For the two and a half people who care — remember I said this would take me far beyond October? Little did I know that work would stick me on almost TWO MONTHS of twelve hour days. Things already low on my list of priorities got kicked off entirely. But I managed to squirt a little something out in the meantime.
This idea seemed, well, good. It wrote itself. Pity it couldn’t be executed a little better. Maybe somewhere down the line, when it’s not so rushed.
I haven’t posted to this blog in some time — more on that in a future post, although I doubt many are on the edge of their seats about it. For now, I’m interested in playing about with Inktober, combining Animaniacs characters with a lazy old Halloween monster theme. October, see? This will probably take me long beyond October, but hey, it’s content. Remember content? You probably saw it on some other blog.
Finally, the thing I promised with ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ back in — August. Shoot! Fun fact: the idea of this popped into my head long before I heard that Slappy — and 90% of the other characters — were cut from the reboot. It still works, it just changes up who was rejected first.
That’ll do it for the snark, for now. We’re back to the reviews next time, but we won’t leave Slappy behind.
NEXT: Enough with the singin’, already!
I still have to get around to the next episode review that I planned months ago. Events happened. In the meantime here’s more idle nitpicking and fun poking.
— but I’m not dead. Neither is she.
After the Newsreel of the Stars and the regular intro — that I thought were one and the same, back then — the episode begins with one of the most well-remembered segments in the series: the Yakko’s World song.
Here, Rob Paulsen — Yakko’s voice actor — sings the names of the majority of the world’s countries, as they were in the early 1990s, to the tune of Jarabe tapatío, the Mexican Hat Song. And that’s it. But that doesn’t do it justice, not by a long shot. Youtube to the rescue.
It’s really impressive in how quick it is, how Rob trips so many complicated names off the tongue. Even if reading off a page, it’s excellent. I can only imagine what kind of practise and rehearsal went into it. If I recall, I picked up on one of the Animanicast episodes that it was a song that predated Animaniacs — written by Rob? Randy Rogel? — so I guess it didn’t need too much.
There are mistakes in this list of nations. Too many for me to care. See the Animaniacs wiki if you want to check them out. It doesn’t really matter. This is a treat to open the show with, though some little thing in the back of my head didn’t completely trust it. It felt like it was trying to sneak education in under the cover of fun —
This segment opens in Bern, Switzerland in 1905. Our first hint that the Warner sibs will travel throughout time and space to bother historical figures, like a latter-day Bill and Ted. The Warners are there to sell ‘Kid Scout’ cookies, the exposition given in a personal little jingle that concludes with Wakko going off on a yodelling fit that would have turned into a Cab Calloway impression if it went on for another ten seconds. But at that moment a visual gag wanders past.
Surprisingly, it’s Yakko who calls Wakko to heel. The Swiss Miss is an obvious reference to the hot chocolate brand but a part of me, just for a second, wondered if the Marx Brothers influence on the three Warners had wavered a little, and the opening of Cookies for Einstein was a small nod to the 1938 Laurel and Hardy film ‘Swiss Miss’. A story in which Stan and Ollie visit Switzerland, selling mousetraps door to door.
There’s one last house to sell to, and the name on the mailbox is Albert Einstein, who’s currently racking his brains to figure out the theory of relativity. He’s throwing — stuff — at the board to see what sticks.
Einstein’s interrupted by the Warners at his door, who mistake his rant about ‘black holes’ for blackheads’ and assume he’s a dermatologist. This is played with during the segment and here and now, gives the idea that Einstein is going to get the same treatment as the P-sychiatrist, Doctor Scratchansnif, from episode one. It also gives a good grossout snigger at Einstein being offered Wakko’s wart. Wakko’s skin conditions don’t impress Einstein and he slams the door in the Warner’s faces. It leads to a couple of nice character moments for Dot and Yakko as the spotlight focuses on her dramatic but not entirely sincere lament —
— and Yakko’s reassurance that they’ll sell Einstein cookies or die trying.
As in De-Zanitized — relentlessly cheerful.
