H-h-hello you happy people! And it’s time for my first birthday special for  Looney Tune! While I covered some with Tex’s birthday last week, this is the first of these specials i’ve done to cover one of their stars.. and it’s apporirate it starts with their first big one: Porky Pig! 

Yes for those of you who didn’t know, and until a few months ago that included me turns out Porky wasn’t always a second banana who still had an iconic habit of closing out shorts with his signature “T-t-that’s all folks!’. He was Warner Bros first big star and mascot. Like Daffy would do in Porky’s own shorts he started out  as a sidekick in shorts for Beans the Cat

No one Brak, that’s why eventually Beans, who was a diet Mickey outside of his first short, which we’ll get to in a moment, got the boot while the stuttering adorable pig got the starring role instead. Porky was the studio’s big headliner for years and years.. but most wouldn’t know it. Outside of Porky in Wackyland, none of his shorts without Daffy or Sylvester really got a lot of play on Cartoon Network or other repackages, likely because most were black and white and for whatever reason they didn’t mix them in. But after seeing oh so many in the menu for Looney Tunes on max I was super curious, and thus super excited for this day to come so I could take a look and see how they held up, holding off watching them so they’d be fresh. And outside of three shorts: his first appearance, one suggested by my friend Blah and one picked by my Patreon Emma, as one of the perks for my patreons is getting to pick a cartoon when I do one of these 10 cartoon specials, I just went with my gut, what sounded interesting or what have you, avoidnig the ones where he was Daffy’s sidekick and what not to focus soley on porky hamself to see how he stacked up alone. 

How’d it turn out? Well join me after the cut for a nice pile of ham, bacon, sausage and other pork products as we dig into everyone’s favorite pig. Well almost everyone I have my own favorites. 

Yes yes you are sweetie. Reviews of 10 Porky Shorts, all but one in black and white, under the cut. 
Trigger warning: One of these shorts involves attempted suicide Yes really. So if that’s a trigger for you, please avoid this review entirely or if you want to just avoid that specific entry, the one on Porky’s romance. Thank you. 

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Originally posted by adventurelandia

Happy Birthday to my faviorite duck! As you can probably guess from my previous Ducktales reviews Donald Duck is my faviorite of the classic disney gang. As an angry but well meaning, sometimes lazy sometimes hardoworing and always out of his depth guy really spoke to me for obvious reasons and my love of him made me check out life and times and well you know the rest. 

But weirdly, until last month i’d hardly seen any of his theatrical shorts. I grew up as a “Tom and Jerry” and “Looney Tunes” kid, and with Disney never playing them on disney channel for whatever reason (even with the ones they really CAN’T play there’s dozens they sure as hell can), I just never had any real intrest. But then Louie’s Eleven happened , I was starved for Donsy content and thus rewatched Mr.Duck Steps out, and most of her filmography, skipping the ones where she’s the miserable wife from every sitcom… more on that later, and with one exception. So I wanted to review them.. but quickly reailzed that with 6 minutes for most shorts there’s not a ton to dig into, so I decided after finding out his birthday was next month to take a handful and pile them in here, review them and see what makes my boy so great, what dosen’t, and look at the good the bad and the holy shit did he just point a shot gun at that poor defensless animal of Donald Fauntleroy Duck. We get this party started under the cut. 

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Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a celebration of the only cartoon director I knew as a kid and one of the finest whose ever lived, Mr. Tex Avery. 

Avery is a legend in the animation industry and rightly so. Starting out at a few other studios, and loosing sight in one of his eyes due to some tomfoolery at one, Tex was annoyed with the restrctive enviorment and eventually found his way to Termite Terrace, the animated shorts wing of Leon Schislenger Productions, aka the future Warner Brothers Studios and the makers of Looney Tunes. And his impact on the franchise is vast, cannot be overstated and I only learned about just how much recently: The man created Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, created the prototype for Elmer Fudd, and created the design for Porky we’re all far more familiar with. 

