Baby Looney Tunes (Western Animation)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/baby_looney_tunes.jpg

Pint sized looniness.^note

Baby Looney Tunes is an animated program that ran from September 7, 2002 to April 20, 2005. It started out on Kids' WB! and was eventually moved to Cartoon Network for the rest of its run. The series actually started out as an infant and toddler-oriented sub-brand for the Looney Tunes during the '90s, which originally went under the name "Looney Tunes Lovables". Around 1997, when the animated series was announced, the brand was renamed Baby Looney Tunes, and more merchandise featuring the logo that would become associated with the animated series became more readily available.

The animated series served as a breath of life for the long-stagnant Spinoff Babies formula made popular by Muppet Babies (1984). Similar to that series, this program features baby versions of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Lola Bunny, Taz, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird and other Looney Tunes characters with Granny as their caretaker. Her grandson, Floyd, was introduced as a Canon Foreigner, and other Looney Tunes members either make cameo appearances in songs, or as guests in some episodes.

Don't confuse this series with Tiny Toon Adventures, which has similarities to the Spinoff Babies genre, but featured teen/tween Expies of the Looney Tunes cast.

Tropes:

Adaptational Badass: Baby Foghorn Leghorn stands up to the barnyard dog and wins.
Adaptational Friendship: Sylvester and Tweety Bird are portrayed as friends here, despite the main Looney Tunes show having Sylvester seeing Tweety Bird as prey.
Adaptational Heroism: Marvin the Martian, who was a villain in the original series. Here he's a sweet guy.
Adaptational Jerkass: Baby Melissa is a little more brash in this cartoon than her adult counterpart. Justified because Melissa's only official appearance in classic cartoons was The Scarlet Pumpernickel where she was just a Damsel in Distress without much personality.
Adaptational Nice Guy: Most of the babies are far more innocent than their adult counterparts.
Adaptation Dye-Job:
- Petunia normally has black hair but here it is brown. Averted in Season 2 when it becomes black again.
- Melissa is traditionally a blonde however here she's a redhead.
Animation Bump: This is noticeable in the episodes and songs done by Wang Film Productions.
Argument of Contradictions: In "Did Not! Did Too!," Bugs Bunny and Lola have an argument over whose flag to plant in a block tower. They go to their rooms and have a "Did not! Did too!" argument over who asked who to help each other.
Artistic License – Paleontology: In one episode, wherein Petunia is repeatedly crying wolf, we actually get a double subversion. Daffy's dinosaur book features an amazingly accurate (right down to Daffy pronouncing its name correctly) Sinosauropteryx. However, when Daffy goes looking for it, he apparently expects it to have broken down a bunch of trees. Unless the trees in Granny's yard are the size of daisies, a three-foot-long Sinosauropteryx would not be capable of that.
Ascended Extra: Petunia and Melissa are main characters here despite having minor roles in other Looney Tunes cartoons. Melissa especially since she only had a small number of appearances.
Baths Are Fun: Baby Taz learns this in the end of "All Washed Up" after trying to avoid the bathtub, but ends up giving in near the conclusion.
Big Eater: Sylvester eats a whole jar of cookies in one episode, and Taz is almost an Extreme Omnivore like his adult counterpart. Melissa also shows shades of this in the cake episode.
Big Fun: Taz is this on his happy days.
Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Lola Bunny, Petunia Pig and Melissa Duck in that order.
Bring My Brown Pants: This line from Sylvester in "Flush Hour":
Sylvester: "Good thing I brought a spare diaper!"
Bratty Half-Pint:
- What do you expect from a toddler version of Daffy Duck?
- Taz often goes into this territory, but he still retains his Jerk with a Heart of Gold status.
- Any of the kids can act bratty if the plot requires them to be, like Tweety in "Daffy Did It!" and Lola in "Pouting Match".
