Tiny Toon Adventures

**Tiny Toon Adventures**, or simply **Tiny Toons**, is an American animated sitcom created by Tom Ruegger for syndication for the first two seasons and the Fox Broadcasting Company via Fox Kids for the third season. The show was produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation.

It began production as a result of Warner Bros. reinstating its animation studio in 1989 after a decade of dormancy. During the 1980s, the new studio only worked on revivals of the classic characters, meaning that *Tiny Toon Adventures* was the first of many original animated series from the studio. The cartoon was the first animated series produced by the collaboration of Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. Animation during the animation renaissance of the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

The pilot episode, "The Looney Beginning", aired as a prime-time special on CBS on September 14, 1990, while the series itself was featured in first-run syndication for the first two seasons. The last season was aired on Fox Kids. The series was cancelled and ended production in 1992 in favor of *Animaniacs*; however, two specials were released in 1994 and aired on Fox. The series has since aired in re-runs on Nickelodeon, Kids' WB!, Cartoon Network, and most recently on The Hub. These have all stopped as of August 2017.

## Background

### Premise

*Tiny Toon Adventures* is a cartoon set in the fictional town of Acme Acres, where most of the Tiny Toons and *Looney Tunes* characters live. The characters attend Acme Looniversity, a school whose faculty primarily consists of the mainstays of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons, such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Wile E. Coyote and Elmer Fudd. In the series, the university is founded to teach cartoon characters how to become funny. The school is not featured in every episode, as not all of its storylines are centered around the school.

Like the Looney Tunes, the series is derived from cartoon violence (e.g. anvils falling on someone, liberal use of explosives) and slapstick. The series parodies and references the current events of the early 1990s and Hollywood culture. Occasionally, episodes delve into veiled ethical and morality stories of ecology, self-esteem, and crime.

## Characters

*Tiny Toon Adventures* consists of a wide variety of characters who attend a school called Acme Looniversity to be the next generation of *Looney Tunes* characters. Most of the Tiny Toons characters were designed to resemble younger versions of Warner Bros.' most popular *Looney Tunes* animal characters by exhibiting similar traits and looks.

### Main Characters

The first nine are listed in order by introduction of the theme song.

* Babs Bunny, a pink female rabbit (no relation to Buster), voiced by Tress MacNeille
* Buster Bunny, a blue male rabbit (no relation to Babs), voiced by Charlie Adler and John Kassir
* Montana Max, a greedy kid with rich parents who enjoys destroying his toys, bullying Buster, or polluting factories and is also considered to be the main antagonist of the show, voiced by Danny Cooksey
* Elmyra Duff, a sweet, good-intentioned girl, who loves animals to the point where she can squeeze them to death, voiced by Cree Summer
* Hamton J. Pig, a pink male pig, voiced by Don Messick
* Plucky Duck, a green male duck, voiced by Joe Alaskey
* Dizzy Devil, a purple Tasmanian devil, voiced by Maurice LaMarche
* Furrball, a blue cat who rarely speaks, voiced by Frank Welker
* Gogo Dodo, a zany dodo, voiced by Frank Welker

* Fifi La Fume, a purple-and-white female skunk, voiced by Kath Soucie
* Shirley the Loon, a white female loon
* Sweetie Bird, a pink canary
* Calamity Coyote, a bluish-gray coyote, voiced by Frank Welker
* Little Beeper, a red-orange roadrunner, voiced by Frank Welker

### Recurring Characters

* Li'l Sneezer, a gray mouse with powerful sneezes, voiced by Kath Soucie
* Concord Condor, a purple condor, voiced by Rob Paulsen
* Byron Basset, a usually sleeping basset hound, voiced by Frank Welker
* Bookworm, a green worm with glasses (Bookworm originally appeared in the classic cartoons with Sniffles)
* Arnold the Pit Bull, a muscular white pit bull, voiced by Rob Paulsen
* Fowlmouth, a white rooster who curses, voiced by Rob Paulsen
* Barky Marky, a brown dog, voiced by Frank Welker
* Mary Melody, a young African-American human girl, voiced by Cree Summer
* Ralph T. Guard, known as "Fat Guard", a police for the Warner studio who would later appear in *Animaniacs*, voiced by Frank Welker
* Steven Spielberg as himself

### Original Looney Tunes Characters

Many of the characters from the original series also appear in recurring roles as well. Since the show was being produced the year Mel Blanc died, various voice actors came to replace him. Some of the original characters were voiced by more than one different voice actor during the run of the series.

## Production

### Screenwriters

The series and the show's characters were developed by series producer, head writer and cartoonist Tom Ruegger, division leader Jean MacCurdy, associate producer and artist Alfred Gimeno and story editor/writer Wayne Kaatz. Among the first writers on the series were Jim Reardon, Tom Minton, and Eddie Fitzgerald. The character and scenery designers included Alfred Gimeno, Ken Boyer, Dan Haskett, Karen Haskett, and many other artists and directors.

One episode, "Buster and Babs Go Hawaiian", was co-written by three then-teenage girls who were fans of the show.

### Casting

Voice director Andrea Romano auditioned over 1,200 voices for the series and chose more than a dozen main voice actors. The role of Buster Bunny was given to Charlie Adler, who gave the role, as producer Tom Ruegger said, "a great deal of energy." The role of Babs Bunny was given to Tress MacNeille. Writer Paul Dini said that MacNeille was good for the role because she could do both Babs' voice and the voices of her impressions. Voice actors Joe Alaskey and Don Messick were given the roles of Plucky Duck and Hamton J. Pig, respectively. Danny Cooksey played Montana Max and, according to Paul Dini, was good for the role because he could do a "tremendous mean voice." Cooksey was also the only voice actor in the cast who was not an adult. Cree Summer played the roles of Elmyra Duff and Mary Melody; former *Saturday Night Live* cast member Gail Matthius played Shirley the Loon, and Kath Soucie had the roles of Fifi La Fume and Li'l Sneezer. Other actors for the series included Maurice LaMarche as the voice of Dizzy Devil; Candi Milo as the voice of Sweetie, Frank Welker as the voice of Gogo Dodo, Furrball, Byron Basset, Calamity Coyote, Little Beeper, Barky Marky, and other voices; and Rob Paulsen as the voice of Fowlmouth, Arnold the Pit Bull, Concord Condor, and other characters.

### Animation

In order to complete 65 episodes for the first syndicated season, Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment contracted several different animation houses. These animation studios included Tokyo Movie Shinsha (now known as TMS Entertainment), Wang Film Productions, AKOM, Freelance Animators New Zealand, Encore Cartoons, StarToons, and Kennedy Cartoons. Tokyo Movie Shinsha also animated the series' opening sequence. Warner Bros. staff disliked working with Kennedy Cartoons due to the studio's inconsistent quality, and episodes that they animated were often subject to multiple re-takes. In other cases, such as the debut episode "The Looney Beginning", portions of Kennedy-animated episodes were re-animated by another studio.

*Tiny Toon Adventures* was made with a higher production value than standard television animation. It had a cel count that was more than double that of most television animation. The series had about 25,000 cels per episode instead of the standard 10,000, making it unique in that characters moved more fluidly. Pierre De Celles, an animation producer, described storyboarding for the series as "fun but a big challenge because I always had a short schedule, and it's not always easy to work full blast nonstop".