Cartoons may or may not have been made just for kids, but one thing is for certain. Cartoons have made an everlasting impression on all people both young and old. Some cartoons fade into obscurity quickly while others stand the test of time. We're going to be starting a series of some of the most famous and arguably most important cartoons of all time. Bugs Bunny has been a cartoon character seen not only on the cartoons but in commercials for a number of products. Bugs has become a household name and an American institution. Bugs Bunny was originally created in 1939, but it wasn't until 1940 when he took on a new voice in the person of Mel Blanc that Bugs became the character that we have grown to love. The truth is, nobody really knows who created Bugs Bunny. Speculation is that he was created by a number of people. Bugs did go on to become the first Warner Brothers cartoon and to this day, still the most popular. Speculation is that the character of Bugs Bunny was created to mimic the real life person of Groucho Marx. This may or may not be true, but there is a definite similarity between the two. Bugs was a rather devilish character. He'd always manage to get everyone around him into all kinds of trouble while avoiding the same. He was the cartoon character's con man and escape artist. No matter how tough a spot he was in he always found a way out of it. Kind of like a Superman without the super powers. And oh, the targets of his conniving. Bugs had a host of characters to play off, all of which were just as important in cementing the Bugs Bunny legacy as Bugs himself. Probably the most famous and the one who Bugs got the best of was Elmer Fudd. Poor Elmer. All this man wanted to do was hunt, as he would say, "wabbits". Mel Blanc brought such wonderful life to this character with his garbled speech and dumb sound. Fudd was indeed what we call "bumfuzzled" or simply confused. No matter what trap he set for Bugs, the rascally rabbit was always able to weasel his way out of it. Then there was Daffy Duck. Daffy was the wise guy kid and class clown who you both hated and loved in high school. Poor Daffy was also many times the victim of Bugs' schemes. In one very memorable cartoon, Fudd was hunting rabbits and while Bugs and Daffy were together, Bugs managed to convince poor old Elmer that it was duck season. So instead of shooting Bugs, he'd shoot Daffy. And of course the head would go spinning around until he was looking behind him. A real person would have been dead. But these characters just kept coming back again and again. Not all of the Bugs Bunny, or what was known as the Loony Toons cartoons, revolved around Bugs. There of course was the classic matchups of Tweety and Sylvester, and Road Runner and Wyle E. Coyote. To see each of these duos try to out fox each other alone was worth the price of admission. Books could be written about these and so many other Bugs Bunny characters. If you haven't seen the cartoons then do yourself a favor and pick up a DVD from Amazon or wherever you can get a hold of one. The resulting hours of laughter will be more than worth the price. |
