Here’s one of the more memorable (and better, in my opinion) Merrie Melodies segments that were featured in The Looney Tunes Show. Specifically, this one aired in the episode “Sunday Night Slice”. This was also the longest MM segment that was ever made for the show; 4 minutes. Personally, I would’ve saved a “special” number like this one for the season finale, but that’s me. Anyway, here’s “Daffy Duck the Wizard”. Enjoy.
Category Toons & Tunes
Toons & Tunes: Be Polite
Here’s another Merrie Melody from The Looney Tunes Show, this one starring Mac and Tosh, aka the Goofy Gophers. One of the highlights of TLTS for me was how Mac here was voiced by Rob Paulsen and Tosh by Jess Harnell, making it an Animaniacs reunion of sorts, as Paulsen and Harnell voiced Yakko and Wakko Warner respectively. Funny thing about this segment: when it made its’ debut appearance on Cartoon Network, a lot of people derided it for being a treacly politically correct PSA, when in fact it’s actually a parody of treacly politically correct PSAs. Subtlety, folks; not everything has to be overblown. Anyway, here’s “Be Polite”.
I’ve gotta say, while the Gophers were good, it was Marvin the Martian who sold this one for me.
Toons & Tunes: How Funky is Funky Phantom?
The late Adult Swim series Harvey Birdman, Attorney-At-Law made a career out of skewering the classic Hanna-Barbera shows and characters from the 60’s through 80’s, a little too harshly and with mixed results, some would say, but every so often a good gag managed to pop up. Here’s a bit from the show that I’ve always found amusing, in which Peanut (this show’s fun house mirror version of Birdman’s sidekick Birdboy) dares to ask Jonathan Muddlemore, aka the Funky Phantom, just what makes him so funky.
Toons & Tunes: The Ewoks/Droids Adventure Hour Intros
Today we’re forcing you to remember The Ewoks/Droids Adventure Hour, a Saturday morning cartoon series based on the popular Star Wars franchise, but taking place after Return of the Jedi, which aired on ABC from 1985 through 1987. It was that special time when the Star Wars movies had ended but George Lucas realized he could still milk this cash cow for all its’ worth by shilling it out to every other possible media (including a goshawful fighting game), SatAM included. So this is sort of both a Toons & Tunes as well as a Cartoon Couch, since most of our contemporaries have forgotten this series existed.
I won’t be doing full reviews on either show, since what I remember of both the Ewoks and Droids cartoons respectively, is that they were each a bit boring. Honestly, the best things about both shows were their opening theme songs. First up, the theme from Ewoks. This show was basically one of the many “cute, cuddly creatures living together in a community forest setting” cartoons created in the wake of NBC’s Smurfs, only set in the Star Wars universe. Give a listen:
Great, now I’m going to be hearing “E-E-E-E-Ewoks” in my head for the rest of the day. Still catchy, though.
Next up, the Droids opening. Droids was the more traditionally Star Wars-ey of the 2 shows, with R2-D2 and C3PO passing through various human masters and encountering sci-fi adventures along the way (just no appearances by any of the human characters from the movies, they’d want money for the use of their likenesses, after all) Unlike Ewoks, which boasted a single stand-alone story in each episode, the Droids episodes were each mini-serials, with the stories contained within 3 or 4-part sagas, but each ep still being a self-contained story with no cliffhanger endings. And again, the opening theme was the best thing about the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7XCe2XorcY
Droids was the slightly more ambitious of the 2 toons, so not surprisingly it was gone after a single season. The following year, only Ewoks returned as a stand-alone series entitled All-New Ewoks, with–drag!–an entirely different theme song:
Granted, this 2nd opening is more indicative of the sort of thing the Ewoks would perform (heck, it’s very similar to the some the ‘Woks were jamming to at the end of Return of the Jedi–which I’m sure was the idea), but I still like the first theme better. I don’t know much about Star Wars, but I know what earworms I like.
Neither Ewoks nor Droids set the world on fire, but trust me, there are worse Star Wars cartoons out there. Much worse.
Toons & Tunes: ChalkZone Opening and Dream A Lot of Dreams
Earlier this evening, I read a post on Toon Zone from a member discussing the Nickelodeon animated series ChalkZone. I saw the original shorts on another late Nick series Oh, Yeah! Cartoons, and a small number of episodes of the series, and I can honestly say that the best thing about (aside from E.G. Daily as the voice of Rudy) was some of the music. Below are my 2 favorite songs from ChalkZone. The first of them is the shows’ hard rockin’ opening theme:
The second is one of the music videos stuck onto the end of the episodes to fill out the running time that I just happened to stumble upon one day. When I first heard this, I was genuinely surprised by how good it was. This song is so mellow, beautiful, whimsical and pleasant that I almost believe that it was originally intended for something else but instead ended up on ChalkZone. I like this song so much, in fact, that it came a hair close to being mentioned in Nerdvana. Here’s “Dream A Lot of Dreams”.
Twin Images 
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