Now for more cartoon antics. While Einstein is measuring the speed of light (“Boy, that’s quick!”) the Warners appear in his house, out of thin air, in the grand Looney Tunes tradition. They do this a couple of times but somehow the first time, when Einstein swings his chalkboard around, tickles me the most. Speed it up and it’s almost a jump scare.
Not to mention bamboozling him out of his own home.
The Warners step up the sales pitch. There’s a moment where Einstein’s offered a free chia pet, that feels like it’s meant to be a joke but it’s hard to say how. It’s forgotten by the time the great pocket fisherman gag plays out. From literal interpretation to toilet humor before you can blink.
Einstein breaks down, and the Warners finally take pity on him, pulling him into their mutual support group as they recite the ACME song. Yakko spells the letters on Einstein’s chalkboard, and Wakko picks up with his verse, writing them backwards — EMCA.
It sparks something in Einstein. Shakingly, feverishly, he reaches out with the chalk and draws an equals sign in among Wakko’s letters, and the A that looks like a 2. E=MC2!
It’s Einstein’s triumphant moment, and we quickly segue to his receiving of the Nobel Prize for Physics, graciously shared with the Warner siblings.
And with that, another reminder that what goes on in the heads of these kids, their wants and obsessions, are happily askew.
What to think of this segment? It’s good. It’s not great, but it’s good. All the Warners and Einstein get their moments and most of the jokes and gags land. It almost feels like a breather, maintaining the rush of the first episode before we dive into the rest of the series. TMS is almost restrained in their animation compared to their other work for Animaniacs, though some sequences shine through. In places the Warners’ proportions and features make them look especially young, but that’s nothing compared to the design of Einstein used in this segment. The big, round head represents his intelligence, but the characters face, proportions and coiffured hair might have more in common with, say, Mindy, than Einstein. I think the segment itself drives it home when it recreates the famous ‘tongue’ photo!
Also, different Animaniacs fan media point out how E=MC2 isn’t the theory of relativity, but the mass-energy equation. But they don’t point out what the theory of relativity is. Well here’s what the Warners helped Kid Einstein to discover —
The first segment that focuses on characters other than the Warners. We saw Pinky and the Brain in the first episode, twice. We know they ‘want to rule the universe’, now we find out how they aim to go about it.
The Brain tries to rope Pinky into a scheme for world domination, but Pinky is too distracted watching The Honeymooners on the lab TV. Brain isn’t impressed, but his voice doesn’t rise much above a steady monotone, even when threatening Pinky with violent punishment.
It’s a deadpan Orson Welles impression given to the character by voice actor Maurice LaMarche, and it adds a lot of humor, here and down the line — especially contrasted with Pinky’s gawky, manic tones, provided by Rob ‘Yakko’ Paulsen.
Brain manages to make Pinky concentrate, for a while at least, as he lays out his plan. And it’s a ridiculous, crazy, Rube-Goldberg, Bond-villain plot. He’ll use a ‘superconductive magnetic infindibulator’ to create a magnetic charge from the center of the earth and cause everyone to be stuck to the ground by the loose change in their pocket.
It’s brilliantly stupid, and the absurd ideas and situations keep piling on. Pinky picks out the one flaw he can see (“No, wait. What if they take off their pants?”), which is one more than the Brain anticipated. They need an infindibulator but can only source one from the Farmer’s Almanac, and even then it’s not the device itself but the plans to build one.
I think it takes a second or third view for all this to sink in. It piles up like a David Zucker film, almost too quick to notice, and we’re far from done. The duo wonder how they can raise the funds, being lab mice and all, and Brain is inspired by the TV that Pinky left on. He realises that someone could win $99,000 by answering every question correctly on the game show ‘Gyp-Parody’.
Brain prepares a disguise to enter the show, and it slots nicely into the unfolding farce. It’s a robot body in the shape of an enormous suited man, complete with bowtie, and Brain’s own (relatively) small mouse head peers out of the cockpit at the very top. It’s a funny image.
I wonder how the reboot would play with that?
Pinky and the Brain arrive at the TV studio in this contraption and Brain proceeds to thrash the other contestants.
