| Tiny Toon Adventures | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Also known as | Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures Tiny Toons |
| Genre | |
| Created by | Tom Ruegger |
| Based on | Looney Tunes byWarner Bros. |
| Directed by | Andrea Romano (voice director) |
| Voices of | |
| Theme music composer | Bruce Broughton |
| Opening theme | "Tiny Toon Adventures Theme" byCharlie Adler,Tress MacNeille &Joe Alaskey |
| Composers |
|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 3 |
| No. of episodes | 98 (233 segments)(list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Steven Spielberg |
| Producers |
|
| Running time | 22 minutes |
| Production companies | |
| Original release | |
| Network | CBS |
| Release | September 14, 1990 (1990-09-14) |
| Network | First-run syndication |
| Release | September 17, 1990 (1990-09-17) – February 24, 1992 (1992-02-24) |
| Network | Fox Kids |
| Release | September 14 (1992-09-14) – December 6, 1992 (1992-12-06) |
| Related | |
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Tiny Toon Adventures is an Americananimated television series created byTom Ruegger and produced byWarner Bros. Animation. It originally aired from September 14, 1990 to December 6, 1992, airing in syndication before eventually settling atFox'sFox Kids block. It was the first animated series by Warner Bros. Animation to be produced in association withSteven Spielberg'sAmblin Entertainment.[1] The show follows the adventures of a group of young cartoon characters who attend Acme Looniversity to become the next generation of characters from theLooney Tunes series.[2]
The pilot episode, "The Looney Beginning", aired as a prime-time special onCBS on September 14, 1990,[3] while the series itself was featured in first-run syndication for the first two seasons. The final season aired onFox under theFox Kids programming block. The series ended production in 1992 in favor ofAnimaniacs, which premiered a year later; however, two specials were produced in 1994.[4]
Tiny Toon Adventures won sevenDaytime Emmy Awards, aYoung Artist Award, and anEnvironmental Media Award, with nominations for one other Daytime Emmy Award, twoAnnie Awards, onePrimetime Emmy Award, and one otherYoung Artist Award. Spin-off media include magazines, toys, video games, and home media releases that continued long after the series' initial run.The Plucky Duck Show, a spin-off television series, was created forFox Kids and ran for one season. A second spin-off series,Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain ran onKids' WB for one season. Areboot/revival series,Tiny Toons Looniversity, was released on September 8, 2023, onMax and then premiered the next day, on September 9, onCartoon Network.
Tiny Toon Adventures is a cartoon set in the fictional town of "Acme Acres", where most of theTiny Toons andLooney Tunes characters live. The characters attend "Acme Looniversity", a school whose faculty primarily consists of the mainstays of the classicWarner Bros. cartoons, such asBugs Bunny,Daffy Duck,Porky Pig,Sylvester the Cat,Wile E. Coyote andElmer 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 revolve around it.
As with the originalLooney Tunes cartoon shorts, the series makes use ofcartoon violence (e.g.anvils falling on someone, liberal use of explosives) andslapstick. The series parodies and references the current events of the early 1990s andHollywood culture. Occasionally, episodes delve into veiled ethical and morality stories ofecology,self-esteem, andcrime.
The series centers on a group of young cartoon characters who attend a school calledAcme Looniversity to be the next generation ofLooney Tunes characters. Most of the Tiny Toons were designed to resemble younger versions of Warner'sLooney Tunes characters by exhibiting similar traits and looks. The main characters are Buster and Babs Bunny, two young rabbits with "no relation", their friends, Plucky Duck and Hamton J. Pig, and antagonists Elmyra Duff and Montana Max. They are accompanied by a wide variety of supporting and recurring characters, such as Dizzy Devil, Furrball, Gogo Dodo, Calamity Coyote, Little Beeper, Sweetie Bird, Fifi La Fume, Shirley the Loon, Li'l Sneezer, Byron Basset, Concord Condor, Fowlmouth, Arnold the Pit Bull, Mary Melody, and Bookworm, among others.
