Baby Looney Tunes

I was born in the good times - the Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Show ran from 9:00AM until 10:30AM every Saturday morning. Life was good.

Now, all I've got is some brat named Caliou and other assorted Disney characters to offer my 3 year old. Thanks to Baby Looney Tunes, I can introduce her to the characters I love so much. Since she got into Baby Looney Tunes (which wasn't hard), she loves to watch the true animated shorts with me.

Bottom line: Taken on its own, it's pretty bad. In the Looney Universe, it's a great introduction to all our favorites.

Unlike some other reviewers, I don't think this is a disgrace to Looney Tunes, but I agree that it's not as good as the original Looney Tunes and not entirely faithful to the source material. It's not without its flaws (more about that later), but it's better than The Looney Tunes Show (2011) and Wabbit. Baby Looney Tunes is one of many prequel shows with the characters as babies or kids that I've come across. It's not one of the best ones, but it's better than Yo Yogi and Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go (although I don't think the latter is supposed to be a prequel series to Thomas & Friends. It's a non-canon reboot with the characters as kids).

Baby Looney Tunes has a completely different premise in place of the old one, and the characters' personalities may not be as fleshed out as their adult counterparts, but some of them still have a little bit of their original personalities in them. Taz is still the dimwitted "tornado" who eats everything, grunts, and blows raspberries, Daffy Duck is still the short-tempered and hyperactive duck who has a tendency to get jealous of Bugs Bunny and yell "Woo hoo!", Lola Bunny is still the tomboy who is good at sports, etc.

Sylvester doesn't try to eat Tweety Bird anymore, but maybe the show would be darker than necessary if he did. I don't know, I can't imagine babies or little kids doing such a thing to each other. However, a couple of the songs from the show mention him trying to catch birds and failing at every attempt. In the original Looney Tunes, Granny smacks Sylvester whenever he picks on Tweety, but I find that so difficult to imagine happening here. She is a benevolent mother figure (or maybe it'd make more sense to say grandmother figure), and I like that side of her.

Most of the characters' voices sound the same but slightly higher, but that makes perfect sense because that makes them sound like younger versions of themselves, and that's what they are. Additionally, June Foray has returned as Granny, adding to the charm of the show.

Some Looney Tunes characters other than the main characters appear from time to time, while others only appear once and never appear again. To name a few examples, Pepe Lepew and Foghorn Leghorn occasionally appear, while Elmer Fudd and Marvin the Martian each appear in one episode.

The character designs and stories are cute. The babies get into all kinds of appealing childlike shenanigans and adventures, like playing school, making a Mother's Day card for Granny, Sylvester tripping over a towel that wraps around his head and makes everyone else think he's wearing a cool hat, and more. The plots are relatable and perfectly capture childhood innocence. I don't know what else to say about them.

The songs are catchy and sometimes funny. Most of them are parodies of traditional children's songs, but some of them have their own original melodies. My favorite one might have to be either The Looney Riddle or Born to Sing, both of which have entirely original tunes. The album version of the latter is slightly longer and mentions some of the Looney Tunes who aren't mentioned in the version from the show singing about things they do or are into. For example, it mentions Yosemite Sam singing country music and Pepe Lepew singing love songs, which makes the album version even better! Additionally, some of the music videos have nods to the original Looney Tunes that never appear in the main story, like Wile Coyote chasing Roadrunner, Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs Bunny, Pepe Lepew being a lovesick skunk, and more.

If the five Looney Tunes characters most commonly seen on merchandise-Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Taz, Tweety Bird, and Sylvester-plus Lola all lived with Granny when they were babies, I would guess that Granny has had Tweety and Sylvester since they were babies, while Bugs, Daffy, and Taz moved into the woods later. Although Tweety is still a baby in the source material, perhaps he is slightly younger here, and birds age much slower in the Looney Tunes universe than in real life. I'm not sure how that works.

It makes sense that Granny is still old, as she is the guardian of the main babies, and I think she is supposed to be much older than most of the other characters in the regular Looney Tunes as well. This brings me to my next point.

As I said, the show is not without its flaws. Here's what I dislike about it: 1) Lola is one of the main characters, and she and Bugs have known each other since they were babies according to Baby Looney Tunes. However, Lola is not an original Looney Tune, and she and Bugs meet for the first time as adults in Space Jam.