Eventually though while he was happy there, his career when ended when he eventually got into a squabble with Leon schsinger over the ending of “The Heckling Hare” and left soon after. Given he got a four week unpaid suspension for it , a bit extreme given all he’d given the studio, I can’t blame him. He instead went over to MGM who badly needed his wacky energy, and thus got to go as nuts as he wanted, with creative control a better budget and the result was his peak and classic characters like Red and my personal faviorite and personal boy: Droopy. I will try and do a birthday thing for him next month, we’ll see if my rather packed schedule will allow for it. Point is I watched the guys cartoons a lot as a kid between looney tunes and his shorts being repacked for the Tex Avery show in the late 90′s, and until recently I had no idea the depth and scope of his career: The guy gave looney tunes it’s standard fourth walll breaking and made it a huge part of the industry, and he was the one to hlep htem break out of being a Disney knockoff and into what we know today. The guy has my utmost respect so today I honor him as the first animator to get one of my birthday specials: As is my standard ten shorts, my patreons get to pick one each (I now have two but she start’s next month so her benefits will too) if they so choose (Kev opted out of the porky pig one next week) and I went to my friend blah for a recomendation as he’s an avid fan of the golden age of animation and thus usually has a really good choice up his sleeve. Now that’s out of hte way join me under the cut for some shenanigans as old tex would want it that way. 

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Happy belated 420 you happy people! I’m jake, I review cartoons and to celebrate a drug that genuinely helps people relax, with anxiety and really took way too long to get legalized, let’s talk about a goofy cartoon from the 1990 that treats it with the grace and subtely you’ve come to k now from anti drug psas.

Yes folks we’re talking about Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue, the 1990 drug PSA that’s here to talk about how the devil’s weed will destroy your brain, lead you to injecting crack, and force all your faviorite cartoons and alf to stage an intervention.

And you’d expect that last part to be in quotations, being whoever the networks could scrape together. Instead.. it’s an entirely stacked lineup of some of the biggest cartoons of the 80’s, two all time stars, most from franchises that in one way or another are either still here or still iconic enough their in the public conciousness: We have Michealngelo of the tmnt, Kermit, Piggy and Gonzo of the muppet Babies, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Bugs and Daffy, Pooh Bear and Tigger too, Slimer, Garfield, Huey, Dewey and Louie, The Smurfs and … Alf.

A lot of studios went in on this and every children’s cartoon network aired this thing. Granted they all agreed to a limited release, so it hasn’t gotten a remaster or anything since airing, but said legal hurdles mean that since no one technically owns it, no one can yank it off youtube.

So I not only got to watch it but I can present those of you who haven’t seen it with one of the most hilariously inept psas and crossovers of all time. Join me under the cut as these cartoon all stars jump to the rescue!

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Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Pride Month! Today is another comission for friend of the blog @weirdkev27. I do really appricate kev: he’s the reason i’m at all fincially solvant and i cherish that. That being said…

… he also made that he really is a dear.. but seriously also fuck him because I had to sit through Queer Duck. 

Queer Duck is a flash cartoon from 2000, made by Mike Reiss, who you may remember as the former showrunner for the Simpsons during seasons 3 and 4, two of my faviorite seasons as well as the co creator of the utterly awesome show “The Critic”, which sadly only lasted for two seasons and was cancelled after one season on two diffrent networks and not allowed to move on to another network. I feel this clusterfuck of treatments was the large reason why Reiss had gotten tired of doing big network shows that took hundereds of people and decided to go into web animation. The results were this, a web series of the critic I don’t like to talk about, and Hard Drinkin Lincoln.. which only makes this review harder because I wish i’d watched THAT instead. At least I could’ve watched Teddy Roosevelt give Lincoln an intervention… .I assume that was an episode if otherwise why make this. 

As for why he choose to make a show based around a sterotypically gay duck..

I only found about two things on the series:Wikipedia saying Reiss wanted to make sure to cast a gay man to play queer Duck on the dvd bonus features of the movie. 

