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That’s Warner Brothers! Getting a Little Loony

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So, this year, Warner Bros Media announced that Cartoon Network will begin airing the international preschool programming block Cartoonito to the CN US starting this September.

“Uh………yay?”

The reason why I’m bringing this up here is because there are no less than three (3) shows coming to the block that are based on Warner Brothers owned properties. One of which is Batwheels, a series set in the DC universe that focuses on the exploits of the Batmobile.

Well, OK, then. So that’s a thing that’s happening.

But what’s more interesting to me is two other shows based on WB properties that are coming. One of which is a new Looney Tunes animated series titled Bugs Bunny Builders.
What it’s about (source: TheTVDB.com) – Bugs Bunny Builders brings the wackiness, humor and slapstick we’ve grown to love to a new preschool audience. At ACME Construction Company Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny manage a crew of builders that, quite frankly, should not be anywhere near a construction site. However, by working together as a team, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety and others use their tools and wild vehicles to pull off some of the looniest construction jobs ever.

My Initial Thoughts:

I know that we’ve been down this road before with Baby Looney Tunes, but this series seems to be a tad more ambitious than that series was. BBB isn’t just a clone of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies.

This series at least has an original premise (well not so original. Bob the Builder anyone?), and this series claims to incorporate some of the Looney Tunes’ signature zany humor. Now, I don’t know how well that’s going to translate on a show aimed at preschoolers, but it’s certainly an ambitious endeavor.

Also, based on the few images that I’ve been able to find, it looks as though Builders will focus mostly (if not solely) on the characters of Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Lola and Tweety. I’m guessing that if any of the other LT characters appear at all, they’ll appear as either guest stars, supporting players or make the odd cameo now and then.

Side Bar: I read a comment about this show on YouTube in which someone responded with:

“No…Pepe LePew! (sob)”

OK, seriously. I like Pepe LePew as much as anyone else, but can you all please stop crying about Pepe LePew whenever the subject of something Looney Tunes related comes up? I agree that it sucks that Pepe’s one scene in Space Jam: A New Legacy was cut, but it was just one scene, which wouldn’t have made a huge impact on the film even if it didn’t get cut. And yeah, I agree that WB doesn’t need to remove the character going forward., but the fact of the matter that Pepe’s chief shtick (jumping on anything with a pulse) didn’t age well. That’s really all there is too it.

Pepe was problematic, but not unfixable. WB could at least try to give the character a new shtick for the modern era. New Looney Tunes (an underrated show, in my opinion) was on the right track when they turned Pepe into a parody of James Bond. In those shorts, Pepe’s advances were strictly toward his female partner, but she would routinely rebuff his advances and tell him to keep his dirty mind focused on the mission at hand. As for Bugs Bunny Builders, Pepe was never an A-list character. He was B or C-list at best, so it wasn’t a given that he’d be in this show anyway, at least not as a central character.

End Side Bar.

Is it just me, or do the Looney Tunes appear to be drawn to look a little younger than usual? I guess that makes sense, seeing how this show aimed at preschoolers.

And if this picture is any indication, it looks as though we’ll be getting the 1940s crazy version of Daffy Duck here. That puts a smile on my face. And on that note…Producers, please make Lola funny on this show. Having Lola revert to her earlier boring, dull as dishwater self in Space Jam: A New Legacy was such a letdown! Please tell me that we haven’t seen the last of kooky, distsy, zany Lola.

I don’t plan on watching this regularly, since I’m not 4 years old, but I must admit that I am curious to see just how WB plans to execute this idea. When it’s ready to air, there will undoubtedly be clips for it on YouTube and sites similar to that, so I’ll likely check those out in order to satisfy my curiosity.

Moving on…

The last show based on an established WB property that was announced was a show being called Tom & Jerry Junior.

And if you thought Warner Brothers was being tight lipped about Bugs Bunny Builders, the studio is being super secretive about this show! The notes on Tom and Jerry Junior must be locked up in a vault and that vault must be buried 6 feet underground! So far, we’ve got no synopsis, no trailer, no premiere date and the only image for the show that I could find was the above title card that doesn’t even have any characters on it. Literally, all we know about this show is that it’s going to air on Cartoonito, it has something to do with music and Tom & Jerry are in it. That’s it!

I’m legit curious about this show’s title. Why is it called Tom and Jerry “Junior” (singular) and not “Juniors”, with an ‘s’? Is the word “Junior” in the title because it’s a preschool show? Or is it another kiddification like Tom & Jerry Kids was?