He soon wins the $49,500 that he can double in Final Gyp-Parody. Brain needs to give just one more correct answer — in the form of a question — and he’s won the $99,000. But who is known for saying “Bang, zoom, right in the kisser”?
It’s Ralph Kramden of course, from The Honeymooners, the show that Brain tried his level best to ignore for the whole segment. He can’t answer and loses every cent he won up to that point. Back at the lab, his sense of dejection fairly flows out of the screen.
But he can’t mope around forever. He has to prepare for tomorrow night —
Others have said how Pinky and the Brain seemed to spring fully-formed onto the screen, with few changes, and just worked. It’s difficult to disagree when the formula carried them onto not one but two spin-off shows. Forget the Hip Hippos, this pair were the real breakout stars of the show. The simple premise that could be endlessly played with, the character designs, the catchphrases — “The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!” and “Are you pondering what I’m pondering?” — with the bizarre non-sequitur responses (“I think so Brain, but where are we going to get a duck and a hose at this hour?”) — and the classic interplay between the dummy and the dummy who thinks he’s smart.
Hard to say how it wouldn’t work.
This first segment didn’t just have its own mini-intro, as most of the other characters would have, but two. This first segment features the version animated by Wang, who would handle most of the Pinky and the Brain segments. The version used later, and more often, was animated by TMS. The difference is notable, especially when you’re expecting the latter, and not just because the Warners show up ‘in person’ to present the pair of lab mice in the Wang version. Brain’s mouth movements in particular seem a little sloppy, in comparison, but it ruins nothing.
Knowing a bit more about how episodes of Animaniacs were put together, The Wheel of Morality begins to feel a little like filler. But that’s selling it short. A lot of cartoons came with miniature PSAs tacked onto the end, and even Tiny Toons had its share of ‘very special episodes’, so when Yakko summoned the Wheel of Morality with a phony sense of reverence and landed on random life lessons, I got what it was trying to lampoon from the get-go. I loved it for that alone, and it only got better with the snarky and nonsensical morals that writer Mark Sweeney provided.
For this first bit, “if at first you don’t succeed, blame it on your parents.” Nice. It’s a 90s sort of reference, makes me think of an episode of Seinfeld or Friends. It’s still pretty relevant today, though I think it could use an update for 2020.
Also, I get a little chuckle out of the green section of the wheel. ‘Morally bankrupt’.
NOW I GET IT
Hello Nice Warners and the Animanicast inform us that Win Big is based on the Honeymooners episode ‘The $99000.00 Answer’, where Ralph is annoyed by Ed playing ‘Swannee River’ on the piano, which ends up being the answer to the question he’s asked on a big-stakes game show. It explains the Ralph Kramden references in the segment! I’m not sure how it makes me feel about Win Big — homage or rip-off? It takes away some of the feel of originality, but I think it’s still held up by the peculiarities of the characters and their situation. It’s still Pinky and the Brain.
It’s also the only episode of The Honeymooners I’ve watched, via Youtube.
Also, after putting together some images for this blog post, I feel a brand new respect for the background artists on this show.
A THOUSAND WORDS
Case in point, look at that cartoon Bern. Ain’t that nice?
A shot of the Warners and their synchronised yodelling, all lined up as they swing about the screen.
These feel like in-jokes in the Farmer’s Almanac, but I don’t get them.
And a shot that demonstrates the Brain’s pomposity, that soon comes back to bite him. Pinky pops out of the robot suit’s pocket while Brain plays Gyp-Parody, cheering him on. There’s not a word from Brain, barely even an acknowledgement, just a quick flick at his poor sidekick’s head.
NEXT: don’t call us, we’ll call you.
When I heard about the 2020 reboot of Animaniacs, and that none of the original crew were called to work on it, I thought — what’s the idea? What kind of showrunner are they going to choose?
The episode kicks off with a kind of prologue, the ‘Newsreel of the Stars’, setting the period of the Warner sibling’ first appearance. Partly by stating it outright — the year 1930 — and also by showing a selection of famous actors and films from the black and white era. Every other Animaniacs blog and cast, like the Animaniacs References Guide, lists these already, so I won’t bother. Let’s have a little game in the comments, naming them off the top of the head.
