days in 2016/2017) until 2021, when it moved over to a graveyard timeslot of 3:00 AM before getting removed completely the following year. The series would later return to Boomerang in June 2023, airing there during the day again alongside fellow "spin-off babies" reimaginings of the channel's most popular franchises, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and Tom & Jerry Kids.
- Cartoonito, the preschool spin-off channel of Cartoon Network, loved this series as well; it often used to air for at least 12 times a day, every single day. Eventually, it stopped being airing as much in Europe. When Cartoonito finally made its debut in the United States in September 2021 as a block on Cartoon Network, Baby Looney Tunes became a cornerstone of the American version. It used to be the first series to air on Cartoonito every single morning, thus making Baby Looney Tunes the only series that was shown on the US version of Cartoonito every day of the week.
- However, the block's treatment of the series went downhill fast. Despite being the second highest-rated program on the block (behind only Caillou), the series was taken off Cartoonito's line-up on January 27, 2022, with its timeslots being taken over by Care Bears: Unlock the Magic. The series returned to Cartoonito on March 22, 2022, airing in the place of Care Bears on Tuesdays and Thursdays... only to be removed from the block again one week later. The series returned to Cartoonito once more on April 4, 2022, ironically replacing the very series that replaced it on the block's line-up until June. Later, the show was dropped from Boomerang's schedule in August 2022, meaning that the show no longer aired on American television and can now only be legally obtained through iTunes and (until 2024) the Boomerang SOVD service.
- Although the show premiered in 2002, the songs were recorded in 1997 (as the show was still being developed) and released on two cassette tapes: "Born to Sing" (May 23, 1997) and "Born to Sing Too" (January 13, 1998), which all of the songs shown in-between episodes were taken from. These cassettes have never seen any sort of reprinting to any other form of media; they are also long out of print and impossible to find.
- This series has recycled plots from other cartoons where infants are the main characters:
- "Like a Duck to Water" is similar to the Muppet Babies (1984) episode, "Beach Blanket Babies", wherein one character (Baby Daffy, Baby Fozzie) is afraid to go swimming for the first time.
- "Leader of the Pack" uses the same basic plot as the Rugrats episode, "Tommy and the Secret Club", wherein one character (Baby Daffy, Angelica) starts their own secret club and makes their friends do certain tasks for them in order to join.
- "I Strain" uses the same basic plot as the Muppet Babies (1984) episode, "I Want My Muppet TV" and the Rugrats (1991) episode, "Kid TV". In all three episodes, the TV breaks, so the characters make their own TV out of a cardboard box and act out their own TV shows with it.
- "The Dolly Vanishes" is similar to the Rugrats (1991) episode, "Murmur on the Ornery Express". In both episodes, the favorite toy of one of the babies (Edna, Wawa) goes missing during a train ride, and the other babies search the train for it.
- Italian airings of the series for years kept everything as it was, but after 2016, they started removing the songs that were usually played between each episode and repacking every 10-minute short as a standalone episode to cram more advertising in-between (again, this is another way to circumnavigate the law forbidding commercial breaks during cartoons).
- This was also how the series was first shown on Cartoonito in the United States when the American version of the block launched in September 2021, with five of its standard segments airing together to make a 75-minute broadcast of the series. However, on November 2, 2021, the block started airing the show in its original format so that it can run on the clock.
- Cartoon Network and Kids' WB! did squat when, despite wanting the series to be successful, they barely advertised it after launch; no merchandise was made for it either. There was notably a three-year delay between season 1 and 2 on Cartoon Network, with the latter being burned off in less than a month, most likely because of the failure of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, which caused the original Looney Tunes shorts to get removed from Cartoon Network.
- The live-action specials Backyard Adventures and Musical Adventures haven't been re-released since their 2003 VHS debuts. Musical Adventures was eventually added to HBO Max, but the actual series wasn't, though the show averted this via availability on digital platforms.
- After the first three seasons (sometimes collectively titled "Season 1") aired in a bomb format throughout late 2002, the show underwent a three-year hiatus before receiving a fourth and final season.
- The series was originally announced back in 1997 under the name Li'l Looney Critters, but in 1999 the name was changed to what we know now.
- In 2003, a series of direct-to-video puppet films aimed at infants and toddlers were produced in an attempt to capitalize on the Baby Einstein franchise. Two films were released, Baby Looney Tunes: Musical Adventures and Baby Looney Tunes: Backyard Adventures, featuring the same voice cast as the TV series. The films were never released on DVD. However, Baby Looney Tunes: Musical Adventures became available on HBO Max and Tubi later on. Baby Looney Tunes: Backyard Adventures was formerly available on Binge in Australia. They have been widely criticized for being saccharine and boring; they were also commercial failures (not unlike the main show, which had poor ratings due to a lack of advertisement and merchandise) and immediately fell into obscurity upon release.
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