Feeding off the characters are the more traditional Looney Tunes including (but not limited to)Bugs Bunny,Daffy Duck, andPorky Pig. Most of the adults teach classes at Acme Looniversity and serve as mentors to the Tiny Toons while others fill secondary positions as needed.
According to writerPaul Dini,Tiny Toons (originally titleTiny Tunes) originated as an idea byTerry Semel, the then-president ofWarner Bros., who wanted to "inject new life into theWarner Bros. Animation department", and at the same time create a series with junior versions ofLooney Tunes characters. Semel proposed that the new series would be a show based onLooney Tunes where the characters were either young versions of the originalLooney Tunes andMerrie Melodies characters or new characters as the offspring of the original characters.[5] The idea of a series with the basis of younger and junior versions of cartoon characters was common at the time; the era in whichTiny Toons was produced for had such cartoons asMuppet Babies,A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (which Ruegger worked on),Tom & Jerry Kids andThe Flintstone Kids.
On January 20, 1987,[6] the Warner Bros. Animation studio approachedSteven Spielberg to collaborate with Semel andWarner Bros. head of licensing Dan Romanelli on Semel's ideas.[5] They eventually decided that the new characters would be similar to theLooney Tunes characters with no direct relation. As series producer/show-runner Tom Ruegger explained: "Well, I think inWarner Bros. case, they had the opportunity to work with [Steven Spielberg] on a project [...] But he didn't want to just work on characters thatChuck Jones,Friz Freleng,Bob McKimson andBob Clampett made famous and created. He wanted to be involved with the creation of somenew characters." The result was a series similar toLooney Tunes without the use of the same characters.[5] However,Tiny Toons did not go into production then, nor was it even planned to be made for television; the series initially was to be atheatricalfeature-length film.[5][7]
On December 27, 1988,Tiny Toons was changed from a film to a television series, withJean MacCurdy overseeing production of the first 65 episodes.[5] MacCurdy said thatTiny Toons was changed to a television series to "reach a broader audience".[7] For the series, MacCurdy hiredTom Ruegger, who previously wrote forFilmation andHanna-Barbera, to produce.[5] In January 1989, Ruegger and writerWayne Kaatz began developing the characters and the setting of "Acme Acres" with Spielberg.[5]
On January 9, 1989,Warner Bros. Animation chose its voice actors from over 1,200 auditions and put together its 100-person production staff.[7] On April 13, 1989, full production of series episodes began with five overseas animation houses and a total budget of $25 million.[7][8] The first 65 episodes of the series aired in syndication on 135 stations, beginning in September 1990.[9] During that time,Tiny Toons was a huge success and got higher ratings than itsDisney Afternoon competitors in some markets. After a successful run in syndication, Fox attained the rights for season 3. Production of the series halted in late 1992 to make way forAnimaniacs to air the following year.
The series and characters were developed by series producer, head writer and cartoonistTom Ruegger, division leaderJean MacCurdy, associate producer and artist Alfred Gimeno and story editor/writerWayne Kaatz. Among the series' first writers wereJim Reardon,Tom Minton and Eddie Fitzgerald. Other writers includedArleen Sorkin. The character and scenery designers included Alfred Gimeno, Ken Boyer,Dan Haskett, Karen Haskett and many other artists and directors.
