“What’s Up Doc?”: A Look at 80 Years of Bugs Bunny Diving into the 80th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray used for this review. The opinions I share are my own.

I am a huge Bugs Bunny fan. I probably spent more time as a little kid watching Bugs Bunny cartoons (and Tom and Jerry, and Heckle & Jeckle) than I did any of the PBS shows (including Electric Company which I watched all the time).

Bugs Bunny’s snark and perseverance and expert escapist abilities likely made me claim him, subconsciously, as my guardian angel.

By the time I was in my teens and twenties, the Looney Tunes cartoons had begun to be “edited” for child safety concerns… can’t have kids blasting each other in the face because they saw Bugs and Daffy and Elmer do it, now can we? Yes, I was irrationally upset when I stopped to watch one Saturday morning after a late Friday night working. I stopped watching Looney Tunes entirely at that point, didn’t even bother watching the rebooted series later.

Back then, the Golden Collections weren’t out yet, but when they showed up on laserdisc, I bought all the ones I could find. More important to me at the time were not the big box collections, but the single disc specialty collections, like The Wartime Cartoons, The Musicals, etc. Some of my biggest regrets were selling off all my laserdiscs after both my players became unserviceable. 20 years they entertained me well, but hauling around a large bookshelf’s worth of very heavy laserdiscs with no way to play them anymore became a matter of practicality rather than collectibility.

Now there are new Looney Tunes collections available on DVD, they are on my wish lists to get someday (once I figure out which ones are closest to the laserdisc Golden Collections), but this 80th Anniversary Collection, to honor Bugs’ 80th birthday, is a good start on rebuilding my Looney Tunes library.

This collection contains many, but not all, of the best and most iconic cartoons where Bugs Bunny has a starring role.

The highlights of this set are the various featurettes and “Behind the Tunes” bonus content, the featurettes with commentaries from family members of the original Looney Tunes voices and animators, and insights from Leonard Maltin and Jerry Beck, and more:

1) Documentary: Bugs Bunny’s 80th What’s Up Doc-umentary!

2) Behind the Tunes Featurettes:
“Hare Ribbin'” director’s cut
Forever Befuddled
Bugs: A Rabbit for All Seasonings
Mars Attacks: Life on the Red Planet with My Favorite Martian
A Hunting We Will Go: Chuck Jones’ Wabbit Season Trilogy
Bugs Bunny: Ain’t He A Stinker?
Wagnerian Wabbit: The Making of What’s Opera, Doc?
Hard Luck Duck
Short Fuse Shootout: The Small Tale of Yosemite Sam
50 Years of Bugs Bunny in 3 1/2 Minutes

3) 10 Looney Tunes Cartoons episodes

Some shorts have commentary tracks, including “What’s Opera, Doc?”, and those go a step beyond, including insights into the creative process for the shorts.

The history collected in the featurettes is just as wonderful for me as the 1989 Looney Tunes reference, “Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons” (which should be a must-have for any Looney Tunes fan). I mean, I had no idea Marvin the Martian had a popularity surge because George Lucas managed to get “Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century” screened before showings of Star Wars!

The 3-Disc Collection features 60 Shorts Along with Bonus Content, Including 10 Episodes of Looney Tunes Cartoons, A Documentary and Collectible Memorabilia, the main one being the Glitter Funko figurine.

Glitter. Bugs Bunny. Funko.

Yes, a lot of Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny collectors will want to add this one to their collection.

4 stars

Top 10 Bugs Bunny Moments In Looney Tunes (HBO Max)