Broken Aesop: In one episode where they went apple picking, Melissa insisted to the others that her picking method was better than the others', at which point they decided to have a race to prove which was the best. It ended in a tie, giving the Aesop that everyone's methods of doing things should be respected. However, the farmer taught her that method, making the Aesop come off as "it's okay to ignore the advice of the local authority figure".
Brought Down to Normal: Taz briefly loses his spinning ability in "Spinout" due to eating too much sugar.
The Bully: Elmer Fudd in his only A Day in the Limelight episode, although he reformed in the end.
Butt-Monkey:
- Mostly Sylvester, being by far the least confident of the kids.
- Daffy has moments of this even though, being Daffy, he usually brings it on himself.
- Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam, when they appear in songs, like "Baby Elmer Had A Friend".
Call-Forward: Inverted, since the show was made after and, like most Looney Tunes incarnations, isn't set in the universe of its namesake; for the sake of their ages, however, this is how it is listed.
- In the episode Duck Reflucks, there is a sequence in one point that is vaguely similar to Duck Amuck, but with the roles reversed, with Daffy being the tormentor and Bugs being the tormented. And earlier, Daffy even says "The scenery! Where's the scenery?"
- In New Cat In Town, Sylvester looks at a electronic that tells about skunks. It shows Pepe Le Pew as an adult.
- In School Daze, Bugs and Daffy do their famous Duck Season, Rabbit Season routine over who gets to sit at the back of the "bus".
- In Lights, Camera, Tweety!, Bugs and Daffy's reaction when they realize they're live on TV with thousands of people watching them is very similar to the former's reaction at the end of Haredevil Hare when a journalist asks him a press declaration.
Canon Foreigner: Floyd, Granny's nephew, wasn't an original Looney Tunes character.
Cats Are Snarkers: Sylvester has his moments.
Cats Hate Water: Sylvester. It becomes a plot point in "The Puddle Olympics".
Celebrity Paradox: At the beginning of "Log Cabin Fever", the babies are seen watching classic Looney Tunes shorts such as Hair-Raising Hare.
- In the Halloween Episode "A Mid-Autumn Night's Scream", Bugs, Daffy and Granny dress up respectively as Yosemite Sam, Duck Dodgers and Witch Hazel.
Children Are Innocent: So much. Even Bugs is naive and innocent in a childlike way.
Cloudcuckoolander: Taz, most of the time.
Companion Cube: Hairy Gary is Taz's favorite doll, often acting as his Morality Pet.
Compressed Vice: An episode is about Sylvester being unable to accept new things, and being also attached to his Security Blanket and an old shirt. Those two last items never appeared before or later.
Cool Old Lady: Granny. She's always doing a different job every episode.
Creepy Doll: The appropriately named "Spooky Man" from the bottom of Daffy's toy trunk. The doll has a soul piercing stare, a wicked grin, nicely groomed red hair, and an ambiguous human body. The babies all fear it, and for good reason.
Curtains Match the Window: Petunia has brown hair and brown eyes.
Cute Kitten: Sylvester has some kittenish habits, such as playing with yarn. Also doubles as a Furry Reminder.
Cute Little Fangs: Taz. He always brushes them after eating.
Dark Horse Victory: Twice by Sylvester, in Cat-Taz-Trophy and The Puddle Olympics.
A Day in the Limelight: Aside from the main characters, who are the ones mentioned in the theme song (Sylvester, Bugs, Daffy, Taz, Lola, Tweety) plus Melissa and Petunia, all the other Looney Tunes characters rarely appear, and mainly during songs (Speedy Gonzales and Penelope Pussycat never appear at all). Sometimes though they get their own storylines and interact with the main cast, like Marvin in "War of the Weirds", Pepe in "New Cat in Town" and "Stop and Smell Up the Flowers", Elmer in "A Bully for Bugs", and Foghorn in "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo-It!".
Death Glare: In "Pouting Match" Lola starts pouting whenever she doesn't get her way. When the other babies start using the same trick she ups her game by switching to Crocodile Tears.