Yes there was a movie.. and yes.. that’s next week. The other was a short interview with him and al jean where Reiss is quoted saying:

“It’s the thing I’m most excited about in my entire life,” he says. “I don’t like how gay people are treated in comedy. Gay people are nothing besides their gayness. So I created a cartoon that was pro-gay and featured gay animals.”

I could honestly tell in the text: Queer Duck, the series at least, comes off as a man WANTING to represent gay people and wanting to mock the assholes mocking them.. but who clearly knows so little about gay people the best he can come up with are stereotypes and various jokes that amount to…

I’ll go more into it in a moment though provided you join me under the cut as I examine queer duck and go into every damn episode of this thing. 

Content warning: this series contained jokes about Homophobia, Sucicide, Gay Conversion “Therapy”,  HIV/AIDS, and the KKK so if any of that is a trigger for you best skip this one for your health as I need to talk about the episodes talking abotu those topics. 

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Hello all you happy people. I’m Jake, I review animation and today’s my friend, collaborator and often comissioner Kev’s Birthday! Hit it hesh!

So for the big day i’m doing a birthday review for him a proud tradition going back.. a year honestly. Last year he had me look at The Lion King a masterpiece of animation that to this day is one of the golden standards for theatrical animated films… .and this year he’s having me look at Lion King 1 and ½ which is held up as “Eh at least it dosen’t make my eyes bleed QUITE as bad as Lion King 2019″, with 2 coming next year. As you can tell I wasn’t exactly a fan but we’ll get to that later today. 

As a suplmental though in addition to his free birthday review he comissioned these two episodes of the 1995 Lion King tv series Timon and Pumbaa. I couldn’t find much on it being made but I assume the motive was what it usually is for Disney

Since Lion King is so succesful they were able to make a SECOND tv spinoff decades later and still bank on it being recognizable, releasing one right after the movie was just good sense. It did make a pivot that might seem strange thougH: unlike most disney sequel series before and after this it dosen’t follow the protagnist of said movie: While from both one of these episodes and looking at wikipedia, Simba is still around, he’s a supporting character, there to pal around with his gay dads or show up if the plot needs him. My guess is they both wanted to promote popular characters and wanted the show to stand out more, have it be more of a slapstick comedy with adventure elements than another “Protaganist goes on more adventures show” like aladdin. Let it stand on it’s own.

And honestly that was the right approach: Part of what makes Lion King so special is the fluid, lush animation that mimics animals, something that would be near impossible on a 90′s tv budget. So rather than go for realisim except where needed like in the faces, the series just decided to do some slapstick looney tunes shenanigans and the results are decent. It isn’t a series i’ll probably go out of my way to watch again any time soon, these episodes are fine but nothing really grabbing, but it’s still in the spirit of the lion king, including using obscure animals among the more famous ones as we’ll see, while being it’s own fun thing. 

As for why these ones, these episodes present their own version of Timon and Pumbaa’s past, one diffrent from what we’d see in Lion King 1 and ½, which again i’ll get too soon enough. So Kev thought i’d be fun to see how they stack up. The short answer, better but it’s hard to get a lower bar than the movie. The long answer… well come with me. 

                                                      Once Upon a Timon

So these episodes are notable as their the only two parters in the series… which really translates to being half hour episodes. I get it for this one as it covers Timon’s backstory and how he and Pumbaa met, a story well worth covering in general especially in a spinoff focusing on the characters. The next one..  eh kinda but we’ll get to that. 

The framing device here is also geninely clever. Zazu comes to Rafiki for some help: See he has records for the rest of the kingdom.. on paper. 

 Again you have to remember that instead of running on “sorta realistic but their also cartoon animals” like the film, this runs on Looney Tunes whatever’s funniest rules, and the fact Zazu somehow either found paper for this or had to go buy it from the Pride Rock Office Depot gets a chuckle out of me. 

The problem is he has no record of Simba’s dad or where Timon in paticular actually COMES from and feels he has to as while he dosen’t like them, Simbaa does, and thus having no record of one of the king’s dad’s past is a bit of a sore spot. So Rafiki agrees to tell him.

