The World War II Ten (Looney Tunes)

The World War II Ten
How could Warner Bros. Cartoons know merging one of the deadliest wars in human history with the slapstick humor of Looney Tunes cartoons could be a good idea?
Series: Looney Tunes Episode Number: 374, 376, 392, 403, 410, 416, 427, 429, 440, 447 Air Date: July 11, 1942-January 13, 1945 Previous episode: "Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid" "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" "Greetings Bait" "Tin Pan Alley Cats" "Inki and the Minah Bird" "Tick Tock Tuckered" "Swooner Crooner" "Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears" "Odor-able Kitty" Next episode: "Foney Fables" "The Squawkin' Hawk" "Pigs in a Polka" "Yankee Doodle Daffy" "Hiss and Make Up" "An Itch in Time" "Duck Soup to Nuts" "Lost and Foundling" "Draftee Daffy"

The World War II Ten is a group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons originally produced and released by Warner Bros.

Due to these cartoons being heavily filled with World War II-related propaganda and intense racial stereotyping towards both Japanese and Germans, this caused most of these cartoons to be shelved from television airings (at least in the United States) since the end of the war in late-1945.

List of World War II Cartoons

1. "Wacky Blackout" (Clampett; July 11, 1942; one-off)
2. "The Ducktators" (McCabe; August 1, 1942; one-off; premiered with The Gay Sisters)
3. "Confusions of a Nutzy Spy" (McCabe; January 23, 1943; with Porky Pig; premiered with Casablanca)
4. "Tokio Jokio" (McCabe; May 15, 1943; one-off)
5. "Scrap Happy Daffy" (Tashlin; August 21, 1943; with Daffy Duck)
6. "Daffy – The Commando" (Freleng; November 20, 1943; with Daffy Duck)
7. "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" (Freleng; April 22, 1944; with Bugs Bunny; premiered with Uncertain Glory)
8. "Russian Rhapsody" (Clampett; May 20, 1944; one-off; premiered with Between Two Worlds)
9. "Plane Daffy" (Tashlin; September 16, 1944; with Daffy Duck)
10. "Herr Meets Hare" (Freleng; January 13, 1945; with Bugs Bunny)

