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Category:    Home > Reviews > Animation > Comedy > Satire > WWII Propaganda > Looney Tunes Golden Collection – Volume Six + Spotlight Collection – Volume Six (Warner Home Video)

Looney Tunes Golden Collection – Volume Six + Spotlight Collection – Volume Six (Warner Home Video)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: A/C+     Shorts: A/B

 

 

With Blu-ray here, Warner Bros. has decided to wrap up the DVD releases of their extensive sets of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts on DVD with the sixth and final releases of The Looney Tunes Golden Collection and The Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection.  You can read more about the previous releases in the series at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7722/Looney+Tunes+Golden+Collection

 

 

The final themes this time out are the WWII animated shorts, the peak of the black and white Bosko and separate Buddy shorts, an all-star disc to open the set with and a sort of one-hit wonders and other favorites disc to end the series.  Sadly, not all of my favorite shorts surfaced in this series, but many of them did and at this point, they are often looking remarkable for the DVD format.

 

If you have not heard of Bosko, you have seen him and it turns out that the character moved on to another studio, where the character and his related characters were suddenly in full color.  None of those are here, but the transfers on the black and white shorts are newer because they needed to strike new copies due to them being out of print for so long and they remain some of the best monochrome animated shorts ever made.

 

One of the highlights among the main shorts are three sponsored and co-funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to teach young people about how capitalism works, or is supposed to work.  By Word Of Mouse, Hear-Conditioned and Yankee Dood It all are very entertaining and shows how the marketplace can work through humor and gags.  They are three of my favorites and it is nice to see them finally collected in one space.

 

Warner has been putting out the money out to save and upgrade these classics and most prints look like upgrades.  The 1.33 X 1 image on the main shorts are clean, clear and detailed as a result, with the pre-1948 shorts Warner owns again from buying the Turner Entertainment catalog benefited from his efforts.  The Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono on those main shorts are good, but sometimes come up short, while oddly, some of the bonus shorts are in Dolby 2.0 Mono to their advantage.  Either way the arc of improvements over the six box sets show the increased care Warner is putting into their classic cartoons.

 

Extras are spread over the four DVDs with select commentary and isolated music/sound effects tracks and include the following.  DVD 1 adds the TV specials Bugs Bunny in King Arthur’s Court and Daffy Duck’s Easter Egg-Citemen, plus bonus shorts Boyhood Daze, Hippety Hopper, Rabbit Rampage and Sniffles Takes A Trip.  DVD 2 adds five of Friz Freleng’s MGM shorts and though they are good, they seem to be at the expense of some missing Warner classics.  You also get bonus shorts Confessions Of A Nutzy Spy, The Fighting 69˝th and Hop & Go.  DVD 3 adds a World of Leon Schlesinger Featurette Gallery including a Martha Sigall/Jerry Beck intro, Crying For The Carolinas, Haunted Gold title sequence from the live-action short and Schlesinger Productions Christmas Party with a Sigall/Beck commentary, plus bonus shorts How Do I Know It’s Sunday, I Like Mountain Music, I Love A Parade and Sittin’ on The Backyard Fence.  DVD 4 wraps things up with Mel Blanc: The Man Of A Thousand Voices and bonus shorts Bartholomew Versus The Wheel, Punch Trunk, Sleepy Time Possum and Wild Wild World.

 

This is the conclusion of the series, as meant for serious adult collectors, but the Spotlight Collection sets are child friendly and a less expensive alternative with the same quality, but we prefer the full sets.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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