WARNING
In this one, we're going to be viewing sights that may appear very disturbing to many of you, so I'm just warning you guys ahead of time. Sights like this:
After seeing these, I'm convinced you could make a horror movie that could do for Bugs Bunny what "It" did for clowns. Their origin is just as unholy as their existence: in the decades after Warner Bros. stopped making Looney Tunes cartoons, they were all edited down for children and repeated over and over on television. Products appeared everywhere to cater to those children, many of which looked hideous. They're supposed to be puppets, but they look like they should burst out of a guy's chest or spit pea soup and growl. You can still push the Back button...you can still escape. Or do you want to see....ELMER FUDD??
AAAAAHHHH!!! Looks like Elmer's been getting the same treatment at night that Mr. Burns has. "I bring you looooooove...."
There's more than puppets out there. I can't find a single character on this poster that doesn't have something obviously wrong. I know things can get mistaken in translation, but who was told Foghorn was a green chicken?
If official merchandise can be this bad, imagine how bad unofficial merchandise must be. If you think you don't own any, you're wrong...you've seen one. Most homes own at least one copy of a tape produced by a small company, filled with public domain cartoons.
Not everyone
understands the truth about PDs, so here's the deal. There are
roughly 900 public domain cartoons in existence, and they've been
used in movies, TV shows and everywhere else, whenever the
company using them doesn't want to pay to show a cartoon someone
else owns the rights to. These are shorts, or prints of shorts,
that are kind of bad in quality or contain a character no one
wants to own. So instead of holding on to them, the studios gave
up the rights and placed them in "public domain," the
name for anything that does not have an official owner. No matter
who you are, it's perfectly legal for you to make a tape of Bugs
Bunny or Popeye or Betty Boop cartoons and then sell it, as long
as you use the PD ones. You could do it right now. Here's one to get you started! You like "Little Audrey,"
right?
Be aware, though, that you can't really use the exact likeness of
Bugs on the cover of whatever you're about to make. You can sell
the cartoons, sure, but you can't put a copyrighted character on
that cover without permission. Unless the drawing you're using
occurred in the PD cartoon itself. You get me? That's why Bugs on
that cover above looks so old-timey. But did you see TWEETY?
The puppet has now
been topped! Who chopped off his hands? The true reason is that this
tape contains the first Tweety cartoon, and in it he looked like
that. They couldn't put the modern Tweety on the cover because
he's not in the PD cartoon!
If you don't want to draw them THAT way, there's only one other
alternative: you can draw a character that looks kind of
like Bugs Bunny, but not exactly. Many times on "Family
Guy" when they use a character they don't own, they change
the character's appearance to the style of the show...this is the
reason for that. Exhibit A!
Painstakingly rendered by an 87-year-old farsighted mine shaft worker in 1977 and colored with the finest markers, this video has surely earned its "Quality Assurance" sticker. That's not the ugliest cover I've ever seen, though. It's just one of many.
Believe it or not, you still haven't seen the worst. Are you prepared for what's up next-- the most hideous drawing of "Bugs Bunny" to ever exist?
AAAAAAAUGH!! EYAAAAAHH!!! I gave you fair warning, so don't complain to me.
Who are those
other blobby guys? It was pointed out that the guy on the far
left with the rubber arm appears to be Dan Backslide from the WB
cartoon "The Dover Boys"(a cartoon that's not on this
DVD itself), but other than that nobody else is an actual
character. Scroll down already; even I'm getting spooked out.
So, can you draw better than this? Or worse? (It really doesn't matter.) If so, you now have
all the knowledge you need to make your own really bad cartoon
collection for the open market. But if you're still not sure,
then it's time to enter the GoldenAgeCartoons.com DESIGN AN UGLY PUBLIC
DOMAIN VIDEO COVER CONTEST!!!
Every year, though I forget at what time, GAC's competition is held, with scads of bad artists competing for the crown. Does it sound too good to be true? Well, it's true! YOU could be displayed alongside these stellar luminaries! So get cracking and get rich!
See the results of Contest #1
See the results of Contest #2
See the results of Contest #3
See the results of Contest #4
See the results of Contest #5
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