Demoted to Extra:
- (Baby) Porky Pig never actually appears in any episode. He is seen only in songs. It makes no sense that Petunia, Porky's girlfriend from the thirties (a rather obscure character who disappears after a few shorts), is a main character and Porky is just an extra.
- In-series, Granny. She's the Team Mom in seasons 1-3, but due to Floyd mostly taking over as the babies' caretaker, she appears less in Season 4.
Duck Season, Rabbit Season: Played with in "School Daze", where Daffy and Bugs are arguing over who gets to sit in back of the bus while pretending to play school. Bugs wins, of course. The original short is even referenced.
- In season 2, it becomes their Running Gag.
Edutainment Show: Given the morals, it's not surprising.
Everybody Cries: Happens in some episodes. In "Mother’s Day Madness", the babies get angry and fight on the Mother’s Day cards, and then they eventually start crying. "Takers Keepers" has this too: When Taz’s toy is gone, he starts crying and the other babies (save Daffy initially) all feel guilty and cry along with him. In "Move It!", the babies overhear what they assume is that Granny is moving to a new house and burst into tears under this deduction. It is revealed that all Granny was mentioning was to move around, as in exercise.
Everyone Has Standards: Daffy may be a Jerkass but he's not The Bully. He even tells on Elmer first when Bugs is too afraid to speak up.
Expospeak Gag: This gem:
Floyd: Hey, take it easy guys. Tweety here is simply exhibiting what the esteemed professor of pediatric developmentology, dr. R.U. kitten termed "classic fluctuation of expectatory perception."
Bugs: Uh, in English, doc? In English?
Floyd: He's not having fun.
Fat Idiot: Taz is rather dimwitted compared to the others.
Fat Bastard: Taz, whenever he has picks up the Jerkass Ball.
Fiery Redhead: Melissa has both the red hair and the attitude, and is usually one of the most outspoken in the group.
French Jerk: Averted with Baby Pepe, as he is very polite to everybody.
Friendly Tickle Torture: Lola and Bugs share one in an episode.
Fun with Flushing: The main characters wonder about the toilet in the bathroom and form their own theories about how dangerous it is, while Petunia assures them nothing is wrong. In the process, they panic when Petunia accidentally flushes it, and puts toilet paper to "Feed the monster," clogging it up. They accidentally leave her in and she comes out wet with toilet paper on her. When Granny shows her what the toilet is really for, and Petunia tells them, they don't believe her.
Gentle Giant: Taz
Girlish Pigtails: Petunia has brown pigtails.
Green-Eyed Monster: Sylvester when he's jealous of Pepe in "New Cat In Town".
Growling Gut: Bugs and Daffy have this a few times during the series. Taz doesn't in the episodes but does in the song "Taz's Fridge is Falling Down."
Halloween Episode: "A Mid-Autumn Night's Scream". The kids go trick-or-treating and Lola, Melissa, and Petunia enter a costume contest. In the episode, Bugs dresses up as an adult Yosemite Sam, Daffy dresses as Duck Dodgers, and Granny dresses up as Hazel the witch. Also, three baby Martian Birds appear.
Height Angst: Some episodes deal with disadvantages Tweety has because of his small size.
I Got a Rock: Keeps happening to Daffy when the babies go trick-or-treating, even when he's trick-or-treating the same houses as the others.
Injection Plot: In the episode "Flu The Coop", the kids go to get their flu shots. Bugs and Daffy run away to avoid getting one, but at the end of the episode, they both get the flu..
Insult Comic: Melissa becomes one after seeing one on TV. It doesn't go well, needless to say.
It's All About Me: Daffy is prone to selfishness, much more than the other babies, although he usually learns his lesson at the end.
Innocent Swearing: In Who Said That, Daffy hears the garbage man curse when he drops the trash can on his toe. He swears several times in the episode.
Innocently Insensitive: In "Wise Quacker", Melissa starts telling jokes that insult her friends. However, because everyone responds to them positively, she doesn't realize how hurtful she's being until one of her jokes drives Lola to tears, and even then she doesn't understand WHY Lola got upset until Granny explains how cruel her jokes were.