"Buster and Babs Go Hawaiian" was co-written by three then-teenage fans.[10]
Voice directorAndrea Romano auditioned over 1,200 voices and chose more than a dozen main voice actors.[6][7] The role of Buster Bunny was given toCharlie Adler, who gave the role, as producer Ruegger said, "a great deal of energy".[5] The role of Babs Bunny was given toTress MacNeille. Dini said that MacNeille was good for the role because she could do both Babs' voice and the voices of her impressions.[5] Voice actorsJoe Alaskey andDon Messick were given the roles of Plucky Duck and Hamton J. Pig, respectively. Child actorDanny Cooksey played Montana Max and, according to Dini, was good for the role because he could do a "tremendous mean voice."[5]Cree Summer provides the roles of Elmyra Duff and Mary Melody; formerSaturday Night Live cast memberGail Matthius voices Shirley the Loon, andKath Soucie provides Fifi La Fume and Li'l Sneezer. Other voice actors includeMaurice LaMarche as Dizzy Devil;Candi Milo as Sweetie,Frank Welker as Gogo Dodo, Furrball, Byron Basset, Calamity Coyote, Little Beeper, Barky Marky and other voices; andRob Paulsen as Fowlmouth, Arnold the Pit Bull, Concord Condor and other characters. Legendary original Looney Tunes voice actor,Mel Blanc, was initially set to reprise his roles as the classic characters, but due to his death in July 1989, his characters were recast to Alaskey,Jeff Bergman,Greg Burson,Bob Bergen, and his sonNoel Blanc.[5]
During production of the third season, Adler left the show.John Kassir replaced Adler for the remainder of the show's run (although Adler would eventually return to voice Buster in the cancelled video game,Tiny Toon Adventures: Defenders of the Universe). Alaskey, voice of Plucky Duck, briefly left for financial reasons, but returned when an agreement was reached with the studio.[11]
In order to complete 65 episodes for the first season, Warner Bros. Animation andAmblin Television contracted several North American and international animation houses, includingTokyo Movie Shinsha,Wang Film Productions,AKOM, Freelance Animators New Zealand, Encore Cartoons,StarToons[12] and Kennedy Cartoons.[13] Tokyo Movie Shinsha also animated the series' opening sequence. Some of the Warner Bros. staff disliked working with Kennedy Cartoons due to the animation studio's inconsistent quality, and episodes that they animated were often subjected to multiple re-takes; in other cases, portions of Kennedy-animated episodes were reanimated by other studios.[11][unreliable source?] Kennedy Cartoons was dropped after the end of the series' first season.
Tiny Toon Adventures was made with a higher production value than standard television animation. It had acel count that was more than double that of most animated television shows then.[5] The series had about 25,000 cels per episode instead of the standard 10,000, making it unique in that characters moved more fluidly.[5] Animation producerPierre DeCelles 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".
During development, Spielberg said that Warner Bros. would use a full orchestra, which some thought too expensive and impossible, but they ended up agreeing. Warner Bros. selectedBruce Broughton to write the theme tune (for which he would win aDaytime Emmy alongside Ruegger and Kaatz) and serve asmusic supervisor. Screen credits for the composers were given based on the amount of music composed for, or composed and reused in, the episode.
Twenty-six other composers were contracted to create original dramatic underscore for each episode: Julie andSteve Bernstein,Steven Bramson,Don Davis,John Debney, Ron Grant,Les Hooper, Carl Johnson, Elliot Kaplan, Arthur Kempel, Ralph Kessler, Albert Lloyd Olson,Hummie Mann,Dennis McCarthy,Joel McNeely, Peter Myers,Laurence Rosenthal,William Ross,Arthur B. Rubinstein, J. Eric Schmidt, David Slonaker,Fred Steiner,Morton Stevens,Richard Stone,Stephen James Taylor andMark Watters. The composers conducted their own music. Of these composers, Broughton, Bramson, Davis, Olson, Stone, Taylor and Watters wrote the score toHow I Spent My Vacation.
