A lifelong fan of cartoons, Steven Spielberg looked back to the Golden Age of the Warner Bros. Animation studio—creators of such venerable cartoon stars as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, and many more—to breathe life into Amblin’s first animated series, Tiny Toon Adventures. The half-hour animated series featured a cast of new Looney Toons borne of the DNA of Bugs and company, a gaggle of tiny, toon-y (and of course, a little looney) personalities including Buster and Babs Bunny, Plucky Duck, Hamilton the Pig, Elmyra, and a gang of crazy characters attending Acme Acres’ Looniversity.
Tiny Toon Adventures ran for three seasons, from 1990-1992. The series also led to more fun with the Tiny Toon characters in the feature-length Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation (1992) and the Halloween special Tiny Toon Night Ghoulery (1995), a playful homage to Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (1969-1973), the very television series Steven Spielberg cut his directing teeth on with episodes including his professional directing debut Eyes (starring Joan Crawford, no less).
A short-lived spin-off series featuring Plucky, The Plucky Duck Show, also aired in the autumn of 1992. That show was a repackaging of Plucky-centric shorts from Tiny Toon Adventures, although its premiere episode (out of a run of 13), was the original short The Return of Batduck, which itself would later be incorporated into the run of the main Tiny Toon Adventures series.
In 2020, Amblin announced a brand-new series with the Tiny Toon Adventures gang, Tiny Toons Looniversity, was in development for HBO Max† and the Cartoon Network.
† No relation to Montana Max.
