Looney Tunes Golden Collection


The Looney Tunes Golden Collection was a series of six four-disc DVD box sets from Warner Home Video, each containing about 60 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts. The series began on October 28, 2003 and ended on October 21, 2008.

Overview

The Golden Collection series was launched following the success of the Walt Disney Treasures series which collected archived Disney material.
These collections were made possible after the merger of Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting System, along with the subsequent transfer of video rights to the Turner library from MGM Home Entertainment to Warner Home Video.
The cartoons included on the set are uncut, unedited, uncensored and digitally restored and remastered from the original black-and-white and successive exposure Technicolor film negatives. However, some of the cartoons in these collections are derived from the "Blue Ribbon" reissues, as the original titles for these cartoons are presumably lost. Where the original titles, instead of the "Blue Ribbon" titles, still exist, Warner has taken the "Blue Ribbon" titles out.
A handful of cartoons in the first two collections and the bonus cartoons on Volume 6 have digital video noise reduction artifacting. The noise reduction process sometimes unintentionally erases or blurs some of the picture on certain scenes of the cartoons, which has caused controversy among some Looney Tunes fans. The most recent collections, however, lack such artifacting. Since August 2007, Warner Bros. Home Video has been quietly reissuing copies of the fourth disc of Volume 2 that lacks artifacting and interlacing because of numerous complaints by consumers.
Beginning with Volume 3, a warning was printed on the packaging explaining that the collection is intended for adults and the content may not be suitable for children. This goes along with Whoopi Goldberg's filmed introduction in Volume 3 that explains the history of ethnic imagery that frequently appears in cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s. Beginning with Volume 4, a singular disclaimer text card similar to Goldberg's spoken disclaimer precedes each disc's main menu. This is seen on the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection discs and even on the back of the Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection discs.
The DVDs also feature several special features including interviews/documentaries of the people behind the cartoons such as Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Robert McKimson, Chuck Jones, musical conductor Carl Stalling and voice-artist Mel Blanc, pencil tests, and audio commentaries by animation historians Jerry Beck, Michael Barrier and Greg Ford, as well as current animators Paul Dini, Eric Goldberg and John Kricfalusi and voice actors Stan Freberg and June Foray. In addition to the appearances by the above-mentioned, there is interview footage of Stan Freberg, June Foray, Noel Blanc, Billy West, Keith Scott, Mark Evanier, Bob Bergen, Joe Alaskey, Bill Melendez, Willie Ito, Corny Cole, Peter Alvarado and the children of the various directors: Robert McKimson, Jr., Ruth Clampett, Sybil Freleng and Linda Jones. Audio footage of Mel Blanc in recording sessions is heard as a bonus feature on several of the discs, as is an obscure audio clip of Arthur Q. Bryan rehearsing a line as Elmer Fudd in What's Opera, Doc?. In total, there are 356 cartoons spread throughout the six volumes.
In some regions, such as Regions 2 and 4, each disc in each volume is packaged separately.In this format, it was titled "Looney Tunes Collection" omitting 'Golden' from the title. There were no boxes to group the various volumes, and no numbering on the spine of each individual cover, so storage order was not easily maintained.
The Region 1 box set has since been released in Regions 2 and 4.

Releases

Volume 1">Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1">Volume 1

Volume 1 contains 56 cartoons mostly from the 1950s with a smaller selection of shorts from the 1940s. Popular shorts include:
Disc One
  1. Baseball Bugs
  2. Rabbit Seasoning
  3. Long-haired Hare
  4. High-Diving Hare
  5. Bully For Bugs
  6. What's Up Doc?
  7. Rabbit's Kin
  8. Water, Water Every Hare
  9. Big House Bunny
  10. Big Top Bunny
  11. My Bunny Lies Over the Sea
  12. Wabbit Twouble
  13. Ballot Box Bunny
  14. Rabbit of Seville
Disc Two
  1. Duck Amuck
  2. Dough for the Do-Do
  3. Drip-Along Daffy
  4. Scaredy Cat
  5. The Ducksters
  6. The Scarlet Pumpernickel
  7. Yankee Doodle Daffy
  8. Porky Chops
  9. Wearing of the Grin
  10. Deduce, You Say
  11. Boobs in the Woods
  12. Golden Yeggs
  13. Rabbit Fire
  14. Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century
Disc Three
  1. Elmer's Candid Camera
  2. Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears
  3. Fast and Furry-ous
  4. Hair-Raising Hare
  5. Awful Orphan
  6. Haredevil Hare
  7. For Scent-imental Reasons
  8. Frigid Hare
  9. The Hypo-Chondri-Cat
  10. Baton Bunny
  11. Feed The Kitty
  12. Don't Give Up the Sheep
  13. Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid
  14. Tortoise Wins By a Hare
Disc Four
  1. Canary Row
  2. Bunker Hill Bunny
  3. Kit for Cat
  4. Putty Tat Trouble
  5. Bugs and Thugs
  6. Canned Feud
  7. Lumber Jerks
  8. Speedy Gonzales
  9. Tweety's S.O.S.
  10. The Foghorn Leghorn
  11. Daffy Duck Hunt
  12. Early to Bet
  13. Broken Leghorn
  14. Devil May Hare

    Volume 2">Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2">Volume 2

Volume 2 contains a broader selection of cartoons from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s including
This is the first volume to have 60 cartoons, which would continue to be the "standard" number in later volumes.