2) Computers, video games, a modern telephone, color TVs, and a Blue's Clues parody are present in various episodes. This is presumably set before the original Looney Tunes, yet most of those things didn't exist when the source material was being made. These modern items make me think maybe Baby Looney Tunes is non-canon.

3) Many Looney Tunes characters appear in post-episode music videos but never in the episodes themselves, like Yosemite Sam, Gossamer, Marc Anthony, Michigan J. Frog, and even important Looney Tunes like Porky Pig, Roadrunner, and Wile Coyote. Petunia Pig, Porky's girlfriend and a minor character in the source material, appears in both episodes and music videos from time to time, but why not Porky?

4) It's unclear to me as to how old this show is. This page says it ran from 2001-2005, and the episodes' end credits have the same dates in them. However, my mother once told me she watched this as a kid. She wasn't a kid during those years, and the modern technology we have today didn't exist when she was a kid. The show would be close to my age if the aforementioned original airdates are the right ones. Maybe this is a reboot of an older show.

5) "Time Out" and "Takers Keepers" are bad episodes.

6) Animation errors are present in some episodes. For example, in "Things That Go Bugs in the Night," Bugs Bunny's gloves briefly disappear.

Anyway, this is still a good show regardless of these flaws.

I think that one should think of these shows (the old-timey Looney Tunes and Baby Looney Tunes) as two different shows.

The latter is a cutesy, gentle kind of cartoon that gives good messages to tots--but, also, to kids of all ages, because we never outgrow our need for learning lessons.

It's what you would call a sweet cartoon--and I would rather have kids exposed to sweet cartoons like this that also happens to have wonderful animation than that same tired stuff that they also show on the Cartoon Network that is woodenly-animated and sparse in meaningful plot.

The Looney Tunes I grew up with (I'm 51 years old) are the traditional ones, and they're full of slapstick, current event comedy that adults can appreciate on their own level (make that historical events for most of us), and amazing animation.

They're very fun and looney as the name implies, but they also exercise your mind as you keep on your toes for getting the double meanings.

Looney Tunes and others of their ilk also were music appreciation mini-courses, as they used a lot of classical, jazz, and other musical genres as background music at times and as part of the actual plot at other times.

Sadly, I see very little of those cartoons in the calibre of Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Popeye, Rocky & Bullwinkle, etc. shown on The Cartoon Network.

And Baby Looney Tunes--while given a somewhat bigger piece of the pie--only represents a small portion of what's on there.

There are other really cute and funny cartoons on this network, but it seems as if most of it is made up of those very woodenly-animated, same old plot kind of cartoons.

They're of the animae type--which people tout as being something really special--but it's the most primitive of this type of cartooning to the place that all the different cartoons kinda go together.

It's supposed to be a children's show so get over it. I understand that there are many mistakes but none of the children I know are going to sit down, watch this, and try to analyze this show. Even if the characters were introduced in the 20's and 30's, no child in their right mind is going to sit there and say "hmmmm, isn't Granny supposed to be younger?" or "Lola isn't supposed to be here. She showed up in Space Jam." So what if it's a rip-off of Muppet Babies or Rugrats. Every show is a ripoff of something. Here in Detroit, Baby Looney Tunes is shown from 9:30 am - 10:30 am. Therefore, little kids ages 1-4 are watching around this time. Bottom line, Baby Looney Tunes is made to entertain young children. Let them do that.

Frankly, I'm really mad at all of those who have bashed this show with bad reviews. "Baby Looney Tunes" is to me, a really good show. The show features our beloved "Looney Tunes" characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Taz, and Lola Bunny (from "Space Jam" for those who don't know) as babies. Each episode features one, or some of the little tykes getting into a situation, but in the end, their nanny (If you want to describe it that way) Granny (BRILLIANT!!!) helps solve the problem that the little tykes got into.

Overall, I like the show. I think it's cute, and I think it's great to see our "Looney Tunes" characters shown as babies. Sure some will say it rips off "Muppet Babies" (A GREAT show from my youth), but so what? This show's great!!

This gets a 10/10.