Jaded Wash Out: Inverted. Despite being a toddler, Sylvester has some shades of this. He was a consistent villain in the original show, but he's an Extreme Doormat in this series.
Jerkass: Taz is kind of a Bratty Half-Pint but never intentionally mean or malicious, Daffy on the other hand is more of an outright jerk, being often rude, selfish, and an Attention Whore. And he's even more bratty than Taz. Melissa also has her moments.
Jerkass Ball: Often the babies will act mischievous in certain episodes if the plot demands it.
Jerkass Has a Point: In the movie, Daffy tells the others that the Easter Bunny is not real and can't be proven to be true.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Daffy is a jerk a lot of times, but since this is a Lighter and Softer version of Looney Tunes and there is always a lesson (usually involving Granny), he usually understands his behaviour was wrong at the end of the episode (most of the time).
- Taz is somewhat annoying and bratty, but is generally innocent and goodhearted. For example, he was actually the only one at first to be nice to Baby Marvin.
- Melissa can be snotty and a control freak, but still a good girl.
Kick the Dog: Whenever one of the babies Took a Level in Jerkass this would follow.
The Lad-ette: Downplayed due to the child-friendly nature of the show, but Baby Lola is shown to love athletics, watch sports, play fighting games, and beat the boys at just about every game.
Laser-Guided Karma: Daffy and Melissa usually receive comeuppance for any trouble they would cause.
Lighter and Softer: BLT is quite a radical departure from the wanton violence and other antics of the classic Looney Tunes, as well as Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. It's an in-name only spin-off, considering how far the characters are removed from their signature personas.
Little Miss Badass: Lola. She likes playing fighting games and is skilled enough to jump on top of the highest shelf in the house.
Loners Are Freaks: The babies believe that Marvin is weird just because he's shy and friendless.
Loose Tooth Episode: In "To Tell the Tooth", Bugs and later Taz lose their teeth. Daffy feels envious because he supposedly doesn't have any teeth^note, so he tries to steal their teeth to scam the tooth fairy. When Granny catches him in the act, she informs him that there's also a "feather fairy" who takes young birds' feathers when they molt.
Lovable Coward: Sylvester who is timid, fearful and often lacks the confidence shown by the others.
Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Of the friendship variety, Lola and Sylvester aren't into things usually associated with their gender. Lola prefers basketball while Sylvester prefers tea parties.
Mistaken for Toilet: Inverted in "Flush Hour", where Daffy thinks the toilet is a monster.
Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Marvin. He acts shy, but he helped the other babies fix their broken toys.
Momma's Boy: Or Grandma's Boy, in Sylvester's case, who is easily (and ironically) the closest to Granny.
Morality Pet: Taz's favorite toy, Hairy Gary acts as this for him.
Mouthy Kid: Daffy is the snarkiest of the kids, to say the least. To a lesser extent there's his Distaff Counterpart Melissa.
Mr Fix It: Marvin. He was taking the toys from the other babies so he could rebuild them.
Neat Freak: Sylvester likes cleanliness and good order, as revealed in one episode, in contrast to Daffy who is his total opposite. It's rarely an issue in the rest of the show though.
Needlework Is for Old People: Downplayed for Granny, who is starting to learn to knit and says, "Knit one, purl two" whenever she knits.
Never My Fault: In the episode "Daffy Did It!" Tweety pins the blame on Daffy for anything caused by the former's actions, and Daffy gets in trouble for it. Of course Daffy himself is guilty of this several times too, just not in that episode.
Never Say "Die": Granny says her mother "lives a long way away from now" in "Mother's Day Madness". Although she did go to the effort to make a present for her mother and send it to her, so it's possible that her mother is still alive. If she's anything like her daughter, this wouldn't be all that surprising.
