Discount Looney Tunes Super Stars: Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote

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"Looney Tunes Super Stars: Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote: Supergenius Hijinks" contains the worst Road Runner cartoons ever made. Casual buyers who don't know any better are going to be awfully disappointed with this DVD.

These are not the "classic" Road Runner cartoons that were made during the "Golden Age" of Looney Tunes. It would be a shame if this DVD was any young person's introduction to the Road Runner, as it would give them a false impression of what the real Road Runner cartoons were like.

What Warner Bros. should have done instead is to release the rest of the pre-1964 Road Runner cartoons that weren't included in the six "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" releases, plus the wolf/sheepdog and Bugs Bunny/Wile E. Coyote cartoons that weren't included in those releases.

Shame on Warner Bros. for putting out such a horrible collection of cartoons as its first Road Runner single disc release!

Update added on February 3, 2011: Warner Bros has just announced a change to the contents of this DVD. Five cartoons are being replaced with five other cartoons. However, the DVD will still not contain any of the pre-1964 "classic" Road Runner cartoons from the "Golden Age," or any of the wolf/sheepdog or Bugs Bunny/Wile E. Coyote cartoons from that time period. Just like with the original list of cartoons that would be on this DVD, all 15 of the cartoons in the new list were made after the original Warner Bros cartoon studio shut down in 1964. So my original rating of 1-star still stands.

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Pure travesty. This collection is a slap in the face. Pure junk. Where are the classic cartoons? Who's running the show at WB? It's obviously somebody who doesn't know what she is doing. I'll even go so far as to say that the cartoons from the '60s on this set aren't that good. Where's the rest of the classic cartoons from the 50s and early 60s? Those are the ones customers want, not something made in the 2000s. This is a pure money grab by WB. People who don't know any better will end up buying this only to be extremely disappointed.

On top of all the classic Looney Tunes yet to be released, what's WB waiting for with the balance of the classic Popeye cartoons? They started releasing sets of those a few years ago but then stopped. Either the rats are running the ship at WB, or the person in charge is a complete dope.

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No Chuck Jones "classics" here but he did come back to make "Little Go beep" bringing his traditional humor back tot he series. Most are new to DVD. The three much anticipated CGI 2010 Road Runner Cartoons will be here, mixed in with some revival shorts and the mid-1960's Depatie Freling almost limited animation shorts. This will make for a very odd mix of Road Runner cartoons.

I know, Warner Home Video is only releasing those cartoons that require little restoration as WB has used up their restoration budget. Only the first 5 here look pristine, the others have some grain to the picture.

By my count there are 10 CHUCK JONES Road Runner cartoons not on DVD, 4 of them were released on Japanese Laserdiscs in 1999 so they have already been somewhat restored. I have them, they look great!

There are also 5 more DePatie-Freling Road Runner cartoons not on DVD, and 1 of those was released on a Japanese Laserdisc in 1999.

We can only hope the economy gets better and DVD (or blu-ray) sales go up, encouraging Warner to put more money into their restoration work.

The option to watch these in Wide Screen or Full frame is available on this DVD. Unlike the previous Looney Tunes DVDs, the first five cartoons MUST be watched in Wide Screen to get the full picture.

Warner makes it difficult to switch back & forth between wide screen & full frame. The option only comes up when the disc first loads up, the menus do not give the the option. On my Sony player I had to go to the menu first, press the "Stop" button on my remote, then press the "Enter" button on my remote, as the disc was loading up again I pressed the "Menu" button. This time the "Full Frame" & "Widescreen" option menu came up. Different players may work different ways to get to this menu option.

The REVISED cartoon line-up, the screen format is the format in which the cartoon was made:

COYOTE FALLS (2010 CGI 3 minute cartoon 2:33-1 widescreen aspect ratio

FUR OF FLYING (2010 CGI 3 minute Cartoon 2:33-1 widescreen aspect ratio

RABID RIDER (2010 CGI 3 minute cartoon) 2:33-1 widescreen aspect ratio

WHIZZARD OF OW (2003 7 minute cartoon 1:85-1 widescreen aspect ratio; previously on Golden Collection 1.)