Nuclear Qualities

1. While these cartoons are not as bad as the more-infamous "Censored Eleven", these cartoons are littered and filled with not just with vulgar themes, but they also use a lot of their heavy use of ethnic stereotypes, and the infamously heavy World War II themes, especially towards Asians and Hitler. Really, Warner Bros.? Racists to Asians much?
   • Worse, unlike the more-infamous Censored Eleven or any other cartoon produced during the Golden Age of American Animation, the racism in these cartoons towards Asians and Hitler tend to be more blatantly obvious, unsubtle and on-the-nose to the point of being propagandistic, which just reflects on how Americans at the time had a huge dislike towards Japanese and Germans (though to be fair, this was caused by the bombing of Pearl Harbor in late-1941, resulting the United States to declare war against both countries, though they're they're not to blame either, and still doesn't excuse the Americans' racial prejudice towards Japanese and Germans at the time).
     • Each of these cartoons tend to depict Japanese and Nazis as nothing more than a bunch of zany-wacky comic reliefs whose characterizations amount to an amalgamation of various Japanese/Nazi stereotypes without a personality of any kind other then being mean, angry, violent, murderous and sadistic tyrants to the point of being stereotypical for the moviegoing audience of the time to laugh at, which to the extent where it isn't funny and comes out as tasteless, even by 1940s standards.
   • For these reasons, this prevented a lot of World War II-themed cartoons from not just Looney Tunes, but other animation studios at the time such as MGM, Disney, and Famous Studios, to be shown on television in the United States since the war, with the cartoons "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" and "Tokio Jokio" being the absolute worst offenders which never made it on television airings in any where in the world just like the Censored Eleven due to their intense racial stereotyping towards Japanese people.
     • In fact, the inclusion of "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" on home video releases in the 1990s proved to be extremely controversial, even more so than any of the WWII-themed color Looney Tunes cartoons from the a.a.p. package for this reason - when this cartoon was released on both The Golden Age of Looney Tunes: Volume 1 VHS and Laserdisc releases in the early-1990s Japanese viewers in the United States protested against the inclusion of this cartoon on the more family-oriented VHS versions due to said cartoon's more controversial nature, causing the VHS version of The Golden Age of Looney Tunes: Volume 1 to be withheld from distribution by MGM/UA Home Video, while the later reprints of the Laserdisc version of The Golden Age of Looney Tunes: Volume 1 has "Bugs Bunny Nips The Nips" replaced by a double-dip of "Racketeer Rabbit" (a much better Friz Freleng-directed Bugs Bunny cartoon, which was previously released on The Golden Age of Looney Tunes: Volume 3 laserdisc release), and this even caused "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips", which was rarely ever shown on television prior to that, to be permanently barred from television airings and home video distribution worldwide since 1993.
2. While Mel Blanc did a good job voicing most of the characters, the voice he used for Adolf Hitler is unsetting, loud and painful to hear, mainly due to how Adolf Hitler has the tendency to angrily yell a lot in a high-pitched, gibberish mock-German accent in each of these cartoons. This is one of those rare voices you can't stand how Mel Blanc is performing a voice.
3. Most of the designs for the Asians characters in the cartoons come off as grotesque and uncanny.
   • "Russian Rhapsody", while a decent short, had strange and weird designs for the gremlins which were based of caricatures of the Warners directors themselves.
4. Just like the "Censored Eleven", they also suffer from loads of padding and filler, especially in "Tokio Jokio" and "Wacky Blackout".
5. "The Ducktators" contains a duck version of (get this.) Adolf Hitler himself. Though this makes sense since Adolf was responsible for the Holocaust, but even then it's still not funny.
   • This short also had a duck version of Hideki Tojo as well.
6. Similarly, the cartoon "Russian Rhapsody" is entirely dedicated to making a blatant mockery out of Adolf Hitler, right down to the ending where Adolf Hitler gets killed off by the Gremlins at the end.
7. Out of all the 10 cartoons, "Tokio Jokio" is often considered the absolute worst short of the World War II Ten, not only due to being filled with lots of padding and filler, but also making fun of Asians (in the most obscene way and how it went way too far with those jokes). It was also the short that rightfully deserved to get completely banned from syndication and HBO Max due to the excessive amounts of Japanese stereotypes.
   • Probably the worst moment of the cartoon is when it says a room has been prepared for the visit of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese navy, and then cuts to a room containing an electric chair. This means that we have a Looney Tunes cartoon which calls for the death of a real-life person! To add insult to injury, Yamamoto died in combat a month before the cartoon was released, making the reference outdated and the joke incredibly tasteless anyway.
   • Even the cartoon's title itself is not only offensive, yet it is downright laughable as well, since it's title "Tokio Jokio" basically means "Jokes on Tokyo", which refers to the cartoon making blatant mockeries and jokes towards Tokyo at the expense of the Japanese people.
     • While nowhere near as bad as "Tokio Jokio", "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" also counts as the worst one just because so much of that short currently suffers the same fate of the Censored Eleven since 1993 for the same reason.
8. Some of these cartoons have weak jokes and poor humor.
   • ”Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” has a infamous scene where Bugs calls Japanese people racist slurs such as “monkey face” and “slant eyes”.
9. Most of the shorts give little to no respect towards Asians like all of them are sneaky and scummy individuals who hate America for no reason.
10. Most of these cartoons tend to be more violent than the rest of the other cartoons, with more frequent use of brutal violence involving tanks, gunshots, as well as bombings.
11. Out of all the 4 directors behind these shorts, Norman McCabe is the person who was responsible for having the most badly done WWII cartoons, as he was responsible for making fun of Japanese and taking Hitler jokes way too far (in "Tokio Jokio" and (to a lesser extent) "The Ducktators").