These composers would later write the musical scores for shows includingAnimaniacs andThe Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries.
| Season | Episodes | Originally released | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | Network | |||
| 1 | 65 | 1 | September 14, 1990 (1990-09-14) | CBS | |
| 64 | September 17, 1990 (1990-09-17) | March 29, 1991 (1991-03-29) | First-run syndication | ||
| 2 | 13 | September 16, 1991 (1991-09-16) | February 24, 1992 (1992-02-24) | First-run syndication | |
| How I Spent My Vacation | March 11, 1992 (1992-03-11) | Direct-to-video | |||
| 3 | 20 | September 14, 1992 (1992-09-14) | December 6, 1992 (1992-12-06) | Fox (Fox Kids) | |
| Specials | 2 | March 27, 1994 (1994-03-27) | May 28, 1995 (1995-05-28) | ||
A feature-lengthfilm was releaseddirect-to-video in 1992, entitledTiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation.[9] This was later re-edited and aired as part of the series. The length of the movie is 79 minutes.[14]Fox airedIt's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special in prime time on December 6, 1992.[15] This episode is a parody ofIt's a Wonderful Life. Although the Christmas episode is called a special, it is only called this as it is Christmas-themed and is just a regular episode.The Tiny Toon Spring Break Special[9] was aired on Fox during prime time on March 27, 1994.[4][16] Fox airedTiny Toons' Night Ghoulery[9] in prime time on May 28, 1995.[17]
The show was received with positive reviews; thePhiladelphia Daily News remarked "It's the most cinematic first-run animated show on TV, mixing long shots, extra-tight closeups and odd perspectives for comic effect..."[18] Citizens' Voice noted "Combining the animation of Warner Bros. and the creative direction of Spielberg, the collection of 65 half-hour cartoons is sure to make a big impression during the weekday late afternoon viewing period..."[19] However, writer Jon Burlingame observed that "Adults looking for the smart-aleck attitude and wit of the old Warner Bros. classics will be disappointed, however; these are aimed squarely at kids and reflect a '90s sensibility, sneaking pro-social messages into madcap adventure stories."[20]
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Daytime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Animated Program | Steven Spielberg,Tom Ruegger, Ken Boyer, Art Leonardi, Art Vitello,Paul Dini, andSherri Stoner | Won | [21] |
| Outstanding Music Direction and Composition | William Ross for "Fields of Honey" | Won | [22] | ||
| Outstanding Original Song | Bruce Broughton,Wayne Kaatz, andTom Ruegger for the main title theme | Won | [22] | ||
| 1992 | Outstanding Animated Program | Steven Spielberg,Tom Ruegger,Sherri Stoner, Rich Arons, and Art Leonardi | Nominated | [21] | |
| Outstanding Music Direction and Composition | Mark Watters for "The Love Disconnection" | Won | [22] | ||
| Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program | Nicholas Hollander,Tom Ruegger,Paul Dini, andSherri Stoner | Won | [22] | ||
| 1993 | Outstanding Animated Program | Steven Spielberg,Tom Ruegger,Sherri Stoner, Rich Arons, Byron Vaughns, Ken Boyer, Alfred Gimeno, and David West | Won | [21] | |
| Outstanding Music Direction and Composition | Steven Bramson for “The Horror of Slumber Party Mountain” | Won | [22] | ||
| 1992 | Annie Awards | Animated Television Program | Nominated | [22] | |
| 1993 | Nominated | [22] | |||
| 1991 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Animated Program | Steven Spielberg,Tom Ruegger,Paul Dini,Sherri Stoner, Dave Marshall, Glen Kennedy, Rich Aarons (for episode "The Looney Beginning") | Nominated | [22] |
| 1989/1990 | Young Artist Awards | Best New Cartoon Series | Tiny Toon Adventures | Won | [23] |
| 1991–1992 | Outstanding Young Voice-Over in an Animated Series or Special | Whitby Hertford | Nominated | [24] | |
| 1991 | Environmental Media Awards | Children's Television Program – Animated | episode "Whales Tales" | Won | [25][21] |
In January 2009, IGN namedTiny Toons as the 41st in their Top 100 Animated TV Shows list.[26]
Tiny Toon Adventures Magazine, a quarterly children's magazine based on the series, debuted in October 1990. Issues #1–4 were published byDC Comics, and issues #5–7 were released by Welsh Publishing Group. The final issue was cover-dated Spring 1992.[27] Also, various storybooks were published by theLittle Golden Book company, including a few episode adaptations and some original stories (Lost in the Fun House andHappy Birthday, Babs!).Tiny Toon Adventures also had a comic book series made byWarner Bros. and DC. The characters also made occasional cameo appearances in theAnimaniacs,Freakazoid! andPinky and the Brain comic books.[citation needed]
Since its debut, numerousvideo games based onTiny Toons have been released. There have been no less than nine titles based on the series released after its original television run and as recently as 2002. Many companies have held the development and publishing rights for the games, includingKonami (during the 1990s),Atari,NewKidCo,Conspiracy Games,Warthog,Terraglyph Interactive Studios, andTreasure. Toys for the series included plush dolls and plastic figures, primarily made byPlayskool.
Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation was released onDVD on August 21, 2012. There are currently no plans to release the two specials (Spring Break andNight Ghoulery) onDVD. In the early to mid-1990s, Warner Bros. had released several videos, includingTiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation (a direct-to-video release which later aired as a four-part TV episode),Best of Buster and Babs,Two-Tone Town,Tiny Toons: Big Adventures,Tiny Toons: Island Adventures,Tiny Toons: Music Television,Tiny Toons: Fiendishly Funny Adventures,Tiny Toons: Night Ghoulery, andIt's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special.
| DVD name | Ep # | Release date | Special features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 Volume 1 | 35 | July 29, 2008 (2008-07-29) | From Looney Tunes to Tiny Toons: A Wacky Evolution, featurette | Was released concurrently with the first season ofFreakazoid!. "The Looney Beginning" episode is uncut on the set. |
| Season 1 Volume 2 | 30 | April 21, 2009 (2009-04-21) | None, aside from trailers | Was released concurrently with the second season ofFreakazoid!. Two episodes are edited: "Tiny Toons Music Television" (a phone number gag was removed) and "Son of the Wacko World of Sports" (wraparounds and title cards were removed).[citation needed] |
| Volume 3: Crazy Crew Rescues | 17 | January 8, 2013 (2013-01-08) | None, aside from trailers | The allegedly banned episode "Elephant Issues" is included in this set. Initially when the set was announced, the content list did not contain the episode due to its controversial "One Beer" segment.[28][a] |
| Volume 4: Looney Links | 16 | May 28, 2013 (2013-05-28) | None, aside from trailers | The original release contained a glitch which Warner Bros. fixed by the end of July. Also, "Best of Buster Bunny Day" is missing its second wraparound scene.[citation needed] |
In 1992,The Plucky Duck Show was produced as a spin-off forFox Kids, based on the character Plucky Duck. Except for the premiere episode, "The Return of Batduck", the show consisted entirely of recycled Plucky-centric episodes fromTiny Toon Adventures.[29][unreliable source?]
In 1998, a second spin-off, entitledPinky, Elmyra & the Brain, premiered onKids' WB. This series featured the character Elmyra Duff as well as Pinky and the Brain, two other characters who were originally onAnimaniacs before receiving their own spin-off series, also entitledPinky and the Brain.Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain picks up afterPinky and the Brain leaves off where Pinky and the Brain become Elmyra's pets after Brain accidentally destroys their original home, ACME Labs, during an experiment.Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain lasted for 13 episodes.
Areboot,Tiny Toons Looniversity, was announced on October 28, 2020, through theAmblin Entertainment website. It was ordered for two seasons, with each episode running 30 minutes.[30][31] As with the original series,Steven Spielberg returned to his role as executive producer.Sam Register, Darryl Frank, and Justin Falvey also served as executive producers, while Erin Gibson was the showrunner and co-executive producer. The series premiered onMax on September 8, 2023, and it aired onCartoon Network on September 9, 2023.[32][33]
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