LITTLE GO BEEP (1994 7 minute Chuck Jones cartoon 1:33-1 full frame aspect ratio

CHARIOTS OF FUR (1989 7:50 cartoon 1:33-1 full frame aspect ratio

and the 1965/66 Depatie-Freling cartoons ranging from 6:20 to 6:50 in 1:33-1 full frame aspect ratio

SUGAR AND SPIES (1966)

CLIPPETY CLOBBERED (1966)

THE SOLID TIN COYOTE (1966)

OUT AND OUT ROUT (1966)

SHOT AND BOTHERED (1966)

CHASER ON THE ROCKS (1965)

HIGHWAY RUNNERY (1965)

BOULDER WHAM! (1965)

HARRIED AND HURRIED (1965)

To be honest, Whizzard of Owl, Little Go Beep, and Chariots of Fur all make good attempts at bringing back the classic style of Chuck Jones and are by far the most enjoyable cartoons in this collection.

Whizzard of Owl MUST be watched in Widescreen, the full frame version pans & scans the widescreen picture to keep the action on screen.

Little Go Beep & Chariots of Fur were produced in full frame with the knowledge that theaters will crop them for wide screen, so watching them either way is acceptable, but you will lose animation if you watch them in wide screen. They also look grainier when watched in widescreen as the frame is magnified when converting the non-anamorphic film to anamorphic video.

The three CGI cartoons were produced in the old "Cinemascope" aspect ratio of 2:33-1 and MUST be watched in widescreen. The full frame version only crops off a great deal of the sides.

Oddly, the Depatie Freling cartoons of the 1960's would have been cropped for widescreen by the movie theaters, but if you watch them in widescreen the image feels tight & cramped. It is preferable to watch these in the 1:33-1 full frame aspect ratio just as they were produced. It seems these were imagined for television where they would end up on "The Road Runner Show" on CBS Saturday Mornings, which they did very shortly after.

To show how much you can not trust official notices on the back of the DVDs, here Warner claims that:

"STANDARD VERSION PRESENTED IN A FORMAT PRESERVING THE ASPECT RATIO OF THEIR ORIGINAL THEATRICAL EXHIBITION"

"WIDESCREEN VERSION PRESENTED IN A MATTED WIDESCREEN FORMAT ENHANCED FOR WIDESCREEN TVS"

I guess as long as they believe these were shown in theaters in full frame, we will at least get the option to watch them both ways.

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I'm just stunned and amazed that WB would put out the Rudy Larriva cartoons as a frontline DVD release. If anything, those films deserve to be bonus material on a "real" Road Runner/Wile E. collection...and even that is a stretch. Why they would put this crap out in front of all the real Chuck Jones classic films is a mystery to me. I was really looking forward to this collection, Wile E. fan that I am, but having read the contents lists I can say that they will not be getting my money for this one.

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Anyone hoping for the classic Road Runner cartoons will be furious at these tired, mechanical spinoffs that were cranked out late in the game to make easy money for Warners with a gutted, hold-your-nose product. There are 15 episodes. Episodes 1-3 are fun, but episodes 4-15 absolutely collapse and fully deserve to be labeled contemptible junk.

The same fate awaited the Mr. Magoo cartoons. They too were a mopping up operation toward the tail end of their production, with the boredom of the creators so palpable it positively dripped from the screen. It was a cynical, last gasp attempt to separate trusting Magoo fans from their money and I was one of those fans. Alas, now I've tumbled into the same pit again by being unwary when this Road Runner release came along.

The motive of this DVD is just to make dishonest buck. A prior reviewer called it "scraping the bottom of the barrel" but it's even worse, because these were cranked out expressly FOR the bottom of the barrel, knowing the reputation of Road Runner would ensure them tidy sales. Don't fall into the trap. Don't let Warner Brothers lead you down the garden path to disappointment with this release.