Good Qualities

1. "Daffy - The Commando", "Russian Rhapsody", "Plane Daffy" and "Herr Meets Hare" are the only good/decent cartoons from the World War II shorts.
   • Likewise, while they are not the best shorts, "Confusions of a Nutzy Spy", "Wacky Blackout", "Scrap Happy Daffy" and "The Ducktators" are still passable at best, even if they are some of the more forgettable shorts.
2. Though still offensive, "Confusions of a Nutzy Spy" and "Wacky Blackout" are often cited as the least offensive out of the "World War II" Ten, unlike "Tokio Jokio" that is.
3. The animation and music are still good for their time being.
4. Besides his poor voicing of Adolf Hitler, Mel Blanc still does a good job voicing a lot of the other characters like Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Bugs Bunny as usual.
5. Friz Freleng, Norman McCabe, Frank Tashlin and Bob Clampett all learned from their mistakes and never made cartoons like these ever again after the war.
   • Chuck Jones is quite lucky that he did not make a single WWII propaganda cartoon for the World War Ten since he is working onto other shorts during this time, albeit he did direct some Private Snafu cartoons; a separate instructional series for the US Army, as well as the WWII rationing-themed spot gag/travellogue cartoon "The Weakly Reporter".
6. To be fair, the vulgar themes and ethnic stereotypes are excusable since it was during World War II, the time where the cartoons would slander other people based on which United States at the time viewed as the "enemy" as the result of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in late-1941 (though these "enemy countries" weren't any better themselves due to being ruled by tyrannical dictators like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Hideki Tojo for example).
   • On that topic, one of the main reasons these cartoons were made were not only to create World War II propaganda towards the "enemy countries", they were also created in order to help moviegoing audiences of the time relieve themselves from the actual hardships and tragedies of World War II while igniting a patriotic spirit in them at the same time with these cartoons' optimism, patriotism, and their wacky, humorous and irreverent approaches towards World War II.
7. "Draftee Daffy" is an massive improvement over the previous WWII cartoons due to great gags, fast pacing, and is a perfect grand finale of The World War Ten, and most importantly, notably lacking the use of racial stereotyping of then-enemy countries.

Trivia

• The first 5 cartoons are the only black-and-white cartoons in the list.
  • Likewise, "Wacky Blackout", "The Ducktators" and "Tokio Jokio" are the only black-and-white cartoons that were one-off cartoons.
• "Confusions of a Nutzy Spy" is the only Porky Pig cartoon in the list.
• "Herr Meets Hare" and "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" are the only Bugs Bunny cartoons in the list.
• Scrap Happy Daffy, "Daffy - The Commando" and "Plane Daffy" are the only Daffy Duck cartoons in the list.
• Almost all of the World War II Ten shorts (except for "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" and "Tokio Jokio") had been restored for DVD releases, notably for Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6 and Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3. Some of the "World War II Ten" are also restored for streaming services as well, such as HBO Max and iTunes.
• "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips", "Russian Rhapsody", and "Herr Meets Hare" were the only ones in the Merrie Melodies series. The others were in the Looney Tunes series.
  • "Russian Rhapsody" is also the only one-off cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series.
• Outside these 10 cartoons, other cartoons of the time such as "Fifth-Column Mouse", "The Wise-Quacking Duck", "The Weakly Reporter", "Coal Black and the de Sebben Dwarfs", "A Tale of Two Kittens", "Tin Pan Alley Cats", "Behind the Meat-Ball", "The Draft Horse", "Super-Rabbit", "Nutty News" and "Hop and Go" for example, while not heavily themed on World War II, still had some World War II-related references scattered in here and there, such as dive-bombers, food rationing, military references, amongst others.
• Most of the all-American gremlins in "Russian Rhapsody" are the caricatures of the crew at Termite Terrace such as Leon Schlesinger, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Michael Maltese, Bob Bentley, Rod Scribner, Chuck Jones, Melvin Millar, Mike Sasanoff, Johnny Burton, Lou Cavette, Henry Binder and Ray Katz.
• Throughout the late 1960s and the early 1970s when Warner Bros. was under ownership by Kinney National Company and their own communication establishment (now as WarnerMedia), they didn't renew the original copyright Vitaphone for some 1942-43 black-and-white Looney Tunes shorts because of financial problems.
  • On the other hand, United Artists (who acquired the Associated Artists Productions library in 1958) renewed copyrights for 1944-48 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts as well.
    • Despite this, UA failed to renew the copyright for "Daffy - The Commando", thus making that cartoon also part of the public domain, along with all of the black-and-white WWII Looney Tunes cartoons (from "Wacky Blackout" to "Scrap Happy Daffy").
• The extended dance sequence in the middle of the "Herr Meets Hare" would later be retooled by Chuck Jones into his Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?"
• Shortly after the release of "Tokio Jokio", Norman McCabe would be drafted into the Army and was assigned to the Army Air Corps Training Film Unit in 1943. (Frank Tashlin came back and took over McCabe's unit after McCabe's final cartoon). Because of this, he was billed as "Cpl. Norman McCabe" in the opening credits for "Tokio Jokio".
  • He later return to the series after the war, as he animated at DePatie-Freleng working on Pink Panther cartoons as well as the final decade of Warner Bros. cartoons ("Pancho's Hideaway" to "Daffy's Diner", "Fistic Mystic" to "Shamrock and Roll")

