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The most infamous TV cartoon

Sometimes a bad show becomes legendary if it’s unavailable; because nobody can see it, they’re curious about how bad it is. And so it was with Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies. After Warner Brothers stopped making theatrical cartoons, the company decided to loan out most of its cartoon characters (but not Bugs Bunny, who hadn’t been in any cartoons since 1964; I suppose he was seen as too valuable to use in limited-animation cartoons that might dilute his brand) to Filmation for a crossover special with Filmation’s “Groovie Goolies” characters. This might have been a test for whether Filmation would be called on to produce more cartoons with the WB characters, the way they handled other licensed characters. If it was a test, Filmation flunked; this was the only time until Roger Rabbit that WB loaned out its characters to another studio. You’ll soon find out why. Bad animation, bad writing, and they didn’t even get the speed of Daffy’s voice right.

But because the show is famous for being terrible, along with the fact that Warners will never allow the thing to be released commercially, people have always been interested in seeing it. And someone finally uploaded it last week. It’s in three parts, but I doubt many people will get beyond part 1.

One thing I always used to wonder as a kid was why Petunia Pig, a character I had never seen in the cartoons (she only appeared in a few black-and-white cartoons) was in so many of the licensed properties, like comic books and colouring books and so on. Of course I realized it was because these old cartoons had almost no female characters, and just having Petunia around as a sort of porcine Minnie Mouse was better than having no female characters at all. I suppose Petunia is a more canonical choice than Mary Jane from the old “Sniffles” comics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC1KnRWc8Bo

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