Bugs 'n' Daffy

Bugs 'n' Daffy, formerly called That's Warner Bros.! until 1996, was an animated anthology series for the block Kids' WB! The series focused on Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, two characters from Warner Bros. Animation that appeared from the 1940s to the 1960s in animated shorts. 
The series ran from the Kids WB! launch from 1995 until 1999 when Kids WB! stopped airing many cartoons based on Warner Bros. characters due to the popularity of the anime series Pokémon and Cartoon Network retrieving the Warner Bros. cartoon libraries from other channels, such as ABC and Nickelodeon. One season of That's Warner Bros.! was produced with 65 episodes, while Bugs 'n' Daffy got two seasons of 65 episodes each. Each contained three shorts and one "Hip Clip", an excerpt from another cartoon used as time filler, similar to the syndicated version of Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny & Friends.
==History ==
The opening to the show was mostly the same as the opening on Fox's Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny & Friends. The exceptions were a new, jazzy soundtrack over the animation and the That's Warner Bros.! logo replacing the one for Merrie Melodies. Unlike Merrie Melodies, not all That's Warner Bros.! episodes featured a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
After the first season, the show's title was changed to Bugs 'n' Daffy and given a new opening, complete with a new theme song sung by both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The format remained the same, but each cartoon's opening credits were replaced with a still title card with a cut-short version of the instrumental version of the show's theme song playing over it. While the order of episodes remained mostly the same, "The Bee-Deviled Bruin" was pulled from episodes 24 and 54, due to its violent content, and is replaced with "Beanstalk Bunny" and "What's Up Doc?" respectively.
Not all cartoons that the WB had the right to show were broadcast in their entirety for a variety of reasons. "Rabbit Fire" and "Rabbit Seasoning" for example, never appeared outside of Hip Clips due to pervasive gun violence, though, according to "Censorship" below, Rabbit Fire did air, but had the gun violence cut. Cartoons with outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes, as seen in "Frigid Hare" and "A-Lad-In His Lamp", also went unaired, though "Frigid Hare" did appear as a Hip Clip.
In September 1997, a second set of Bugs 'n' Daffy episodes began airing. This time, the WB added first-run pre-1948 cartoons to create new episodes, with at least one pre-1948 short appearing in each installment. The prints used for the pre-1948 shorts in this program are all 1995 Turner "dubbed versions" as seen on Cartoon Network and the other Turner networks such as TBS and TNT, albeit with their original titles axed out like the rest of the post-1948 shorts in this program. https://web.archive.org/web/20011109090448/http://www.megalink.net/~cooke/looney/update8.htmlhttps://web.archive.org/web/20020213202307/http://www.megalink.net/~cooke/looney/update9.htmlhttps://web.archive.org/web/20020213194356/http://www.megalink.net/~cooke/looney/update10.html Because of the longer length of the pre-1948 shorts, the Hip Clips were dropped.
For the 1998-1999 television season, The WB dropped Bugs 'n' Daffy from its regular schedule, though the show did remain on a few WB affiliates as a replacement for Tiny Toon Adventures. Despite this, the cartoons continued to reappear occasionally on The WB. On 16 January 1999, however, the network introduced a 90-minute compilation series of mostly older WB cartoons, The Cat&Birdy Warneroonie PinkyBrainy Big Cartoonie Show. Cartoons featured on Bugs 'n' Daffy were included in a few broadcasts. 
After the 6 February broadcast, WB trimmed the program to a half-hour and dropped the Bugs 'n' Daffy shorts. For the 1999-2000 season, The Cat and Bunny Warneroonie Super Looney Big Cartoonie Show returned the cartoons from Bugs n' Daffy to the lineup. It failed to generate interest, and the Looney Tunes cartoons were soon moved to Cartoon Network.
==Censorship==
Much like ABC and CBS' edits on Looney Tunes TV airings, The WB airs these shorts heavily censored for content, often in sloppy and abrupt ways. 
References to guns were cut from such shorts as "Rabbit Fire", as were scenes considered too violent such as Sylvester's electrocution from "Lighthouse Mouse". Lines of dialogue, particularly those that contained references to something inappropriate for children (such as Bugs wondering if Amos 'n Andy is on the radio on "Lighter Than Hare", a man screaming, "Kill the women and children first!" when he's put in pirate regalia on "Bugs' Bonnets", and one of the Three Little Pigs telling the Wolf to "...go blow his brains out" on "The Turn-Tale Wolf"), were cut. 
The channel's most extreme examples of censorship include:
*When "A Star Is Bored"http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/ltcuts/s/ The Censored Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Guide had two scenes of gunfire edited completely and the entire cartoon's sequence was shown out of order;
*When Three Bears cartoon "The Bee-Deviled Bruin" was banned for extreme violence and dangerous, imitable behavior when That's Warner Bros.! changed its name to The Bugs 'n' Daffy Show during the second season, and;
*When all references to the You Bet Your Life spoof "You Beat Your Wife" on 1956's "Wideo Wabbit" were haphazardly edited, not just from the dialogue, but the title of the show on the podium was digitally covered with a brown square that disappeared for a few frames and was not blended in properly. Contrast with the version shown on Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and most PAL prints on overseas channels, which used more advanced digital editing to erase the offending title from the podium, and made the dialogue changes less obvious than what the WB did.
==Notes==
*Much like ABC, CBS, FOX and pre-1992 Nickelodeon airings of Looney Tunes prior, all the Looney Tunes cartoons shown on this program all had their original titles and credits cut.
*The instrumental version of Bugs 'n' Daffy's theme music during the ending credits is later re-used in Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5 DVD trailer in 2007.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAxhUANxODshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8Qya7PBgWs
*The ending credits for the series appear at the end of "Prince Violent" on the Boomerang streaming service, as the print for the cartoon used was taken from an old Kids' WB copy.https://watch.boomerang.com/watch/77/19
* This show is different from another unrelated anthology show on Cartoon Network called The Bugs and Daffy Show.
==Video ==
The Bugs 'N Daffy Show WB Kids version-1
The Bugs N' Daffy Show (Kids WB version) end credits True HQ
==Episodes==
Bugs 'n' Daffy Episode Guide
==References==
==External Links==
*The Bugs n' Daffy Show episode guide at Golden Age Cartoons (archived)
 
Category:TV Shows
Category:1995
Category:1996
Category:1997
Category:1998
Category:1999