1990-2
**********
Pros:
Good animation, Nostalgia value
Cons:
Unfunny, Preachy
When
I was a kid, I loved this show. It was
one of the shows that I watched religiously in the early 90’s. When it came time for me to revisit these
cartoons as an adult, I found that many of them were actually better and
smarter than I remember (Batman: The
Animated Series, Talespin). Others, while not great, were still fun and
the nostalgia value was enough to make me like them (Transformers, GI Joe), so
when I Netflixed Tiny Toons, I
thought I would feel like a kid again.
Problem was…I didn’t laugh at it.
It just isn’t funny. In fact,
aside from the episode where Baby Plucky gets potty-trained, I don’t really
remember much from the show’s run I’d find funny as an adult.
This cartoon
was the first collaboration between Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. in the
Animation Renaissance of the 90’s, and it did have some production value. You can tell because the animation is very
good. The characters look good, they
move fluidly and they’re expressive. If
there’s one thing I miss about the 90’s is that we had standards in cartoon
artwork back then. Even the bad cartoons
at least looked good.
Unlike
subsequent Spielberg/Warner Bros. cartoons, such as the subversive and snarky
Animaniacs and the absurdist Freakazoid, this cartoon doesn’t really have anything
to offer in terms of humor.
 |
| Despite the show's own self-assessment. |
There’s a lot of slapstick, but not particularly funny
slapstick. Tiny Toons merely lampshades and apes classic cartoon tropes rather
than innovating in physical humor, even if some of the slapstick is well timed. Dialogue is mostly dependent on lame puns and
lame sitcom-style comebacks. Like many
lazily written shows, it is preoccupied with referential humor, and these jokes
come in three types:
-Hackneyed
references to Early 20th Century pop culture that made you hate
classic movies before you even heard of them.
The same unrecognizably exaggerated vocal impressions of actors that are
used over and over and over again.
- Obvious
references to contemporary pop culture that just seem dated in retrospect--
-References
to famous highbrow works of art “improved” with sight gags.
I
must admit, one of these references produced one of my all-time biggest
nostalgic nightmare moments. Realizing
that the existential terror of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven would be lost on younger viewers, the writers apparently
decided to scare the crap out of children by having Lenore’s ghost fly out the
grave and freaking attack them.
 |
| When I was a kid, I wished there was a Lacuna Inc. around to erase my memory of this. |
Obviously,
the show is an homage to Looney Tunes,
using its well-recognized characters as teachers in a Toon College that is
attended by characters that are younger, less interesting versions of the Looney Tunes cast. Most of them are, anyway. Buster Bunny is nothing like the nonchalant
trickster Bugs; he’s mostly just a bland protagonist who is a mouthpiece for
the creators. Babs Bunny is an impression
artist who is responsible for much of the annoying references I mentioned
above. Although these characters are not
canonically related to the Looney Tunes characters, I always surmised they were
actually their lovechildren. I’ve always
found it odd how these characters are supposed to be college-aged, and yet they
are significantly shorter than their adult counterparts. If not for the body shapes of the female
characters, I would have guessed they were prepubescent children.
Even
worse than the lame humor was the preachiness.
Tiny Toons certainly did have an agenda.
This show had at least one episode that told me to be a vegetarian, and
heaven only knows how many times it tried to manipulate me into the Church of
Environmentalism. I
remember one episode where Buster and Babs fought an evil mogul with a giant
scorpion-shaped robot that cut down trees to make wooden elevator buttons
(Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen
a wooden elevator button). Even more
baffling, the machine would make one button from every tree, and just burn the
rest of the thing (that doesn’t even make sense from a greedy straw capitalist
perspective!). Ironically, I liked the
episode as a kid, but that was only because I thought the big scorpion robot
looked cool, so yeah, good job guys.
Politics should generally be left out of children’s shows. Most of the time, a child’s parents will have
indoctrinated him or her enough so that a contrary opinion on a cartoon is just
as annoying them as it is to an adult.
Tiny
Toons did sometimes tackle serious, but uncontroversial, topics. In order to address the pressing issue of
alcohol abuse among middle class children, the show made the infamously banned
episode “One Beer,” which is unintentionally hilarious in its depiction of
alcohol. It only aired once, but I was
lucky enough to catch that show when it did.
I know that when you’re discouraging alcohol abuse to an audience that
should avoid drinking altogether, saying that alcohol isn’t evil and that it
should be treated with respect isn’t the most appropriate message, but this
cartoon took it a bit far. Buster,
Hampton and Plucky become incoherently drunk high after one sip, ONE SIP,
of beer…not hard liquor, just BEER. You
can’t help but laugh at a show for depicting alcohol as having addictive properties
that put crystal meth to shame.
 |
| Before you know it, alcohol will turn you into a homeless person. |
They
then hijack the squad car of the most incompetent policemen ever and take a joy
ride in it.
 |
| Dude, we left it a long time ago. |
They
drive past a “Road Out” sign and after an admittedly funny exchange, they crash
into the gorge below, killing themselves.
 |
| I must say, seeing them rise up to Heaven as cartoon angels detracts from the visceral impact. Just a tad. |
The
show ends with the trio taking off the angel costumes on set, revealing that
they weren’t killed off for real. This
may redeem the episode, because it may be one of the few genuinely
tongue-in-cheek moments in the show. A
group of writers made to write an anti-alcohol episode barf out a ridiculously
manipulative piece of junk and then make it a show-within-show in subtle
rebellion. After all, moral guardians
during the 90’s had this odd idea that children’s shows that did not force a
message were failing in their obligations. This episode's possible joke might be good meta-humor, but that would
seem hypocritical coming from a show that had no qualms about preaching about other
subjects. Luckily, the Spielberg/WB team
would redeem itself by satirizing this kind of pressure later on.
So
that’s Tiny Toon Adventures. I know this review will probably inspire some nasty-grams from my
peers, but this is my opinion. I won’t
say the cartoon doesn’t have its moments, but I mostly think it’s boring. It may have failed to turn me into a tree-hugging
herbivore, but the show, among many others, did feature “funny”
inflation/expansion gags all throughout.
Even as a kid, I never saw the comic value of such scenes, but I won’t
deny they had an effect on me.
 |
| I'm looking at you, too, Garfield. |
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