Believe It, or Else (Berth Defects)

 

Director(s): Tex Avery (credited as “Fred Avery”)

Summary: A spoof of Ripley’s Believe it or Not, where viewers get to see strange and unexplained phenomena from around the world, from a man who speaks in moos after drinking nothing but milk to a wishing well in Arabia that’s not exactly helpful to a matchstick optical illusion that gets complicated. All the while, Egghead (which, according to the Looney Tunes Fandom wiki is a prototype version of Elmer Fudd) makes his skepticism known by carrying a sign that says, “I Don’t Believe It!” (despite that he’s able to ride in Buck Dodgers’ spaceship camper trailer and somehow survives getting sawed in half).

Fun Facts: 

• This is the last cartoon where the Egghead incarnation of Elmer Fudd was voiced by Danny Webb (“Elmer’s Candid Camera” would have Arthur Q. Bryan voice Elmer until Bryan died in the late 1950s).

• Buck Rogers is an actual pulp space adventure series and character. In the days before Star Wars and Star Trek, this was the space adventure series that was everywhere, whether people liked it or not. There’s even a Looney Tunes parody of it. You probably know it: “Duck Dodgers in the 24th-1/2 Century” (Buck Rogers was the 25th century) from 1953. Here, Buck Rogers is called Buck Dodgers (eh, close enough...)

Sorry, no “Letterboxd Says the Darndest Things” this time. The reviews weren’t funny or interesting enough for me to cut in...

The Channel(s): Cartoon Network, Boomerang, MeTV, and Tubi

Part(s) Edited: The entire scene of “the berth of a baby” (as in “a crying baby in a train car”) was cut because the two people who pull back the curtains just happen to be stereotypically black train porters.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): This simultaneously doesn’t grind my gears and does. It doesn’t grind my gears because this is one of those spot-gag cartoons that are just a flimsy excuse to show as many cheesy visual jokes and scenes that feel like a Family Guy-style cutaway joke with no set-up (in the days before Seth MacFarlane was even conceived) as possible, and cutting a scene like that isn’t going to ruin the flow of the cartoon. 

So what does grind my gears about this edit? That the censors chose to simply cut the scene. That’s not how you make memorably bad censorship cuts on TV. If it were me, I’d replace the scene of the black porters parting the curtains with a black screen (or freeze-framed the green curtains, then dissolved onto the crying baby). In fact, I did the former hypothetical edit just because I could (and because my first plan to crop the shot to get rid of the black porters didn’t work as well as I thought it would. I also was considering digitally removing the porters with AI editing, but the last time I used AI-based digital removal, it made the Toilet Duck scene from Father Ted look stranger than usual. I’m still learning all this AI stuff because it’s better than ignoring or protesting against it):

The blackout edit would make people think their television blew out or that there are technical difficulties on the station’s end. I’d much rather have that, since that can easily be turned into a meme or discussed as a collective childhood memory for 1990s kids online.

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: Outlook not so good. As of this writing, the only way you can see this uncut legally is on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laser disc from 1992 (volume three, side eight: “The Evolution of Egghead”).

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: Good news: It’s currently on Tubi. Bad news: They somehow managed to upload the edited version instead of the uncut version, or better yet, just omit it, since Tubi doesn’t show a lot of the WB cartoons that have been phased out due to outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes. Worse news: It’s not available anywhere beyond that.

 

‘Til next time: Stay Looney and Be Merrie!

A Day at the Zoo (I Picked a Bad Day to Start Smoking)

Before I begin, I want to apologize, because this was supposed to be before “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (Clan of the Cave Duck),” not after. It was an oversight on my part. Also, I'm not including "Porky's Movie Mystery," as that's part of a future post about cartoons with missing scenes that may or may not be because of censorship, and whose missing scenes are either lost to time or still out there, but not rediscovered yet.

Director(s): Tex Avery

Summary: A series of blackout gags centered around a day at the Kalama Zoo (Kalamazoo is actually a city in Michigan), where literal wolves are at a door, the elks are human men who are part of the social club of the same name, Polly the Parrot wants a short beer instead of a cracker, and Egghead (the Joe Penner-esque rough draft version of Elmer Fudd that was seen in “Daffy Duck and Egghead”) won’t stop teasing the lions.

Fun Facts:

- The 2023 movie adaptation of Five Nights at Freddy’s had a clip of this cartoon.

- Tex Avery once owned a nitrate cel of the original titles, which were auctioned on eBay in 2004. Sadly, they weren’t used when restored to Blu-ray.

- The original titles are said to be similar to the ones for “Hamateur Night.” 

- The 35-cent blue plate special advertised on the “Feeding Time” sign would be $8.11 in today’s money. The five cents extra for pie would now be $1.16. Together, that would be $9.27 instead of forty cents.

The Channel(s): TNT, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang

Part(s) Edited: A light, mellow, and satisfying one this go-around (if you’re into that. I don’t smoke, but I saw a lot of vintage cigarette ads as part of one of my college classes about post-World War II history, culture, and ephemera, so I do know how Madison Avenue liked to tout cigarettes in the days when they were considered glamorous). During the beginning showing the visual puns of different animals at the zoo, the shot of the “pack of camels” smoking cigarettes (shown between the “wolf at the door” and the “Greyhound bus”) was cut.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Nothing. Since this is one of those spot gag cartoons, it doesn’t make or break the plot. Yes, there’s a jump in the audio, but the many times I’ve seen the edited version, I hardly notice it. You can argue that this would tick off those who believe that the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons weren’t meant for children and getting rid of tobacco smoking (as well as alcohol drinking) in what are ostensibly adult cartoons is yet another example of major studios catering to younger audiences while screwing over the adults or trying to erase their past, and, yeah, you’d be right, but, as long as the edit isn’t painfully obvious or dumbs down the scene, makes it more problematic than it already is, or kills the joke, then it’s not that big of a deal.

Video Comparison:

Availability Uncut: Good news: this has been in the public domain in the United States since 1967, so you can watch it wherever fine public domain cartoons are released (either offline or online). Bad news: there aren’t many official releases of this short on home media. You have the 1992 release of the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laser disc (volume 3, side 8: “The Evolution of Egghead”) followed by a 33-year gap between that and the 2025 release of the Looney Tunes Collectors’ Vault Blu-ray (volume one, disc one), and that’s it for the physical home media releases.

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: As of 2026, “A Day at the Zoo” is available on Tubi as part of the 700 to 800 Warner Bros. shorts uploaded to the platform. Prior to that, it wasn’t available on any official streaming or digital download platform, which is strange to me. Outside of the Camel cigarette joke, there’s nothing problematic about it in terms of racist caricatures or anything else that would be considered “politically incorrect.” Wonder why this got skipped? Anyway, that’s a question for another day.

‘Til next time, stay Looney and be Merrie.

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…