As for Timon’s backstory it’s oddly similar to what he’ll get in ½: he grew up in a regimented Merkat Colony and hated it there> The diffrence is why: In ½ it’s because it’s montony, esentially living to surviive rathe than anyone even trying to do SOMETHING diffrent. Here it’s more futurama pilot rules: your given a roll for life and if it sucks well sucks to be you your stuck with it. 

Where it differs is that the Merkat Colony in ½.. is an actual Lemur Colony in structure and for all that films problems, I can give them having the Lemurs function like Lemurs. The colony here. .is a city with a duke in charge, because they wanted to have a princess in there too, or “Duke’s Daughter” but she wears a crown and lives in a tower and it’s disney so Princess is what i’m going with. 
It’s.. eh. I”ve seen this sort of thing a dozen times and this does nothing fresh with it and i’d be less annoyed by this if the entire first part wasn’t spent here. 
If your going to make me spend time in a setting then do something neat with it, don’t just give me “generic medevil setting but it also has cars because shut up”

Anyways Timon is a guard for the back gate of the Colony until one day the Duke is away nad Timon’s stupid idiot friend tells him to leave it unguarded and go try and woo a lady instead. Keep this jackass in mind, we’ll get to him again in a second. 

So Timon stupidly goes for it, and while he’s getting ready a Big Ole Snake gets through the back gates, a Cobra to be precise which means to the lemurs

Which is clever… but also leads to a problem as how the fuck was Timon supposed to do anything? How would he have even had time to warn anyone before they could do anything? It would’ve ate him alive. The most he could’ve done would’ve been to shout CHOKE ON EM as the snake devoured his organs. Him abandoning his post IS bad and is entirley his fault: he didn’t have to listen to not-matthew lillard and do this. But they never acknowledge there was nothing he coudl’ve done and just scapegoat him instead of you know, sending him after the snake or something useful. 

Also the real merkat shady.. fucking books it when the snake arrives at the palace. And unlike Timon, he COULD’ve done something. Screamed, shouted a warning, shouted for the princess to run before the snake got in there. But he fucking booked it. And you know what punishment he gets?

Yeah while this isn’t a terrible two parter as a whole, the first part.. really isn’t that good, relying on a ton of contrivance and cliche to get Timon there> And we haven’t even gotten to Snakey Boy kidnapping the princess.

Yup no explination for why he dosen’t just.. snack on every lemur in the colony or takes just one. And as for what he does.. he just puts her in his magma filled lair he has because 

So Timon is banshed and the Lemurs.. do nothing to go get the princess. Also Blonde Guy again escapes consequences despite being just as derlict of duty as timon, having told Timon to ditch his duty, and having contributed nothing

So part 2 has Zazu invested which itself is really funny. Btw none of the original vas bar Pumbaa returned full time for the series. Nathan Lane did a few early episodes, but that’s it. Though like with house of mouse the va is so good, I can’t really notice the diffrence, as is the case for most of them, so it’s fine. Bafflingly most of the cast comes back for 1 and ½. 

So Timon wonders and meets Pumbaa and their meeting.. is eaisly the best part of the episode> Timon is scared of the big giant being but finds out he also eats bugs and hilaroiusly despite really bonding.. the two end up just deciding to seperate.. only to LITERALLY crash into each other. Pumbaa was banished for the same reasons as the movie: Fart Jokes. So they team up and it’s geninely endearing and cute as you’ dexpect. remember this as 1 and ½… dosen’t handle this quite as smoothly. But it’s well done. 

The rest of the episode is exactly what you’d expect: Our heroes find the snake’s lair, and Timon convinces Pumbaa to rescue her, they fight a snake in a lava lair because they got creative NOW instead of.. any othe rtime in the episode, and Timon goes back a hero.. but decides to leave it because they won’t let pumbaa say because this is a prequel. 

