There are few American icons as influential and prominent across television and film as the Looney Tunes. Dating back to the age of black-and-white, rubber hose cartoons, different incarnations of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and Daffy Duck have been delighting audiences with their wacky antics and one-liners (many of which just had Mel Blanc use a different inflection) for decades.
As the franchise evolved, it diversified thanks to several variety shows and spin-offs that kept the hilarity and stories going with new life. Some of these were simple re-imaginings, some were hard adaptations of a famous gag, and others were genuinely new ideas with a Looney Tunes face. Whatever the iteration was, Looney Tunes has persisted through the decades with a variety of evolving and diverse content.
New Looney Tunes
Before HBO Max's current run at bringing Looney Tunes back to its classic form, Cartoon Network and Boomerang had their hand at their own revival with New Looney Tunes. The series' first season mainly focused on Bugs Bunny and was titled Wabbit but would grow to adapt more of the Looney Tunes cast.
A huge part of what made New Looney Tunes special was its attempts at bringing Looney Tunes to a new generation of fans. It skewed away from old plots and gags, tried adapting more modern props, and even introduced a variety of new characters, such as Squeaks the Squirrel, Bigfoot, and new villain, Viktor.
Tweety's High-Flying Adventure
While much of the Looney Tunes franchise may focus on Bugs and Daffy, the franchise's other nest egg is the ongoing, cat-and-bird rivalry between Tweety and Sylvester, a duo so iconic that they managed to land a movie of their own. Tweety's High-Flying Adventure is the cartoon adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days, but with Tweety Bird as the lead.
In order to win a bet to save a children's park, Granny has Tweety adventure around to collect 80 pawprints from cats around the world. Along the way, hilarity and suspense ensue when Sylvester and a mysterious thief try to thwart Tweety's journey. This is just on top of other great moments, such as when Tweety faces off against other cats and makes a new friend, Aoogah.
Baby Looney Tunes
Just mentioning the word "spin-off" inspires memories of a variety of television's oddest tropes, with one of the most weirdly specific being "baby spin-offs." This refers to series such as The Flintstones Kids, Muppet Babies, and Jake and the Neverland Pirates - adaptations that used child versions of original works.
Therefore, it just makes sense that the Looney Tunes would have their own. Baby Looney Tunes is exactly as advertised. It's a youthful reimagining of the core cast but without all of the spectacular antics. All of the fun comes from seeing Bugs, Daffy, and Lola grow up while using the power of imagination to fuel their regular adventures.
Taz-Mania
Like Donkey Kong spinning off from Super Mario Bros. to start his own franchise, the Looney Tunes' Tazmanian Devil got his own story with Taz-Mania, which introduced his own eclectic family members within a tropical setting.
It accompanied Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures as a vibrant, wacky adventure that aimed to stretch its animation budget as much as possible for its visual gags while also including a lot of one-liners (with some even coming from the typically incoherent Taz). Given how '90s animation became famous for having zanier and zanier cartoon characters, Taz and Taz-Mania fit easily into kid's Saturday morning lineups.
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries
Animation wasn't just satisfied with having Scooby-Doo, Speed Buggy, and Jabberjaw to fill its "mystery solving" quota. The mid-90's also introduced a new flavor of mystery solving but with familiar faces with The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, the duo's biggest spin-off to date. Over the course of its run, the show featured Sylvester and Tweety trying to solve a menagerie of mysteries across the world.
Well, at the very least, Granny does some solving. Sylvester, Tweety, and Hector the bulldog continue their classic rivalry but do bump into clues every now and then. The mysteries themselves would also fall in line with the Looney Tunes' eccentric identity, such as the case to solve a variety of bingo accidents or Tweety being mistaken for the "Maltese Canary."
Space Jam
As strange as Space Jam might be, it's rare to hear any actual complaints about the sports-themed iteration of the Looney Tunes. In an intergalactic/live-action animated version of the Globetrotters, Michael Jordan and Looney Tunes' lovable cast have to team-up to defeat an evil group of aliens at basketball.
Whether it's because it features the rare use of live-action animation, stars basketball star Michael Jordan, or provides the most urban, '90s interpretation of Bugs and his friends, Space Jam just sticks in people's imaginations and lingers there until it develops nostalgia and wonder.
Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures was the first collaboration between the Looney Tunes and Steven Spielberg, aiming to bring animation back to the masses during the '90s. With innovation ingrained into its DNA, Tiny Toon Adventures' hilarious episodes focused on Looney Tunes' next generation of cartoon characters as they study at the silly and hilarious Acme Looniversity.
For those familiar with Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures set the ground work for the same episodic and wacky sensibilities seen there but with young versions of the Looney Tunes, including Buster Bunny, Dizzy Devil, and Shirley the Moon. However, Bugs and his generation still frequently appeared to give the new group pointers. It was a funny and charming start to Spielberg's entryway into animation, and it was a wonderful start for the '90s as a whole.
Duck Dodgers
Duck Dodgers was a call back to a classic Looney Tunes bit where Daffy Duck would parody the sci-fi, television series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. However, even without that knowledge (which is very likely since Duck Dodgers premiered in the early-2000's), children could still enjoy this series for its inherent hilarity and adventures in a wacky space opera style
Taking the original gag to the extreme, Duck Dodgers shows a more sincere journey for Daffy and Porky as they protect space and battle aliens. Along the way, they fight off Marvin trying to destroy the world again, escape peril, and even get an alien warrior princess to fall in love with the arrogant Duck.
Looney Tunes Cartoons
Looney Tunes Cartoons is the latest incarnation of the classic characters. This HBO Max exclusive is considered an animated and tonal advancement to New Looney Tunes, as it refurbishes old gags and introduces new ones in a manner that seems both modern yet faithful to the original work.
Between the animation, the style, the music, and the voice acting, all of these aspects have come together to create the closest thing that modern animation will get to looking like it's from the '40s. For some, it's not even a new show. It's the original characters coming back home.
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show may not be the most faithful adaptation of the original shorts and movies, but it never asked to be or needed to be (especially given how Looney Tunes hasn't always aged well). The Looney Tunes Show is the classic franchise's ultimate transition to modern sensibilities.
While it's difficult to see squishy animation and film references disappear, The Looney Tunes Show premiered with the kind of wackiness that modern audiences have come to love: sitcom wackiness. It's a relatively tamer series that uses dialogue and grounded slapstick to fuel most episodes, but most of these are still done incredibly well. Better yet, they make the series' dive back into more absurd storytelling even more unexpected and hilarious.