â??Loonaticsâ?
Submitted by Peggy on Fri, 2005-02-18 14:22
â??Look what they did to the wabbit.â? Adam Nichols of the New York Daily News writes:
What's up with Bugs Bunny, Doc?
The carrot-chomping smart aleck is making a comeback - as a futuristic, slimmed-down superhero.
Some superhero. Doesnâ??t the new version look just plain mean? Smart-alecky is one thing, but an animal turned into raging robot confounds me.
And will we still see a carrot? I canâ??t imagine Bugs (or rather Buzz) Bunny without a carrot. Horrors. Those new laser eyes didnâ??t come from thin air. Years of chomping carrots have their rewards.
Then again, has Bugs been â??clearly wigginâ??â? all these years? Are the automatonâ??s new ophthalmic powers the result of superior nutritional engineering or rather a terrifying, carotene-induced genetic mutation?
In any case, some people voicing opinions donâ??t appreciate the Loonatic makeover.
Lisa Lopez, 26, a Brooklyn resident who works for a car hire company, said, "That's some makeover. I recognize them, but only just. They look robotic. I'm not sure I like it at all."
"Looney Tunes is outdated," said Robert Katz, 28, a dog walker from the lower East Side. "But they shouldn't take classic characters and try to change them. Come up with something new."
The juryâ??s still out for me; I havenâ??t seen the show. But I would disagree with Mr. Katz that â??Looney Tunes is outdated.â? Classic characters are ever fresh in my book.
Totally
I set it as my background so people can see it and realize the evils they have done at Warner Bros. Personally, Bug's (now buzz) Girlfriend looks like she is out of a Miami Strip Club........THEY LOOK LIKE THE DEVIL!! the tasmanian tiger looks like it wants to kill you
Mark my words...
... in two years time, Bugs (not "Buzz") Bunny will be appearing in a "what the hell were they thinking" short subject by way of apology for this travesty. This makes even less sense than Poochy the Skateboarding Surfer Dog did for the Itchy and Scratchy show.
LETs Take Stock Here for a second
You guys crack me up!!!
There were exactly TWO times in kids programming history that a show eluded such responses from NON-KIDS...
1) POWER RANGERS... (i personally found that show to be as stupid as they come but FOX KIDS RULED they air with that show for almost 8 years....Nick was NO WHERE TO BE FOUND!
2) POKEMON .... Who would have thought that a show with such blatantly shitty animation that WREAKED of syndicated fare would be SUCH A HUGE HIT!!
I for one am looking forward to the new toons..
If history repeats itself...we're all going to be saying once again... i guess im not a kid cuz "i dont get it"
a buh bye
Exactly Two, Eh?
Sounds to me like you're just being intentionally contrarian, but I am glad you keep up with the detailed trends in children's animated television. Someone has to, I guess.
But since we're on the topic, I'm having a hard time thinking of another example of a move like this. Power Rangers and Pokemon were whole-cloth creations, after all (even as they were children of their own marketing concepts, and they were hardly exceptional in that regard, either). The closest things I can think of are the "jump the shark" repackagings of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the Harlem Globetrotters show, and Scooby-Doo. Or maybe the continual re-branding, re-merchandising of existing minor characters like Scrooge McDuck and Huey, Louie and Dewey. Or the creation of spinoff properties like Tiny Toons (which, despite some initial nausea induction at the very idea, turned out to be surprisingly faithful in spirit to the old Jones/Avery characters, and was pretty successful with the kids for a long time).
None of those even come close to this. This is more like having Matt Groening write dialog for Mickey Mouse. (Actually, hmmm....[/head-shake]) It's more like turning Mini Mouse into a stripper. It's more like....
Well, it's more like messing with the bunny.
There really are only two animated comic character groups who have truly iconic status: the Mickey Mouse gang, and the Bugs Bunny gang. And for sheer ubiquity, Bugs has the Mouse beat by an order of magnitude. (Who's on more beach towels? Who moves more consumer product? Who'd kick whose ass in a fair fight?) In branding and marketing terms, this is a monumentally stupid decision, because it swims agains the current of a ubiquitous and enormously powerful "brand" with cross-generational impact from the youngest media consumers to those in their 70s.
There's probably no other set of characters with as much accumulated marketing karma as the Looney Tunes crew. Not even the Simpsons.
Pokemon and Power Rangers actually support the basic point that I, Peggy, and lots of other folks are making, here. In both cases, there were really no iconic characters, only consumables paired with vague general tropes. In Pokemon, the trope was the "Pokemon card" motif; they continually re-create themselves, in other words, with newer, fresher, better "mons". And Power Rangers was continually obselescing itself by recruiting not just new actors to play new characters, but entirely changing the premise. (Saban was going against marketing wisdom there, too; after every refresh, they destroyed the syndication market for the previous incarnation of the Power Rangers. Considering their return versus production cost, though, I think their reasoning was sound.)