We just don’t know.

Usually, when a studio is this secretive about one of it’s projects, it means that said project is either very good or very bad. But this is Warner Bros. we’re talking about, so I’m pretty sure that it’s not a case that WB has a major bomb-a-saurus on it’s hands. Most likely, the studio hasn’t ironed out all of the details yet.

A few weeks ago, Cartoon Network made a trailer for Cartoonito and none of the aforementioned shows were anywhere to seen in it. It’s clear that all of these shows must still be in development, so we’ll just have to wait a little longer to learn more about Bugs Bunny Builders and to find out what the hell Tom & Jerry Junior is. This is why I didn’t do this as a full blown Peeks segment. This was just a little taste.

Kind of like mini cakes, only not as delicious.

iViva Los Straitjackets!

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A big shout-out to Los Straitjackets, my favorite instrumental surf-rock band of Luchadores!

If you haven’t heard the following tracks from this band, you’ve been leading an empty life:

Rockula

Squad Car

Tsunami!

Wrong Planet

The Mad Scientwist (with The World Famous Pon)

They’ve also done a pretty cool cover of The Munsters‘ theme for the collaborative album Halloween Hootenanny. (And how often do you hear the word ‘hootenanny’ nowadays?)

If Rob Zombie doesn’t call these guys so he can use their rendition of the theme in his new Munsters movie, then I guess he’s not the auteur we thought he was.

Rise of the Mash-Up

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Hiya, folks.

Story time: Years ago Jason had considered starting a second blog called The Mash-Up. It would’ve been a more abstract, less rigidly structured and more freeform blog focusing on whatever was going through our minds at the time. I dismissed the idea because I felt it was unnecessary, that there was no need, that nothing could be better than what we were doing on Twinsanity at the time.

I was wrong.

Before I go any further, I just to assure you all that Twinsanity 2.0 is still our long term goal for this site. We haven’t thrown in the towel on that, nor have we given up the dream. The Razzle Dazzle Show and webtoons are still this site’s future, that hasn’t changed, but Twinsanity 2.0 has proven to be such a huge undertaking that we’ve had to move the goal posts back a bit. The process and preparation for the videos and webtoons is taking a little longer than we anticipated, and I don’t want to do nothing in the meantime. For a long time, I just wasn’t inspired to do anything, but in recent weeks and months I’ve seen things, shows, ideas and concepts that I’d like to express my thoughts and opinions on, and I’d rather not have to wait until Twinsanity 2.0 is ready to roll to get them out there; you’ve got to strike while the iron is hot and all that. Long story short, I/we may be putting up some new blog posts in the upcoming weeks and months. These will not be Twinsanity 2.0, nor will they be made instead of Twinsanity 2.0; just something to tide you (and us) over until Twinsanity 2.0 is ready to roll.

However, these new posts come with a slew of caveats; it’s not going to be a continuation of what we’ve been doing up to the point where we left off. Real life, my current schedule and energy levels just won’t allow that, plus I just plain don’t want to work at that pace or continue the kinds of posts we were making then. Going back to what I said at the top, this new slew of posts will follow a different formula: they’ll be done in the Mash-Up format.

“What does that entail?” I’m pretending to hear you ask. I’ll tell you:

For one thing, the pace of the output will be greatly reduced and much more relaxed. I used to make lists of everything that I was planning to do per month. Those days are over. One of the reasons I got out of blogging was that it was starting feel like a job, I was working myself to death trying to put out content. No longer. Starting now I’m only going to pour my attention in a single post at a time, and once that’s done, I’ll move on to something else. I’m only going to make a post when I have something to post, and I’m only going to put something up when I have something worth posting. It doesn’t matter if I only make 2 posts in 6 months as long as those 2 posts are good and entertaining. Quality over quantity. I don’t want to be a posting machine; those days are over.

The upcoming posts will also follow a much looser structure than before. It’s not going to be like before when I would tell myself “I have to do a new Talkin’ Nerdy or TV Special Showdown because I haven’t done one in a while”. I don’t wish to be beholden to all of these fancy categories we created; if something fits into one of the little boxed we’ve created, then I’ll check off said box, but that’s no longer a requirement for a post. It’s a pretty simple formula, really:

I’m going to post what I want to post.

