The Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon TV Show Opening (1988)
credits unknown
No, it isn't a cartoon. I didn't even feature any new animation, aside from some superimposed logos and a neat special effect at the beginning. It's only 20 seconds long. But it IS one of the best TV show intros for a Looney Tunes program ever created...at least in this author's opinion. The theme music is actually not the 'Looney Tunes" theme, "The Merry Go Round Broke Down", but the Merrie Melodies tune "Merrily We Roll Along" (most people identify that one more easily for some reason.) But this rendition of it is extremely unusual...it appears to be human vocal effects sped up and edited to sound like really zany, rapid-fire music. Then, an announcer exclaims, "It's Looney Tunes, on Nickelodeon!" followed by a strange noise and a zoom in. As it plays, we're taken through a series of clips, each with a funny "Nickelodeon" image placed in it. A "Nickelodeon" pencil draws Daffy Duck ("Duck Amuck"), Bugs finds 'Nickelodeon" gold ("Barbary Coast Bunny"), Bosko dances in front of a Nick logo curtain (" Bosko In Person"), Foghorn Leghorn floats down on a "Nickelodeon" umbrella ("The Dixie Fryer"), Sylvester sees a "Nickelodeon" flying saucer ("Claws For Alarm"), Elmer Fudd tries to chop down a "Nickelodeon" sunflower ("Each Dawn I Crow"), and Wile E. Coyote gets slammed by a huge "Nickelodeon" boulder. Finally, we see Sylvester and Junior eating Nickelodeon popcorn on an orange couch, watching their TV, which the camera zooms in on just as the announcer says "Now it's time for the show!"
There are other unique qualities about this opening, too. It was the only Looney Tunes TV show to ever feature Bosko in the opening. This is a wild speculation only, but it also appears to have partly inspired the Nickelodeon channel's idea of the 'big orange couch', a tradition they used for years as their logo for the Saturday night programming block called "Snick"...Sylvester and Junior sit on a couch in reused animation from either "Claws in the Lease" or "Fish and Slips"...their couch and popcorn are superimposed orange, with "Nickelodeon" written on the popcorn bucket.
Around 1994, when Nickelodeon remodeled the show, a new opening was added, and though fun, it just didn't have the same charm. So this opening is now essentially lost...it has not been seen on TV in nearly ten years, and there is no hope of ever seeing it again, because Nickelodeon stopped airing WB cartoons in 1999. Anyway, whoever did create this opening cared, and they did a great job. A toast, to the people who made this...whoever they are! It's my favorite opening!