Nightmare Fuel:
- In-universe. In "The Sandman is Coming", Granny tells the kids the story of the Sandman to explain the sleep in their eyes, unintentionally terrifying Daffy, who decides to Never Sleep Again. (And when he does manage to stay up all night and his friends have sand in their eyes anyway, he's even more frightened because he has no idea how the Sandman got past him.)
- Also in-universe, the Spooky Man doll hidden in Daffy's toy chest. It's an eerie Creepy Doll that the babies are too afraid to even look in the face.
- Played for Laughs, the toilet was seen as The Dreaded villain to the babies for quite a while. Eventually they learned what a toilet really was for.
Nobody Likes a Tattletale: The point of the episode "The Tattletale", where the other kids start to shun Lola when she kept telling Granny when they were doing any little thing wrong. She had good intentions, but kept doing it so often that the others refused to play with her, since it looked like she was just trying to get them all in trouble. Eventually, Granny teaches Lola it's one thing to let her know if any of the kids are doing something mean or dangerous, but being a tattletale is another.
Nobody Poops: Downplayed; School Daze mentions they're almost potty trained, and in Flush Hour, Petunia tells them what the toilet is for after using it off screen:
Petunia: "It's diapers plus!"
- Not to mention that their diapers never seem to need changing onscreen. In later episodes, they no longer wear diapers. Petunia wears yellow panties instead of diapers in later episodes. Taz and Tweety were the only characters for the whole series to never wear any diapers.
Non-Indicative Title: There's little that's really Looney about this toon.
- Initially, they were a lot like actual babies with the obligatory "What is that white, water-filled chair in the bathroom?" plot. But it wasn't long before the only thing that kept them from being full-on kids is that they were under school age.
Non-Mammalian Hair: Melissa. She's a duck with hair.
Not So Above It All: Bugs and Lola act as the mature babies, but they still aren't above messing around like the others.
Odd Friendship: Sylvester the cat and Tweety Bird are best friends.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While playing pirate ship, Bugs, Daffy, and Tweety conspire to steal the pretend ship from Lola by ambushing her. The next scene shows us she dispatches them easily and ties all three of them up.
One of the Boys: Lola. She is usually seen playing sports with the boys.
Only Sane Man: Lola is pretty mature, and often serves as the voice of reason, and Bugs, as the levelheaded leader, also tends to fall into this role along with Lola. However both of them are Not So Above It All being still little kids and prone to juvenile moments like the rest of the group.
Pet the Dog:
- When all the other babies ditch Marvin, Taz is the only one who befriends him.
- Daffy has one at the end of "Mr. Mc Stuffles" which is also lampshaded by Granny.
Plot Hole: "To Tell The Tooth" has Daffy being jealous that he has no teeth so he can't get money from the tooth fairy, despite frequently being drawn with teeth. Of course, It's a show for preschoolers, so we're probably overthinking this.
The Quiet One: Marvin. He's shy and is too afraid to make friends.
Resort to Pouting: In "Pouting Match", Lola finds that pouting to get she wants is quite useful when the kids refuse to put on her favorite show. However, the other kids start to use the same tactic so she can know how it feels. As such, Granny tells Lola that she can't always get what she wants, but she should at least ask nicely for it.
Ridiculously Cute Critter: All the characters could count, but Baby Pepe takes it all the way up to eleven in the episodes he appears in.
She Cleans Up Nicely: In Mind You Manners, all the babies dress up in nice suits and dresses after Granny teaches them proper manners when they go out to a fancy restaurant.
Shrinking Violet: Marvin. He's not good with making new friends.
Shout-Out
- In an episode, Granny reads to the babies a tale about four termites living in a terrace, named Tex, Chuck, Friz and Bob^{didn't get it?}.
- In a Season 4 episode, the kids try to fix Tweety's trike, managing to turn it into Fred Flintstone's car, George Jetson's car and the Mystery Machine, with each appearance being introduced by a small bit of their respective theme songs (while the former two have their classic theme songs, the latter uses the then-newer What's New, Scooby-Doo? theme song)
- "Duck Reflucks" is one big shout-out to Duck Amuck. Only this time with the roles reversed with Daffy tormenting Bugs. Additionally the photographer CJ is an obvious Expy of the shorts director Chuck Jones.
