Greatest cartoons of all time

I've been watching one of my all time favourite cartoons today- Animaniacs.
Now its not the greatest cartoon of all time in my view- those are the original Loony Tunes.
But for me Animaniacs was the first time WB cartoons regained the stature of those original pioneering cartoons.
The Loony Tunes cartoons were aimed at adults and kids, they were sold by the studio to cinemas as part of a package deal- you wanted the film you had to pay for the cartoons- when a court ruling eventually banned this practice it was the beginning of the end of the original WB cartoons.
Animaniacs was a co-production with Speilberg- and it delibretly setout to take inspiration from the works of the greats like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones.
The orginal WB cartoons were many things; violent, slapstick, childish, satirical, political, social, and irreverant towards authority. They appealed to both adults and children on different levels.
And it's this Animaniacs captures so well for me.

The format of Animaniacs is also interesting- each episode was three or four sketches featuring different characters, with connecting reoccuring gags inbetween -like the wheel of morality which told the viewer the moral of todays episode in a parody of cartoons like He-man.
Another great thing about Animaniacs was, like the old cartoons they took inspiration from, they often had musical numbers- at least one an episode. And thanks to Speilberg's involvement they got a 35 piece orchestra to record it with. The theme tune, composed by Richard Stone won an emmy. It got 8 in all before it ended.
Another thing worth a mention is the The Warner Brothers -and their sister Dot-(the shows 3 main characters) are brilliant. The look of the characters themselves harkens back to the early days of black and white cartoons- as the backstory was that they had been locked in the water tower on the WB lot since the 1930's and escaped in the 90's.
The animators and writers love for the old WB cartoons shines through everywhere. Slappy Squirel, one of the recurring characters is a crabbit old one time cartoon star of the 1930's.
Several episodes feaure old style animation sequences and there are numerous gags that reference the classics.

So where to begin in stuff to watch? Well I want to put up some sketches that I think show best of the stuff Ive talked about above, but first...

... this one reminds me of Mrs Figg for some reason-



but in fairness, this one reminds me of me! (although at least I'm to poor and drunk to be fat)



I mentioned Animaniacs was written to appeal to both children and adults on different levels- heres a good example of that-



And heres a good example of reusing a classic joke of 40's cinema (sorry cant remember who did it originally!) feauring Scrappy Squirrel- whose quiet tree in the country turned out to be at Woodstock.



Parody, and biting at that, was another thing the show did. And a favourite target was a particular type of childrens show, the safer, gentler, non biting sort- they took swipes at Barney, Power Ranger, Rugrats amongst others. Heres their dig at Barney featuring the Warner Brothers- and their sister Dot-



Musical parody was also a favourite, here its Disney cartoons getting the treatment-







The cinema art world didnt get away either, heres French and Swedish art house films coming under the animaniacs gaze-





Another string to the Animaniacs bow was education believe it or not- usually set to a great tune-







Most of the above features The Warner Borthers- and their sister Dot- but as I mentioned the show was populated with other regular characters.
Sometimes these were a parody of a particular thing- such a the mafia pigeons of Goodfeathers-





Heres a few short clips of some of the other Animaniacs-

Pinky and the Brain (trying to take over Scandinavia, including Fjordia presumably!)


Buttons and Mindy


Chicken Boo (in a western)


Minerva Mink (she was too much for the censors and got pulled after the first season)


The Wheel of Morality


Good Idea Bad Idea


And almost finally, in the category of being in the tradition of the WB Loony Tunes Golden Age, heres one of my favourites as it combines a homage to the classics of old, and cameos from some of cartoons greats, and a good does of piss taking of other cartoons.
Termite Studios by the way was the nickname given to the temporary building the animators were put up in for the first year of their contract on the WB lot.



And lastly a collection of the bits squarely aimed at the mums and dads-



Sorry, I know this a huge post with loads of vids (some are really short though!) but Ive had a life long love of animations that all stems from watching WB Looney Tunes cartoons as a child.
And there is so much variety and stuff going on in Animainacs tied to clasic cartooning that I felt it was a worth a small guided tour.

Holy shit that's a lot of videos, Petty!

My dad used to rent the oooold Looney Tunes collections on DVD from Netflix and we'd watch them together when I was a kid. They're pretty great and it's amazing how many of them still hold up today. "What's Opera, Doc?" is still one of my favorites. There are so many good ones though.



I don't recall even hearing of Animaniacs until I was a teen when I came across some references to them online. I've watched some of the videos you posted above, including Yakko's World and the one about US Presidents. They're pretty great.

There's not too much more I can contribute though since most of my experience with animation comes from the longer TV series format.

Doesnt matter about the format Eldo- that just happens to be my favourite set of cartoons- the Looney Tunes (I include Animaniacs as at least attached to Looney Tunes), just whatever your favourite cartoon is and why.

Thanks for watching those you did though- I know its a lot, maybe start on the short ones and work your way up - I recommend Who? if you havent seen it yet- gets me everytime any way.

Oh, I almost forgot! Duck Amuck is pure creativity and might just be the greatest piece of self-referential animation ever created.



I also have fond memories of watching the latter day Looney Tunes movie Space Jam, where they save the Earth in an interstellar basketball game with Michael Jordan. I own it on DVD but I haven't watched it in years. I'm actually kinda curious to see how it holds up after all these years but I'm afraid I won't like it anymore and will ruin my childhood memories of it.