This episode.. was eh. It’s a pretty paint by numbers origin, only getting creative in the duo actually meeting. It’s still better than parts of that OTHER origin.. but it’s nothing really special or unique. It’s just your standard hero gets cast out, finds a friend and chooses friend over people who cast him out narrative. Ther’es no chemistry iwth Timon and Princess Tatina, and outside of one or two good jokes it’s just sorta.. there. It’s still better than that other origin, but only by comparsion. 

                                                Home is Where The Hog Is

Sadly the episode really dosen’t get into Pumbaa’s history. It just repeats what we know: he left because he had bad gas. It’s more fart jokes instead of really reflecting on what he left behind or Shalla, his ex and the current head hog who enlists his help. It’s just another love intrest to give our heroes a case of the not gays rather than really adding anything. Timon’s story was basic as it gets, but it at least showed he gave up a LOT for his friend. Pumbaa is just turning it down ebcause he has everythign already.. and Shalla needs noseplugs. It’s something both this show and the later film miss: sure we got part of Pumbaa’s backstory form the movie unlike Timon but we don’t know what impact that had on him other than “Farty Hog Feel Bad”

Still the jokes are decent enough and Pumbaa’s solution, brin ga back of firecrackers which fry up the birds, and have his tribe take the real bug stash to escape, is clever. It’s an okay episode it’s just not a ton to talk about.

Overall these eps were okay. Not something i’d come back to but they do a decent job of going into Timon and Pumbaa’s origins. Now let’s see what hte oppiste of that is in a bit as I take on Lion King 1 and ½. Thanks for reading. 

Saludos amgios and welcome to the final sprint of THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS. If your wondering if this is a bit soon.. that’s because it is. While I planned to do the episodes as is before.. this bottom half of the series so far has been so good I couldn’t bare waiting days to get to the next episode just as things are getting really good, especially after the last episode’s cliffhanger. So today, I intend to FINISH the series, with an epilogue next week for my look at the cabs as a whole via a top 12 moments list. Plus i’m already excited for the next retrospective, so there’s that. And yeah Kev’s funding ANOTHER one and you can too.. serioulsy just shoot me an ask for any solo episode or arc you wan’t covered. But now’s not the time for shameless plugs, it’s the time for adventure and to sew up a cliffhanger! So come with me after the cut for some ghouls, ghosts and arthur won’t you?

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Ahoy lubbers and welcome to Pirate Month, a whole month of pirate themed reviews on this fine ship of a blog. I”m your captain jake and starting us off is a weird one.. well by darkwing duck standards.. by my blog’s standards..

IT barely reaches the top 20. And I didn’t even get a photo for the “pants sundae” from austin and ally.. mostly because I don’t want to end up on some form of watchlist for doing my job. 

So reviewing an episode where for no reasons other than the creators thought it would kick ass, which it did so.. touche, we go to the past/some form of pirate au where Pirate Era verisons of Team Darkwing, Gizmoduck and Stegmutt battle pirate era versions of the Fearsome Five. Why is there suddenly a lineage of darkwings? Is this canon? How do all the villians exist in this timeline when most of their origins should be impossible? why does negaduck have a 14 year old’s mustache? 

None of this is really explained. We just get a narration of darkwing leading us in and we’re off. So you’d think just plunking us in to Launchpad’s Pirate AU Darkwing Fanfiction wouldn’t work.. but it does. As I oft have to remind myself Darkwing Duck.. is not a very continuity driven show. Even putting the episode order that i’m convinced is really the sacred text of some elder god designed to drive mortals to madness, while it HAS continuity, the main goal is always jokes. 
It’s a comedy first, and an action show second and while it delivers on both, it’s mostly there to deliver a good episode. So if they want to take a break and just.. plop the characters in pirate times and make a swashbuckling, more dapper version of darkwing. Why the fuck not? As I said it works

This is a solid episode> Admitely there’s not a ton to talk about: character wise the characters are almost all 1:1: The five are their usual selves and resent their boss but are too scard of him, Negaduck is unhinged and resents his arch, Launchpad is stupid but loyal, Gosalyn is still gosalyn… it’’s mostly the same. 
But it works since w eknow the characters well and it’s more about having fun with the premise than really spotliting the sheer amount of characters in this. 
They also DO have a lot of fun with Gizmoduck,w ho still acts like a chivlarous superhero with darkwing frustratedly having to remind the dipstick he’s a pirate and i’ts okay not to play fair or announce what your doing. 