Disc-by-disc breakdown

Disc One
  1. The Big Snooze
  2. Broomstick Bunny
  3. Bugs Bunny Rides Again
  4. Bunny Hugged
  5. French Rarebit
  6. Gorilla My Dreams
  7. The Hare-Brained Hypnotist
  8. Hare Conditioned
  9. The Heckling Hare
  10. Little Red Riding Rabbit
  11. Tortoise Beats Hare
  12. Rabbit Transit
  13. Slick Hare
  14. Baby Buggy Bunny
  15. Hyde and Hare
Disc Two
  1. Beep Beep
  2. Going! Going! Gosh!
  3. Zipping Along
  4. Stop! Look! and Hasten!
  5. Ready, Set, Zoom
  6. Guided Muscle
  7. Gee Whiz-z-z
  8. There They Go-Go-Go
  9. Scrambled Aches
  10. Zoom and Bored
  11. Whoa, Be-Gone!
  12. Cheese Chasers
  13. The Dover Boys
  14. Mouse Wreckers
  15. A Bear for Punishment
Disc Three
  1. Bad Ol' Putty Tat
  2. All Abir-r-r-d
  3. Room and Bird
  4. Tweet Tweet Tweety
  5. Gift Wrapped
  6. Ain't She Sweet
  7. A Bird in a Guilty Cage
  8. Snow Business
  9. Tweetie Pie
  10. Kitty Cornered
  11. Baby Bottleneck
  12. Old Glory
  13. The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
  14. Duck Soup to Nuts
  15. Porky in Wackyland
Disc Four
  1. Back Alley Oproar
  2. Book Revue
  3. A Corny Concerto
  4. Have You Got Any Castles?
  5. Hollywood Steps Out
  6. I Love to Singa
  7. Katnip Kollege
  8. The Hep Cat
  9. The Three Little Bops
  10. One Froggy Evening
  11. Rhapsody Rabbit
  12. Show Biz Bugs
  13. Stage Door Cartoon
  14. What's Opera, Doc
  15. You Ought to be in Pictures

    Volume 3">Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3">Volume 3

Volume 3 contains a selection of cartoons mostly from the 1930s and 1940s, but with some from the 1950s and 1960s including such popular shorts as
Volume 4 contains selections ranging from 1936 to 1966, including such popular shorts as
Volume 5 contains 41 color cartoons and 19 black-and-white cartoons, including such popular shorts as
Volume 6 concludes the entire series of the Golden Collection. The ratio of color to black-and-white cartoons is the same as the previous volume. This volume contains such popular shorts as
On December 27, 2011, Warner re-packaged all volumes in a single pack.

Other DVD releases of Looney Tunes

''Looney Tunes: Spotlight Collection''

Concurrently with the Golden Collections, Warner Home Video also released the ', each volume of which packaged half of the cartoons of a Golden Collection, on two DVDs. The exception to this practice was in 2005, with Warner Home Video instead releasing the somewhat-misnamed Looney Tunes Movie Collection, which featured DVDs containing The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie and '.

''Looney Tunes Super Stars''

In November 2009, it was reported that two new single disc DVD releases, with 15 cartoons each, would be released in April 2010. It was also reported that these 30 cartoons would not contain any duplicates that had already been released as part of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection releases. This series of DVDs is called Looney Tunes Super Stars and the first two titles are ' and '. These new DVDs still have the cartoons digitally restored and remastered - in addition to being shown uncut and uncensored. A second set of Looney Tunes Super Stars DVDs was released on November 30, 2010. The titles in the second wave are ' and '.
Some viewers noted discs of the first wave proved to be cropped and distorted and otherwise poorly restored to present the shorts in "widescreen" as opposed to their original aspect ratio. Warner Bros. stated the reason for this was that all post-1953 WB shorts were shown in matted-widescreen in theaters.
On December 1, 2010, animation expert Jerry Beck explained on the Shokus Internet Radio call-in talk program, Stu's Show that Warner aimed this series not at collectors, but at the mass market who expect it to fit on their widescreen TVs. He speculated that at some point down the road there will probably be a release of those shorts in a collector's DVD version with the video in fullscreen format. However, the Foghorn Leghorn disc contains both the matted-widescreen versions and the original fullscreen. Jerry Beck stated on Stu's Show on December 1, 2010 that 2011 would see new Super Stars releases, such as a release titled ', another Sylvester release titled ' and another .

''Looney Tunes Platinum Collection''

Another new series, Looney Tunes Platinum Collection, was released on Blu-ray. The was released on November 15, 2011. A 2-disc DVD version of the Platinum Collection was made available on July 3, 2012. The first two discs overlap with releases from the Golden and Super Stars collections. Two more volumes were released on Blu-ray and DVD in the following years.
Porky Pig 101
In 2017, a 5-disc DVD set featuring the first 101 cartoons of Porky Pig's filmography was made available to buy.