The Animaniacs References Guide gives these as, starting from top left, clockwise — Ray Katz, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Henry Binder. The last guy is usually given as Leon Schlesinger, owner and boss of the studio until sold to Warner Bros. in 1944. This guy with the long, narrow face is Schlesinger? I can’t see it. He looked more like Jeff Garlin in a previous life.
We zoom in on one of the artists, who’s much more clearly Tex Avery, whipping up drawings of three characters in the classic, black-and-white, rubber-hose style. The Warner Brothers and their sister, Dot! They promptly jump off the page and into the arms of ‘Tex’ and the studio nurse, and — this surprised me on the rewatch — their very first words are ‘Hello Nurse’!
By the by, there’s a picture of Hamton Pig from Tiny Toon Adventures tucked into the side. Everyone notices it. It’s nothing big, but it’s a nice little reference to the older show. It’s almost like passing the torch.
The Warners run wild, too zany for anyone to take. The animators abandon Termite Terrace, and pretty soon everyone on the Warner lot is running in terror. Besides Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and others, here’s where you get to see some more famous faces flitting past. Little ‘blink and you miss it’ references, occasionally put into quick pans and crowd scenes.
The Warners are quickly captured by the first character imported from Tiny Toon Adventures, Ralph the guard. Their films are locked away and they themselves are sealed away in that now-familiar water tower, like radioactive waste. Things are quiet until the ‘present day’, when scientists have discovered nuclear fission and trans fats and color, the episode proper begins with the Warners’ escape, and suddenly it’s time for Animaniacs.
The intro is a riot of up-tempo cuts and wipes, set to series composer Richard Stone’s energetic score, sharply animated by series favourite studio Tokyo Movie Shinsha. TMS Entertainment Ltd. today. Even so it follows a clear procession: introducing the show and its basic theme (with a very 90s ‘zany to the max’); inviting the viewer to watch; running down a montage of the main cast and their schtick; more nuttiness; and a big ensemble shot to finish.
That’s pretty complete, although there are some characters here who barely turn up in the show, and some absent that arguably should have featured.
Overall the theme is more or less in the vein of the Tiny Toon Adventures intro. The shared line about missing scripts jumps out, for some reason. It’s not a problem, it helps establish one show as the studio’s successor to the other. A signal that ‘this is like Tiny Toons, but more so’.
Onto the first segment, De-Zanitized.
Just as an aside, I kind of miss the old-fashioned, painted title cards, made especially for each segment of Tiny Toons. I wonder if Bruce Timm took the idea with him from that show to Batman. The title cards for Animaniacs aren’t bad, and it in no way spoils the show. Its just — something.
The segment starts with the Doctor Scratchansnif the psychiatrist, hunched up on a psychiatrist’s couch. Something bad must have happened to land him there. A not yet familiar voice from the nearby chair invites him to proceed and we get a quick flashback of his professional life to the present. Going by the long row of pictures, featuring Scratchy hobnobbing with film stars, he must have been the Warner studio’s psychiatrist for a long time. We catch up to him after one tough session with Clint Eastwood, which must have been a breeze compared to what comes after, and he’s drawn to the window by the chaos of the Warners’ escape from the water tower. They zip right up to his office, and with Scratchansnif as a proxy, we meet the trio and get another piece of the puzzle of what they’re like. They’re very much cartoon characters, defiantly cheerful, off-kilter, able to pull props out of thin air. Already they drive Scratchy to distraction. He calls for the nurse to take them away, and we meet the next member of the studio to be lined up against the Warners: Jessica Rabbit with a peroxide ‘do, the character with a catcall for a name, Hello Nurse.
The point of her character isn’t difficult to figure out. Yakko and Wakko are under her spell immediately, fantasizing about whisking her away and floating after her in daydreams of desire. This is neatly skewered by Dot’s plodding walk and her expressions as she weighs up her options. It always gets a laugh out of me.
On to meet the chairman of the studio board, Thaddeus Plotz, who’s summoned Doctor Scratchansnif. In my opinion this character introduction is very well handled — his control of the huge drapes, cutting off the outside world; his phony smile; and the emphasis of his short size as this little Napoleon marches, plotzing, along the table. Very economical and succinct. Sharp, Mr. Rugg.