Drake is the only real diffrence. In civies instead of being the same he’s servile, working for King Muddlefoot.. who is in the episode at th ebeigning nad end. Also why Drake needs a cover id when just being darkwing full time would make more since here, I don’t know. It’s the one part of the episode that dosen’t make no sense in the fun way. IT’s just dumb. But as the Darkwing Dubloon, he has darkwings ego, but also a touch of class, speaking a bit more posh and heroic, but still being himself. It’s a ncie little touch as it makes drake fit the pirate fiction drama a bit better. Also a touch our flag means death which I REALLY need to watch. I’ve only seen the trailer. I”m dumb, we’ve established this. You’ve seen what I cover. WOuldn’t change it for the world. 

Really the episodes strength is the clever back and forth as Dubloon tries to rob the fearsome five and they try to rob him back with the treasure going back and forth. It’s why I don’t have a ton to say this go round even if the episode is really good: it’s really just a fun game of cat and mouse, basically looney tunes but with more pirates and superheroes. It knows i’ts just a silly, one off au episode and decides to just have fun instead of trying to dive deeper into characters, or at least versions of the characters, we don’t see again. It’s a really fun episode I highly recommend and a great way to kick things off. 

Ho ho ho all you happy people! I’m Jake I review stuff and my blog’s christmas slurry continues with some brocolli, celery, it’s gotta be VeggieTales, courtsey of my good friend Emma. 

For those who don’t know what the heck this is, VeggieTales was a series of religious direct to video specials for kids done from the 90′s to the mid 2010′s starring antromoprhic vegtables, as the simple shapes needed for that were a god send to early 90′s cg. The franchise still persists today, having both had a mediocre and mildly terrifying netflix show and currently a show on an obscure christian streaming service. Despite wearing i’ts secular nature on it’s sleeves (several specails were outright remakes of bible stories and god is mentioned in every episode but never appears, like their version of Norm’s Wife from Cheers), the series blew up in popularity with kids of all kinds. 

Like many kids I grew up with these, or at least the earlier ones, and loved them dearly, not even realizing they were relegious despite obvious evidence till I was an adult. The show just had pure charm, with great voice acting, fun characters, and a wonderfully silly sense of humor. These 50 specials are a classic for a reason and these characters have lasted this long for much the same reason. 

SO naturally I was happy to cover this for Emma on comission. The result… was easily the thing that pushed my sanity closest to the brink in a year where i’ve had to deal with covid restrictions returning because people are stupid, a disaasterious trip to denver i’d rather not get into, final space and infinity train both getting canceled while owl house had its third season cut to ribbons because “it wasn’t disney content” aka “because it’s very gay and I know we can’t say that but we can certainly imply it”, and a general sense of doom and gloom that while not as bad as last year wasn’t great.. and this was the thing to nearly push me over the edge of insanity. 

See you might think with that leadup this means the special is bad. It’s not. It’s not the shows best, but it’s not half bad. What it is however.. is crazy town banana pants. This may be one of the most batshit things i’ve reviewed on this blog. And in my two or so years doing this i’ve seen Santa untietoinally let his family die because he dosen’t know how doors work, a man who makes golems out of his skin flakes watch two women wrestle in oil, Pinoccio somehow be part of the Donald Duck universe because fuck off, Scrooge McDuck BUY AN ENTIRE ISLAND JUST TO TEACH HIS NEPHEW A LESSON, and whatever the fuck this is. 

But this my friends takes the case for sheer batshit insanity. This my friends is the Christmas Star and trust me, your going to want to unwrap this one with me under the cut. This.. this is a trip. 

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