Song Lyrics

Gremlins from the Kremlin (Russian Rhapsody)

We're gremlins from the Kremlin

Da da da da da

We're gremlins from the Kremlin

Da da da da da

I'm a gremlin from the Kremlin

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

We are Russian gremlins

Up in the sky we're found

Schicklgruber's aeroplanes

We smash right to the ground

We like nothing better than to mess up Messerschmitts

And send their heavy bombers down to earth in teeny bits

Napoleon and his army never got to first base

Now we'll push those nasty Nazis in der fuehrer's face

We're here, we're there, we're everywhere

We're in the Nazi's hair

And when they try to catch us

We're the little men... who weren't there

We're the little men who weeeeeren't theeeere.

Yeah!

We're In to Win (Scrap Happy Daffy)

Daffy: We're in to win

So let's begin

To do the job with junk

We're in to win

Turn in your tin

And listen to it plunk

To our nation's call

Every rubber ball

Goes to conquer freedom's foes

Daffy Hitler: Freedom's foe!

Daffy Mussolini: Freedm's-a foe!

Daffy Hirohito: Oh, freedom's foe!

We're in to win!

Daffy: Our scrap is in So to victory, let's go! And do the job with junk!

Pots, pans, old tin cans,

Pails, nails, empty jails,

Fats, hats, rubber mats,

Missing links, kitchen sinks,

Garbage cans, electric fans,

Rubber boots, bathing suits,

Reels, wheels, run-down heels,

Bed springs, piston rings,

Metal shears, old tin ears

(wolf whistle)

Tire chains, water mains,

Skates, plates, furnace grates,

Pitching forks, rubber corks,

Sacks, racks, railroad tracks,

Soles, holes, fiddle bows,

Plugs, lugs, bathroom rugs,

Collar sheets, house-made beets,

Rubber bands, bird cage hands,

Metal snips, pillow slips

Locks, socks, grandpa clocks

(panting)

Daffy: And that's why we're in win

To wi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-in!

Americans Don't Give Up (Scrap Happy Daffy)

Dillingham Duck: Did I cry "spinach" when I stood

A duck on Plymouth Rock?

Minuteman Duck: Did I and Washington give up

With Valley Forge in hock?

Pioneer Duck: Did Daniel Boone and me quack "quits"

When Indians shaved our scalp?

Admiral Duck: Did John Paul Duck give up the ship

Or ever holler "help"?

Lincoln Duck: Hey, Daffy!

Americans don't give up!

All: No, Daffy!

AMERICANS DON'T GIVE UP!

Comments

Loading comments...