Show Within a Show: Types 1 and 3 are used in "I Strain", where Petunia watches her friends reenact her favorite shows, such as Caraway Street, Beanbag the Dinosaur and Mint's Hints as well as other shows.
- The Super Sunshine Girls are also mentioned in a pair of episodes.
Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Melissa in this show, even though her adult counterpart was usually a blonde.
Slice of Life: The first Looney Tunes incarnation to be this, although not the last.
Small Name, Big Ego: Not surprisingly, Daffy, who is arrogant and thinks he's cooler than he really is.
The Smurfette Principle: Lola Bunny is initially the only female character in the cast, until Melissa Duck and Petunia Pig are abruptly added to the main cast in mid-Season 1.
Suddenly Speaking: Pepe Le Pew doesn't speak in his first appearance in "New Cat in Town", but in his second appearance he speaks.
Spinoff Babies: Of the Looney Tunes, of course.
Swear Word Plot: The episode "Who Said That?" has Daffy learn how to deal with his anger in other ways instead of shouting profanities after he overhears the garbage man say one.
Team Mom: Granny acts like this to the babies.
Theme Tune Roll Call: "Sylvester, Bugs, and Daffy. Taz and Lola too. Tweety's such a sweetie. Now all we need is you."
Those Two Girls: Melissa and Petunia, the least important of the main cast, are both introduced in mid-Season 1 and are often paired together as a duo. Unlike everyone else, they are based on lesser-known Looney Tunes characters and they are only added to the main cast because of the lack of female characters.
Time Zones Do Not Exist: In "For Whom the Toll Calls" Tweety and Petunia accidentally call Japan from an American landline. Putting aside the impossibility of this, it's broad daylight outside when they do this... and in the window in the background of the shot of the Japanese shot, it's somehow also daylight.
Tomboy: Like her older Space Jam counterpart, Lola is a tomboy who likes playing basketball with the boys.
Tomboy with a Girly Streak: However, Lola still exhibits some girly traits like playing with dolls, making herself beautiful, and playing fairly with others. But, she is the toughest baby in the daycare.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: Lola (Tomboy) and Melissa and Petunia (Girly Girls).
Took a Level in Badass: Baby Foghorn Leghorn in his actual debut episode.
Took a Level in Kindness: Taz became much friendlier as the show went on. He was originally an obnoxious little punk who cried to get what he wanted, but grew into the sweetest kid in the daycare.
Town Girls: As seen above, we have Lola, the athletic girl who loves basketball and badminton (butch), Petunia, the quiet and sweet girly girl (femme), and Melissa, who is blunt, outspoken and a bit bossy, but not as sporty as Lola (neither).
Toothy Bird: Daffy is drawn with teeth sometimes. Ironically, in "To Tell The Tooth" it is explicitly stated that he lacks teeth, although we see him with teeth a lot.
Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Lola, Melissa and Petunia have hairbows.
The Unintelligible: Taz. Tweety often translates for him.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The villainous Looney Tunes are far more innocent here than their adult counterparts.
Vitriolic Best Buds: Bugs and Daffy have this dynamic like their older counterparts. Surprisingly averted with Sylvester and Tweety, as they always get along well.
Vocal Evolution: In the fourth and final season, Daffy's voice was pitch-shifted, and a few episodes later, the rest of the babies' voices soon followed, which can be a bit annoying to some viewers.
What the Hell, Hero?: Whenever the other babies are disappointed in Daffy.
You Can Talk?: In "War of the Weirds", the babies, except for Taz, have this reaction when Marvin agrees to play with them. Up until then, he only shyly mumbled. Taz's justification on why Marvin never talked to them before was because he didn't know them, as they had been ostracizing him because they found him "weird", to the point of never introducing themselves to him.

Western Animation / Baby Looney Tunes

Tropes:

Video Example(s):