Easter Yeggs

We see a funny sight right off the bat: Bugs Bunny reading a book titled, "How To Multiply." He seems to be enjoying it. Nearby someone is sobbing out loud. Bugs checks it out and finds it's the "Easter Bunny," who is worried about delivering his colored eggs on this day because his feet are killing him. Bugs volunteers to deliver the "Technicolor hen fruit."

His first stop is a house that says "Dead End Kid" on it. If you've seen any of the Dead End Kids movies you'll know what to expect.

After narrowly escaping with his life, Bugs quits, but get talked into trying one more delivery. It turns out to be Elmer Fudd's house. Bugs tries to get into the spirit of the holiday but it's knda tough when the recipient is waiting inside with a shotgun to blow your head off! Most of the rest of the story has Bugs and Elmer going back and forth with each other. It's okay, but nothing worth noting.

The ending was a bit of a shock, but knowing the "Ain't I A Stinker?" Bugs Bunny attitude, maybe it wasn't.

I grew up on Warner Bros. cartoons, and thought I had seen them all. Somehow I missed this one until I found it on a laserdisc collection. It is now one of my favorites because it contains two of the funniest lines in all of the WB cartoons (see quotes).

The lazy Easter Bunny tricks our redoubtable Bugs into delivering his eggs for him. Bugs Bunny is happy to do it until he encounters a nasty little toddler who sucks a pistol for a pacifier. After nearly getting killed by the boy's hillbilly family, Bugs tries to give the eggs back to the Easter Bunny, who whines some more and gets Bugs to continue with the job. Elmer Fudd is eagerly awaiting the Easter Bunny: he wants "Easter Wabbit stew." Bugs will thwart Elmer by cuddling him in the Tunnel of Love, performing a magic act on his watch, and sending the sadistic brat to beat him on the head. Then Bugs will realize it's time to take revenge on the Easter Bunny.

Elmer Fudd wants to kill the Easter Bunny just to get some food? This contradicts his character and offends comic logic. One, Elmer is too childlike to plot such an act without being manipulated into it. Think of the Elmer Fudd from "Rabbit Seasoning." Two, we already have the main premise: the Easter Bunny tricks another rabbit into doing his work. We don't need a second idea competing with the first—especially when the second idea is so weird.

Still, the gags in this short are so funny it's hard to complain too much. Mel Blanc borrows his characterization of Mr. Beasley the mailman (from the Burns and Allen radio program) to use for the Easter Bunny. He even uses the mailman's catchphrase, "And remember: keep smiling!" Unlike the mailman, the Easter Bunny is a jerk, which makes the ending highly satisfying.

This cartoon is available on the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume Three," Disc 1.

This time, Bugs Bunny substitutes for the infirm Easter Bunny, only to deliver eggs to a malevolent infant - named the Dead End Kid - and then to Elmer Fudd (who plans to make Easter Bunny stew). I noticed that at the beginning of "Easter Yeggs", Bugs is reading a book called "How to Multiply". No doubt that refers to one of the traits most associated with leporids*: having lots of offspring very quickly. In fact, rabbits' extreme fertility is precisely why they're associated with Easter: Easter is one of the major holidays in spring, which of course is associated with rebirth.

But I digress. I didn't think that this was the greatest Bugs Bunny cartoon, but it's still a pretty funny one. I kinda predicted what was going to happen with the log, but that didn't really weaken the cartoon.

*Leporids are rabbits and hares. The family is called Leporidae.

The people complaining about Elmer Fudd hunting for food clearly haven't watched many Bugs Bunny cartoons. "Wabbit stew" was always what Elmer was after when he went hunting — it was one of his catchphrases well before this cartoon was made (example: "Hare Tonic" from 1945, directed by Chuck Jones). It's part of what makes that line so funny in this cartoon! Jones didn't ret-con Elmer into being a vegetarian until "Rabbit Fire" in 1951, so it's hard to understand how McKimson should have been able to foresee that four years earlier. And the mention of Elmer as a vegetarian was just for the sake of a gag anyway, not to establish a running character trait — after all, in 1953, Jones was back to having Elmer hunt for "wabbit stew" in "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!".

As for Bugs being mean-spirited, the same comment applies — Bugs was always somewhat of an amoral character in the 1940s cartoons, even going so far as to be an outright jerk sometimes (particularly in his earliest appearances, such as "Elmer's Pet Rabbit" and the Cecil the Turtle shorts). Jones didn't make him into a goody-two-shoes type character until later in the 1950s.

And of course it's not like the WB cartoons ever cared much about canon or continuity anyway. Next thing you know, someone will be complaining about inconsistency in "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century" because Daffy Duck usually isn't a space marine.