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CARTOONS ON VIDEO
Do you know what you’re buying?
Recently a member wrote to us for advice.
He’d been bought a video entitled ‘Bugs
Bunny and Friends’. It had a picture of Bugs
on the front, and a sort of ‘Roadrunner’
landscape picture on the back together with
a list of seven cartoon titles. Of the seven,
one, Wackiki Wabbit was a Bugs Bunny
cartoon in colour from 1943, another was a
Porky Pig cartoon in black and white from
1941 and the other five black and white
cartoons came from either 1932 or 1931.
Our member felt cheated. Apart from Porky,
where were Bugs’s ‘friends’ - Elmer, Daffy,
Sylvester, Tweety, Wile E Coyote?.
In 1931 and 1932 none of these characters
had been developed and in fact the Warner
Bros studio under Leon Schlesinger was
being used at that time to put animated
pictures to songs from the Warner Bros
music catalogue. If you are a keen fan of
very early Warner Bros animation then there
may be some interest for you in these
cartoons, but at £7.99 you’ve got to be a very
keen fan. There’s another companion
cassette featuring The Case of The
Missing Hare, a Bugs Bunny cartoon from
1942 and six other titles that may not be
quite what you’re used to. Both these
cassettes are distributed by Palace, who,
according to their Press Office, when we
rang them, didn’t feel that the title ‘Bugs
Bunny and Friends’ was misleading.
You’ll also find some unusual early Warner
Bros Animation titles on two cassettes that
have been advertised in newspapers using the
catchy slogan ‘50 of your favourite classic
cartoons on VHS video for only 40p each'.
What this means is that you actually pay £9.95
(plus £2.05 p & p) each for two cassettes with
twenty five titles on each. Or you can pay
£20.00 for both, with postage and packing
included. (UK Buyers Network, 118 West
Street, Faversham, Kent ME13 7JB.
Tel: (0795) 535817). But what are you
buying? Well, you won’t get anything that
was made after the mid-1950s, and most of
the titles date from the 1940s or the late
1930s. Nothing wrong with that of course,
since one could argue that the 1940s cartoons
are some of the best. And there are lots of
different cartoon characters on both
cassettes - Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Superman,
Popeye and Casper, the Friendly Ghost to
name but six. There are examples of early,
and excellent, animation from the likes of
Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett,
plus examples of the work of other masters
Max Fleischer and Walter Lantz. Even if you
buy both cassettes to save the cost of postage
and packing, £20.00 is still a lot of money.
However, compared to the two Palace videos
mentioned above these cassettes do offer
good value. The overall quality of the titles
is much higher and, of course, with more
titles you do get a bigger range. What seems
amazing is that you can have on the market,
at the same time, such different deals.
On Volume 2 of the UK Buyers Videos
you’ll find both the main title cartoons from
the two Palace video cassettes, just sitting
side by side with twenty three other titles.
How these two Merrie Melodies (ie Warner
Bros titles) come to be marketed in such
different ways by two different companies
(neither of which is Warner Bros) is a long
and complicated tale.
Back in the 1950s Warner Bros sold off
some rights to some of their titles. These
rights have yo-yoed around between several
different companies for the last thirty years.
Many of these titles are now over 50 years
old and have entered a legal territory known
as ‘in the public domain`. lt’s not a situation
that Wamer Bros themselves are very happy
about.
'We don’t like it', said Barry Humphreys,
Marketing Director of Warners Home Video,
‘But there’s nothing we can do’. He went on
though to reveal that Warner Bros had
acquired the video rights on some of their
early titles, so they are now regaining
control over their original material.
If you are looking for the same sort of
material that we screen on Rolf’s Cartoon
Club then there’s really only one way to
guarantee that. You need to look for
cassettes that carry the Wamer Bros shield,
illustrated here, and this new logo for
‘Authentic Looney Tunes’. There are nine
videos that have been re-packed and released
this year to coincide with Bugs’s 50th
birthday. They each concentrate on one of
the major characters and feature nine
excellent cartoons, and they cost £9.99 each.
Unlike many titles issued by Disney - who
make available re-released titles for a specific
period and then withdraw them - these titles
should be on the shelves of your video shop
and for sale for as long as people want them.
So, the Rolf’s Cartoon Club advice on
buying cartoons on video is look carefully at
the packaging and the titles. If you feel you’ve
ever been misled by the information on a
video cassette sleeve, write to us and maybe
we can let others know.
BUGS BUNNY
Win the expert view!
Joe Adamson, who appears in our special
‘Rolf Meets Bugs and Friends In Hollywood’
programme as expert historian of the Warner
Bros Animation characters doesn’t look like a
history teacher and doesn’t talk or write like
one either. His latest book, Bugs Bunny -
Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare,
is the definitive book on the wascally wabbit.
The book traces Bugs’s origins in the late
1930s and then follows the developments
through the decades almost to 1990. (The
cover was designed by the director of the new
Bugs Bunny short ‘Box Office Bunny’, Darrell
van Citters). Joe’s text is never dull - he’s
talked to the people who worked with Bugs
and it’s peppered with quotes that offer a real
flavour of “Bugs Bunny - This Is Your Life!"
After the text the book’s greatest virtue is its
pictures. There are some great picture
spreads here that are reproduced at a size
and in a style that does them justice. Joe’s
book is published by Pyramid Books
(Octopus) and costs £14.95. The book was
produced for Bugs’s 50th birthday and has
sold well but, judging by previous experience,
this doesn’t mean there will be a reprint.
Our advice is, if you see it in a bookshop, buy
it now. Either that, or enter our competition.
We’ve got two copies to give away in a
competition and Joe Adamson will add a
special dedication to the winners. To win one,
this is what you have to do:- tell us, on a
postcard, who came first and second and third
out of these characters: Bugs, Daffy, Porky
Pig. If you think there were Daffy cartoons
before Bugs cartoons and Bugs before Porky
cartoons then put Daffy: 1, Bugs: 2, Porky: 3.
What’s the correct order? Send your answer,
on a postcard, to One Grey Hare Competition,
Rolf’s Cartoon Club, P.O. Box 60,
Bristol BS99 7HN.