Warner Bros Animation - The Seven Arts Years

[Napoleon Solo]

Anyone else a fan of the Seven Arts era of Warner Bros Animation from mid '67 to '69? Characters like Cool Cat, Bunny & Claude, Rapid Rabbit & the Quick Brown Fox and Merlin the Magic Mouse? I was woefully oblivious of these cartoons until recently and watched them on YouTube and enjoyed them immensely. Funny thing is, they don't "feel" like Looney Tunes.Merrie Melodies...they're more like something out of DePatie/Freleng!

They've never really made a comeback, probably because they weren't that popular and obviously they don't have the pedigree of Bugs or Daffy and I don't know if WB even acknowledges them at this point. I do know Cool Cat made two appearances on the Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries but even something during the Animaniacs/Tiny Toons era would have been nice. Even an acknowledgement on the final Golden Collection would have sufficed besides just Normal Norman (which is also very good).

Any memories of these cartoons from anyone?

[HUBTigers87]

I remember them airing quite a lot on Nickelodeon back when they did them. I was a fan +/-. even for my knowledge then, I didn't enjoy them as much, but still paid attention.

The animation to me felt HB-esque (heard that elsewhere too). The colors weren't the bright ones we'd seen in the late 40s and 50s, and were pale in comparison, some-what like a HB cartoon, but HB cartoons were just a little more colorful.

I think one thing that stuck out for me, was the intro music to it. I find it catchy. When it got to SA though, the music seemed to have been altered, if I describe in my own odd way, sounded violent or unprepared

For me, I liked the Cool Cat cartoons the best. Those ones had me a little more entertained. The Colonel was a fun character too for his involvements. Like the cartoon with the ghost

[CartoonFridays]

I'm a fan of the music and sound effects.

[wiley207]

I think one thing that stuck out for me, was the intro music to it. I find it catchy. When it got to SA though, the music seemed to have been altered, if I describe in my own odd way, sounded violent or unprepared

For me, I liked the Cool Cat cartoons the best. Those ones had me a little more entertained. The Colonel was a fun character too for his involvements. Like the cartoon with the ghost

I think the reason the opening theme was redone was because by 1967, the sound quality of the klunky "Merry Go Round Broke Down" theme in use since 1963 was detoriating a bit (and at the very tail end of it you could hear some audio goof-up, from the first Format Films Speedy short ("Quacker Tracker") to the final short using the regular "Abstract WB" version of the logos ("Go Away Stowaway.") When they introduced the "Abstract W-7" version of the opening theme, Bill Lava went and re-recorded the opening to eliminate that error, and it sounded a bit cheaper as a result. Then he went and rerecorded the theme again for two cartoons in 1968 ("Three Ring Wing Ding" and the infamous "See Ya Later Gladiator"), and again in 1969 for use on only one cartoon ("Fistic Mystic," which has probably the most bizarre variation of the theme.)
I also liked Cool Cat, along with Bunny and Claude, and "Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too" (my personal favorite of the post-1964 Looney Tunes cartoons.) Some of Bill Lava's music was pretty groovy at times, but I also can't help but wonder what it would've sounded like if Walter Greene scored some of the W-7 -era cartoons? I imagine it may have been a bit slower, with more muted trumpets and twangy low guitars, sort of like his Pink Panther scores and "Sugar and Spies." It would've been interesting to hear.

The animation often reminded me of Filmation or Total Television at times. I recently saw "Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies" from 1972, produced by Filmation, and the animation gave me those Warner/Seven Arts vibes. It even had many of the same sound effects used in the W-7 -era cartoons, and the music tended to sound rather Bill Lava -like! But some of their movements were more static, and there was a loud echoey laugh track often disrupting things.

The worst short of this era was "See Ya Later Gladiator," hands down. It had REALLY BAD animation, Daffy and Speedy were hideously deformed and off-model, not a single joke made me laugh, and Lava's music score for that was just klunky background noise. Even Mel Blanc's voice acting wasn't as strong in it! (Some of the lines had not much emotion, and he pretty much just reused his Marvin the Martian voice for Nero.)

It was very similar to when the company made "What's New, Scooby-Doo" decades later, in 2002-2006.
Yep, something I could talk about for quite a while.

[Eric B]

Wow; in those later W7's, he even brought a piano back in (replacing the harp); sounds almost like it was recorded over an old 30's LT theme or something!

[Voice Boss]

I personally enjoy these cartoons - in moderation. I think these and the DePatie-Freleng cartoons tend to be repetitious and therefore get old after a few cartoons. However when shown mixed in with the Golden age cartoons they bring a whole new feel to the cartoons and make the over all product even more enjoyable.

The one cartoon from this era which I cannot stand however is "Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too". Not that it is a bad cartoon mind you. In fact it had more energy than most other cartoon produced at the time. But I get sick to my stomach watching what is clearly a Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon being shoehorned into rabbit and fox costumes. It makes no sense as Warner Bothers had full ownership of the characters. Especially when Rapid Rabbit takes out a horn to go "BEEP, BEEP!" to scare the Coyote er... I mean, fox. Oh, brother.

[Eric B]

They were trying to create a new Bugs Bunny or something, being that they did not want to distract from Bug's TV run with new Bugs cartoons. So it's like a cross between Bugs and the Roadrunner. Basically, they were trying to create all new characters, since the classic ones were now solidly on TV.

[Peter Paltridge]

They were trying to create a new Bugs Bunny or something, being that they did not want to distract from Bug's TV run with new Bugs cartoons. So it's like a cross between Bugs and the Roadrunner. Basically, they were trying to create all new characters, since the classic ones were now solidly on TV.

I thought it was because Mel Blanc had left the studio.

[Classic Speedy]

Norman Normal is the best of the Seven Arts years, I think. It was radically different from what we expect from the series, but in a good way. I wish that became a series.

The Daffy/Speedy shorts were pretty much a total wash. Aside from running that concept into the ground (seriously, didn't we get enough of them by DePatie-Freleng?), they suffered from lame plots and recycled concepts and some off-model designs and animation (not helped by some of the animators being new to the series, although even veteran Ted Bonnicksen's work took a major downturn in this time).

As for the others, I only like the first Merlin the Magic Mouse short (mostly due to Daws Butler's vocals), Cool Cat is camp, and the one-shot "Flying Circus" was forgettable. I did like the one-shot "Chimp and Zee", though, and the two Bunny and Claude shorts were decent and offered some possibilities had the series not been cancelled (same goes for Rapid Rabbit, I guess). I also liked that B&C offered some humor that would fly over kids' heads: "Is that all you ever think about?... Carrots?"

One thing I did like about the Seven Arts shorts was that Bill Lava more or less abandoned his dissonant music so prevalent in his '62-66 shorts and embraced a more contemporary, and at times, funky feel. Of course, the downside to this approach is that the music didn't always follow the on-screen action as closely, but hey, you wouldn't get something as infectious as "Chimp and Zee" in the earlier part of his cartoon career.