I’m no longer going to feel compelled to make a Retro Bin or a Cartoon Couch or a Talkin’ Nerdy or a Beyond the Background just to fulfill some imaginary quota. I’m going to post whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want. (Sidebar: I won’t be continuing the Animal Jam Pop Dream right now; I’m just not feeling it at the moment. I may get back to it one day, but right now it’s just not on my mind. It’s way too much work to be making something you’re not even into. End sidebar.)

Third, expect less snark posts and more general geeking out on stuff we like, and definitely less review-type stuff. I never wanted to a reviewer; that’s just not where I’m at. I don’t want to be known for snark. I like cartoons. I like to make jokes. I like to have fun. The blog posts were starting to not be fun for me, that’s why I stopped, so these new ones are going to be of a more lighthearted nature. I don’t care if it’s something only I know or care about; if it makes my happy or I’m really interested in it, then I’ll make a post about it. I also plan to reduce the amount of fact-checking and research, because that also became a drag for me. Of course I’m not going to post something that’s just plain factually wrong (like saying that Wally Gator was a champion surfer and railroad tycoon who married Jennifer Lopez), I’m still going to keep my facts straight, but I’d much rather joke around and have fun than write up an essay.

Finally, there’s no minimum requirement for the length of these new posts; they’re going to be as long or as short as they need to be. A post can be a lengthy bombastic diatribe or it can be a quick bite no longer than a couple of sentences. We don’t need to be anchored to one specific structure; I likes muh freedom!

So keep an eye out for some new stuff coming soon. You’ll see the new posts, whenever they happen.

rAnDoM tWiNsAnItY!

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First, wow, the Animaniacs Something Something Whatever Post now has 237 comments! Kudos! Seriously, thanks for sticking around to keep juice flowing here while we’re undergo reconstruction.

That said, The A! reboot has already happened now, and it’s not really big news anymore, so I don’t think we need to connect the assorted comment post to that anymore. So I’m un-pinning the A! Blah Blah Blah Post and Pinning this one instead. Use it the same way you used the previous one. As always, the same rules for comments still apply: Keep your comments, news and announcements relevant, clean, verified and attitude-free; anything that violates those ain’t gonna be published, so don’t try it and don’t try us. OK, now have at it!

Quick Twinsanity 2.0 Update: Cartoon Country Gets Re-Branded…Again!

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Hey, y’all.

Remember back in 2020, when we said this?

“Cartoon Country will not be making the transition to videos, at least not entirely. Damon believes that CC too closely resembles a conventional review show, which we’re trying to steer away from. Meanwhile I’ve been concerned for some time now that Cartoon Country and my miniseries What The Funny are too similar to one another for them both to coexist as separate entities, but WTF is too popular and we both enjoy doing them, so there was never the thought of dropping that segment. I was going to bring CC back as something else, but I have no idea what that something else could be. If Cartoon Country were to continue, I think it would need to have some sort of specific theme (such as Tony Goldmark’s Escape From Vault Disney, Doug Walker’s Disneycember, Austin Hardgrave’s Zelda Month or Allison Pregler’s Baywatching) rather than just be a grab bag of cartoons in general, since that’s basically what our show is; having a mish-mash segment on our mish-mash show would be quite redundant.”

Well, we may have found that special niche for the segment formerly known as Cartoon Country to embody. Jason and myself have been kicking the idea nut around, and it’s looking like going forward we’ll be re-re-branding Cartoon Country as a new segment called (drum roll, please)…That’s Warner Brothers!

What will That’s Warner Brothers! be about? I’m glad I pretended you asked. TWB! will be presented in the same manner as the Cartoon Countries, but as the name implies, instead of them being a grab-bag which focuses on a random show or franchise each time, TWB! will exclusively focus on the works of Warner Bros. Studios specifically. There will of course be segments spotlighting Looney Tunes (the most obvious example), but it will also encompass other shows and franchises under the Warner umbrella such as Hanna-Barbera (this includes Cartoon Network’s Cartoon-Cartoons such as Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo and The Powerpuff Girls, as well as HB-Adjacent works like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Cartoon Planet), Tom & Jerry, Silver Age WB shows like Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs and Freakazoid!, and works based on or derived from Detective Comics (DC).

In addition to doing Cartoon Country style deep dives into WB produced shows and franchises, That’s Warner Brothers! will also spotlight commercials, shorts, toys, consumer products, TV specials and whatever else we feel like, as long as it somehow pertains to the works of Warner Bros. Studios.

So it looks like Cartoon Country will be making the jump to Twinsanity 2.0 after all, just under a different name and with a modified theme. When? I can’t say right now, but we’ll keep you posted on our progress and events as they happen. Stay tooned!