MeTV Toons is Here!

The title says it all!

I don't have cable, so I haven't looked at it yet. As of me writing (5:20 PM EDT) The Tom & Jerry Show is playing (not to be confused with that awful flash show on Boomerang). 

The website is pretty awesome, too, with articles, quizzes, and videos. I found out I was insane, though. I took a Road Runner "complete the title" quiz and got an 100%. Yikes!

It was interesting to see that Histeria! and Freakazoid! are on the schedule. Will Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs start playing too? That'd be cool!

I'm going to make one prediction: I think "new content" will eventually start playing on this channel. Sure, it was said it wouldn't but these kind of channels eventually lean on something like that (can you scream Wabbit and Bunnicula?) This isn't even a bad thing: a classic cartoon channel will have a neo-classical series.

All good!

Public Domain Mickey and More in Video Game Rubber Hose Rampage

I can't believe I didn't discover this until, like, last week. 

Last month a video game came out called Rubber Hose Rampage from Revie Studios, made up of as many "rubberhose" public domain cartoon stuff as possible. Yes, this is the further adventures of the public domain Mickey. 

Here's the description on Steam:

In the near future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots, become sentient and slowly take control of the world's nuclear weapons. Five billion lives ended on August 29th, 2027. The survivors of the nuclear fire lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines. The chatbots which control the machines, sent two cyborgs back through time to 1928 disguised as cartoon mice. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the resistance, the captain of the riverboat, Steamboat Willie.

Uh...what?! Remind me to buy as many Pogo volumes as I can before 8/29/27!

I mean, the graphics are horrendous. They are cartoons traced over. Recognizable here are the bee from Eatin' on the Cuff:

(Why is Mickey using pea shooter?)

And the Big Bad Wolf from Pigs in a Polka:

Note that neither of these characters are rubberhose.

It is generally believed to be a ripoff of Cuphead, a 2017 video game sensation. For those who know nothing about video games, it's a game totally devoted to rubberhose animation, and it is absolutely beautiful. I have never played it (yet!), but from looking at gameplay from it it gets everything right, even the grainy film look with traditional animation. It has done a lot to introduce my generation to older animation (even though I discovered it via television and DVDs). 

Here's the trailer:

But there's a bigger question here: will you play it?

First Preview for The Day the Earth Blew Up and a New Donald Duck Short

There have been two exciting things in the animation world!

Last November I reported that a Looney Tunes movie is supposed to come out soon. Well just a few days ago we got a preview:

Looks pretty funny. That Daffy "crack" gag seemed a little un-Looney Tunes, but it was funny, and that's point, right?

I was slightly disappointed it was flash animated, when it was said to be "fully" animated all those months back. But it sure isn't Clutch Cargo!

Another duck got center stage recently. Donald turned ninety on the Ninth (fittingly), so a new short came out called D.I.Y. Duck. At three minutes, it is directed by modern-day legend Mark Henn, and is his final project. It reminded me a lot of The Looney Tunes Show episode "The Shelf", but I don't think it was a ripoff--it was more Donaldesque.

It was pretty good. It is far more respectful to the source material than 2013's Get A Horse! was, which a friend of mine refers to as being "arbitrary" throwback animation--accurately. It's set up like the 1950s Disney cartoons but with a contemporary setting, which I always like.

Henn was always a great talent. His animation of Mickey Mouse softly crying at Tiny Tim's grave in Mickey's Christmas Carol is one of my favorite pieces of animation ever. It's up there with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

The fact that the short was traditional made it even better. It did do a thing I don't like: reused music and voices. But overall it was worth my time.

Of the two, I guess I found the preview funniest but D.I.Y. Duck was a great throwback to Disney, which is deader nowadays than any other style.