new characters in every short

[CookieS]

Ever noticed how a lot of Merry Melodies had totally new characters for each cartoon. That must have taken a lot of thinking. Aside from the "stars" many enviroments, characters, and plots were one shot deals. I liked that :)

[Matthew Hunter]

That does seem to be true for a lot of them. I think it probably stemmed from the original idea that Looney Tunes were star vehicles and Merrie Melodies were one-shots, and later color. They probably experimented with new characters later on just for the heck of it, though, I doubt there's a specific reason they chose MM's to do that.
-Matthew

[J Lee]

Warner's probably felt back in 1934 that pushing a song through the color cartoons was more important to the company as a whole than pushing a character, since WB owned the rights to the songs in all the Merrie Melodies, while Leon Schlesinger owned Buddy, who was the focus of the Looney Tunes in 1934 (admittedly nothing to write home about there).

So from J.L.'s stanpoint, giving Leon a few extra bucks to do the Melodies in color could help push a few of his music and record division's songs ("synergy" before they ever thought up that stupid word) by making those cartoons more popular with theaters, since only Disney was established in color at that time and the cartoon was often the only thing in color in the entire movie theater lineup in 1934. However, shooting the Looney Tunes in color only meant we'd be able to see Cookie with her new blonde hairdo after she dyed it from the original brunette color in 1933. No sense is spending a few thousand dollars extra on that...