Plotz sends Scratchy back to fix the Warners. Hello Nurse brings the brothers, still delirious, into his office, and Dot gives her first resigned response to their besotted behaviour: “Boys!”
But it’s back to business of de-zanitizing the Warners. We get another look into their heads — they love wordplay and take everything literally. Taking all the umbrage. Taking offence — a fence. They plant themselves on the couch. (What’s the difference between a joke and a gag, anyway?) They get down — to business —
Hold on. They made the Warners rap, right there in the first episode. Who noticed?
In desperation Scratchy splits them up, to handle them one-on-one. In talking to the Animanicast crew in podcast 150, Tom Ruegger stated that this was a great introduction to each Warner sibling, how they each defy ‘normality’ in the shape of the psychiatrist, to define their individual personalities. He’s not wrong. Dot runs the gamut of honesty from sweet childlike innocence to acid-tongued put-downs. Wakko is in a world of his own with a very literal interpretation of things and a big emphasis on physical gags. Yakko has all the S’s — sardonic, sarcastic, subversive and sly. Altogether they drive Scratchy mad to the point that he pulls out all his hair, leaving him with the shiny, bald bulb that we know him for. Also to the point that he ended up on the psychiatrist’s couch himself.
We leave the flashback, returning to Scratchy pouring out his woes, and suddenly the voice of Rob Paulsen coming from the chair is quite a bit more recognizable. He’s been psychoanalyzed by the Warners the whole time. The shock catapults him to Mars. And done.
Adapted for Doctor Scratchansnif/Rob Paulsen by Tom Ruegger, from ‘Monkey’, sung by Harry Belafonte. Listen to the original. It’s a great tune. But then you know that already, don’t you?
In the song, Harry Belafonte is plagued by a crazy monkey who turns up out of nowhere and upsets his life. It’s near-perfect for describing Scratchansnif’s situation with the Warners, and Tom does a great job inserting goofy and surreal situations into this adaptation. ‘They shaved my head with minty toothpaste’ and ‘they put buggies in my underpants’ stand out in my mind. Other Animaniacs songs might be more memorable to fans, but I think the sheer bounce and, dare I say it, zaniness of this one, makes it a great choice as the first one to be broadcast.
Another reason for its inclusion in the first half-hour, is that it features a lot of the other Animaniacs cast running around in the background, giving hints of what they’re about. Buttons chasing Mindy, Slappy tormenting the Mime, and so on. Some characters get more focus — the Goodfeathers are shown first and even get a little dialogue as Pesto’s temper snaps and he beats up Squit. A sample of Pinky and the Brain’s theme intrudes on the music as they tramp past, plans very visibly defeated. Even the Hip Hippos get a few words from the original song as they ‘play that thing’, cheerful and oblivious. Also a space alongside the Warners at the end of the song. There’s a little bit of insight into this from Animanicast 73a, where series writer John McCann reveals that the Hip Hippos were predicted to be the first breakout characters of the show, and backed by Steven Spielberg himself. Strange how things turn out.
A parody of the children’s story book ‘Goodnight Moon’, narrated by Jim Cummings. He uses something close to his Winnie the Pooh voice here, but if you’ve seen a cartoon made sometime in the last five decades, chances are he’s been in it. The segment is also a last quick whistle-stop tour of some of the Animaniacs characters. Some get their first spoken words here: Ralph (In Animaniacs anyway), Slappy, Pinky and the Brain. But the standout for me was the second import from Tiny Toons — a weird, off the wall product of Sherri Stoner’s imagination that really cemented the idea that this show was going to be alright.
Summing it all up? It’s a wild ride of an episode. Again, Tom Ruegger in Animanicast 150 has said that segments were divided up between episodes, and that they had thirty half-hours of episodes ready to go at the start of broadcast. It’s difficult to think what better segments they could have used for this first shot, to introduce a wide range of their characters, and especially the Warner siblings, to the world. Perhaps De-Zanitized could have been placed as a kind of prequel somewhere down the line, but it slots in almost perfectly here. The episode is also reasonably heavy on Doctor Scratchansnif — you get a feel of the character and you feel for the guy, and the task that was thrust upon him. I’d also like to know who gave him that hilarious name.
