Daffy Duck and Egghead (Audience Elimination)

Blogger’s note: Unless otherwise noted, all the cartoons mentioned from here on out are available on the streaming service Tubi, thanks to Tubi acquiring almost all of the 1000 classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts (768 packed in 262 half-hour installments, to be exact, though this article from No Film School says 800) after HBO Max dropped them. The post “The Boob Tubi” already discussed this and has a full list of all the shorts Tubi has uploaded.

Director: Tex Avery

Summary: Picking up where “Porky’s Duck Hunt” left off, another hunter -- this time, Egghead (the Joe Penner-esque Elmer Fudd prototype that was in a lot of the earlier Warner Bros cartoons) tries his hand at hunting Daffy Duck…and, like Porky, fails, because this is the wacky Daffy he’s dealing with, not the later comic loser/greedy jerk Daffy.

Fun Fact(s): This is Daffy Duck’s first appearance in a color cartoon, as well as his first appearance in a Merrie Melodie short, and the first time he’s identified on-screen as “Daffy Duck.”

The Channel(s): The WB, Cartoon Network (USA feed only), Boomerang (USA feed only)

Part(s) Edited: When Egghead is in the marsh on the lookout for ducks, he sees the silhouette of a man getting up from his theater seat (remember: animated shorts used to be pre-feature film filler, just like newsreels, the live-action comedy shorts like The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Taxi Boys, and Our Gang/The Little Rascals; the older “sing-along with the organist” pieces, live-action B-movies that may not have been as popular as the A-films, but had their fans, and, of course, the trailers, which they used to call “Coming Attractions” and actually left something to viewers’ imaginations when it came to showing what to expect) and tells him to sit down. The man then gets up two more times. By the third time, Egghead blasts the man with his hunting rifle. The man goes down like a lead balloon and the cartoon resumes without incident. The WB and the American versions of Cartoon Network and Boomerang cut off after the second time Egghead tells the man to sit down, cutting Egghead shooting the man and the man dropping dead.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Just the fact that Cartoon Network and Boomerang also edited that scene. I understand The WB cutting it, since they normally did edit gunplay from their shorts. Cartoon Network and Boomerang were a bit more permissive in showing gunplay (at least in most of their WB cartoons. Their original programming and anime imports were different stories that I won’t go over here), but for every time Cartoon Network and Boomerang shows a full, uncut version of one of the Hunter’s Trilogy cartoons (which were butchered on most over-the-air channels in America during the 1980s and 1990s), you had cartoons like this that cut a man getting shot or something like “Peck Up Your Troubles,” “For Scent-imental Reasons” (from 2003 to 2010), or “Screwball Football” where the network cuts someone either intentionally or unintentionally putting a gun to their head and nearly getting shot (or that time “Buccaneer Bunny” actually left in Sam attempting suicide with a gun to his head after Bugs tells him “Dead men tell no tales,” yet the ending of “Ballot Box Bunny” wasn’t shown on either network uncut until 2011). Then there's the fact that “Rhapsody Rabbit” and “The Ducksters” weren't cut on Cartoon Network to remove a character onstage shooting an audience member for being annoying (The WB did cut “Rhapsody Rabbit” for that, so at least one channel stuck to its guns...so to speak). All of this is yet another example of the rampant hypocrisy and contradiction that seem to come part and parcel with censorship.

And I think it goes without saying that the cut is painfully obvious, as seen in the video below.

Video Comparison:

Availability Uncut: “Daffy Duck and Egghead” actually has a good run on home media. It was on three VHS tapes (Cartoon Moviestars: Daffy! from 1988, The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 2: Firsts from 1992, and Further Adventures of Daffy Duck from 1996), two laser discs (Cartoon Moviestars: Daffy! and Porky! from 1988 and The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Volume 1, Side 2, Firsts from 1991), two DVDs (Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 from 2005 and The Essential Daffy Duck from 2011), and one Blu-ray (Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault: Volume 1 from this year [2025]).

Is/Was It Available on Streaming: It’s currently part of Tubi’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies collection that came out in August of this year. And it is uncut and uncensored, with original titles restored.

‘Til next time…