Baby Looney Tunes – Tooth Fairy Tales: Volume Four
+ A Pup Named Scooby Doo: Volume Seven
(Animated TV)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Episodes: C+/C
In order
to accommodate younger infant and pre-school children, the various popular
franchises have produced very sensitive, child-friendly, child-safe and
appropriate developmental version of classic characters not going away anytime
soon. It was the great Bob Clampett who
put big heads on small bodies for some of the greatest of all Looney Tunes
characters (Sylvester Jr., Henry The Chicken Hawk, Bugs Bunny’s nephew Clyde)
and sometimes later attempts to do this (Scrappy Doo) just did not work
out. Two hit shows that have fared
better show the classic characters when they were young, albeit updated to now.
Baby Looney Tunes began in 2002 and is still
running strong offers young versions of the Warner Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodie
line-up including Babs Bunny, a belated addition (and tribute to Barbra
Streisand, who essentially played a female Bugs Bunny in Peter Bogdanovich’s
1972 hit What’s Up Doc?) and A Pup Named Scooby Doo: Volume Seven is
the latest of the DVDs from the three season of that older show (1988 – 1991)
that produced its share of shows and may be running out of old shows to pull
from.
Both
shows are fine, but Hanna Barbera, then Turner, then Warner allowed the Scooby
Doo franchise to become too stale and formulaic to its detriment. This show may be the last good show that has
been produced from it before the horrid live action features ruined things for
cheap and even sick jokes. Baby Looney Tunes has lasted longer
simply because there is so much more to do with the characters and that it has
outlived Muppet Babies is impressive.
Both disc are fine for children of all ages and are being released at
the same time by Warner.
The 1.33
X 1 image on both look good and colorful, with Scooby Doo being a bit softer, barely saved by its consistent
color. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Scooby Doo and 2.0 Stereo on Baby are also fine for simple
soundtracks, though Baby has cleaner
and warmer sound. Baby has a trailer for this Scooby
Doo volume, BBC Kids and a new Looney
Tunes video game that looks interesting, while Scooby Doo repeats the video game ad, then ads trailers for Tweety’s High Flying Adventure, What’s New Scooby Doo? V.2 and Charlie & Lola V. 4 from the BBC.
- Nicholas Sheffo