There are also some things here that seem to call back to Tiny Toons. The intro, as mentioned, and the concept of cartoons coming to life and acting in films, rather than being drawn and animated. Throw in the early 20th century Hollywood setting and, frankly, the existence of Hello Nurse, I have to wonder how much the whole lot was built on the popularity of the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Spielberg’s experience on that.
I have to thank Legion1979 at the Hello Nice Warners blog for pointing out the different animation studios that worked on each segment. I noticed that the Warners (and Buster Bunny, for that matter) sometimes looked different, back then, but HNW is a real insight into who did what, and how their styles — and quality — differed.
Case in point: Freelance Animation Ltd, who worked on Nighty-Night Toon. I didn’t notice the dip in quality the first time around. I think I might have been too buzzed from the rest of the episode that came first, and Nighty-Night Toon was ‘blink and you miss it’. But yes, you can see the strangely sloppy movement, like the characters are swimming through molasses. That ‘they have to constantly slide about to prove we’re animating them’ look. I can also pick on the Goodfeathers. Once where Squit almost morphs into a refugee from a Don Bluth film:
And once where the dust cloud from the pigeons’ fight looks like a revolving card cutout, compared to The Monkey Song:
TMS animated The Monkey Song, along with the series intro and a lot of other material down the line. They’re Legion’s favourite studio for this show, and while I’d pick another, I can’t disagree that they’re technically the best, tightest animators on this show. But I can still pick on one piece of strangeness: TMS drew such extreme, U-shaped smiles on the Warners, sometimes it looked like a very elongated upper lip.
Animaniacs was known for inserting references to things and events that would fly over the heads of kids, and notorious for getting crap past the radar of the censors and studio executives. This is the category of the blog where I pick out bits and pieces that little Stan was too unschooled to get. There isn’t too much material for it yet, except for a greater appreciation of some of the names in Termite Terrace, some of the names in the credits of this show, and some of the names in Hollywood at large. Especially Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood.
Glossing over an animated sequence with a few words usually doesn’t do much justice to it, let alone any tics and subtleties it contains. Here’s where I pick out stills of instances that really tickled me, or points that I want to comment on, that don’t fit neatly into the general write-up. I might figure out animated gifs at some point, too.
Let’s start with the third animation studio that contributed to this episode — Cuckoo’s Nest Studio, also known as Wang Film Productions. They handled De-Zanitized very well but did something with Doctor Scratchansnif that I haven’t seen in any other episode of Animaniacs. At a couple of points he has prominent cheekbones that give him a skull-like appearance.
That’s nowhere near as bad as something TMS did at the beginning of The Monkey Song. When Scratchy wakes up, he leans into the camera and his face takes on a distorted, ghoulish look. It’s momentary and bizarre. I guess it’s a reference to Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, but I think it might have worked a little better if Scratchansnif had been screaming instead of singing.
I think it’s made up for by another weird, but funnier lunge towards the screen — that ‘buggies in my underpants’ moment.
And just because, I like the way these teeth are drawn.
Lastly, Legion mentioned a part of the intro where the Warners were pushed to one side by a screen wipe, but I think he had problems capturing it at the crucial point. Here you go.
Hello! Welcome to The Day The Warners Escaped, a blog about Animaniacs. I rediscovered this series not long ago and I was happily surprised by how well it aged. I’ll use this blog to say something about that, some of it in reply to two excellent resources — the Hello Nice Warners blog by ‘Legion1979’, and the Animanicast podcast hosted by Joey, Nathan and Kelly. I’ll take a quick look at the Animaniacs tie-in comic, and I’ll offer a few takes on the new reboot.
Animaniacs and associated characters are the copyright of Warner Media. Their use here is on a strictly non-commercial basis for the purposes of review and parody. Sincere thanks to Tom Ruegger and crew for bringing us these iconic characters and their crazy stories, and apologies to Tom Ruegger and crew for what I’m about to do to them.
Now click on to the first review.
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