Love Duck Amok- great choice Eldo.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Doesnt matter about the format Eldo- that just happens to be my favourite set of cartoons- the Looney Tunes (I include Animaniacs as at least attached to Looney Tunes), just whatever your favourite cartoon is and why.

Heh, well, that could take a while. I'm a big fan of '90s-era Simpsons of course (is there anyone who isn't? I'm sure there must be but I don't think I've met them yet) but as far as Matt Groening's works are concerned I think Futurama is his most underrated and arguably his best. It has a lot of great sci-fi references and humor. It goes a bit over the top with boneheaded protagonist shtick though, and I've heard the more recent seasons aren't as good, though I haven't seen them.

As an overall favorite though, I lean hard towards Avatar: The Last Airbender. I've talked about that show on here before (If I recall correctly, Tin has seen it). It's a fantasy-adventure series with a deep debt to LOTR but it's more influenced by Asian cinema, martial arts, anime, Eastern spirituality, and the like rather than European folklore and medieval romance which, as filtered through Tolkien, dominates so much of the fantasy scene. It has some really fantastic world building, endearing characters, and fabulous art, especially for a show that aired on Nickelodeon of all places (the channel best known as the home of SpongeBob). It also manages to be funny without being gratingly immature, which I consider an accomplishment based on most kid's animation today, although the first season struggles to find its feet a little bit.

I'll think more about movies and hopefully come back to that in a later post. And this without even touching on anime, which I could go on about for hours.

Thanks for watching those you did though- I know its a lot, maybe start on the short ones and work your way up - I recommend Who? if you havent seen it yet- gets me everytime any way.

I'll continue to work my way through them in bits and pieces. That's probably the best way for me to see and appreciate everything you posted.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Love Duck Amok- great choice Eldo.

Thanks for indirectly reminding me of it!

Never heard of animaniacs before...strange mix of disney and WB. Most of those don't work so well for me, but the french movie one was brilliant.

I think the WB cartoonists benefited from basically being given carte blanche to do what tickled them. Reputedly they set one of the walls on fire, it was just that kind of atmosphere. I think the only thing that has matched that recently was when the Muppets were bought out by disney, and then with nothing to do they started posting music videos on youtube. I think the Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody compares favorable with What's Opera Doc?

Post away Eldo I expect an anime disertation with examples!

'strange mix of disney and WB'- I think that would get you an anvil dropped on your head Halfwise. Watch the disney parody ones to see what I mean.

I'll work on that once finals are over. Speaking of anime though, did you ever watch further in Cowboy Bebop? I hate to be "that guy" bugging people to watch a show he likes but I'm curious what you'd think of the whole series since you seemed quite positive about the first episode.

halfwise wrote:
I think the WB cartoonists benefited from basically being given Carte Blanche to do what tickled them.

Was she related to Mel Blanche? I'd like to hear more about this and "what tickled them".

I wish I had the connection speed to watch those, Petty. You've got me curious. I've watched some of the Cowboy Beebop's. They're visually a lot of fun, but they're not really my thing. For Japanese animation, I'm more of a Miyazaki kind of guy.

One of my favourites.

Eldo I watched about half a dozen or so episodes of Cowboy Bebop and enjoyed almost all of them- but I think I watched too many at once- as I just kind of stopped and never got round to the rest.

I love the use of sound in that cartoon Chris, both the incidental stuff and the classical.

As a kid i used to think. How did that little bird beat up that lion and dinosaur.
Love the character music for the minah bird.

I wonder who was first to animate those sort of cartoon birds that way? With the little hop in the walk every other step- genius whoever it was.

Reminds me of this ad from the 80's

You cant whack Tom & Jerry, I love seeing that cat come off worse. poor thing! Hes either getting bashed by the mouse,or bashed by Spike the Bulldog,or bashed by one of Tom's own cat friends!

https://youtu.be/q89LR0pICrU
https://youtu.be/w1lZxP2ym7c
the old cartoons from the 40s onwards were the best.

You cant whack Tom & Jerry, I love seeing that cat come off worse. poor thing! Hes either getting bashed by the mouse,or bashed by Spike the Bulldog,or bashed by one of Tom's own cat friends!



the old cartoons from the 40s onwards were the best.

I never really got into Hollywood cartoons as a kid, non of them struck a cord, and then I discovered Russian animation, and I found it everything I was searching for. Its whimsical magical and strange.

I have never gotteninto Russian animation- its all a bit grim and dark to me.
I like the anarchy and the sense of sticking two fingers up at authority, cenosors and well everyone you get form the classic toons (and animaniacs).
Got any examples of fav Russian cartoons Mrs Figg?- maybe you can convince me otherwise Mrs Figg.

Azriel- Tom and Jerry among the best out there- easily up their with WB classics.

Thankyou for those Mrs Figg- sadly my internet has been on and off all day and now its back on its at a crawl- but I shall watch them as soon as the 21st Century turns back up here.
(This better not happen tomorrow night when IVe a review to post! )

Loved the old Popeye.

me too Petty I am having problems today. its like wading through mud. its soooooooooooo slow. I want to smash it with my fist, but that would be counter productive, and I already killed one computer doing that. so patience it is then.

Nothing worse than being forced into having to be patient!