While I'm Thinking About It

While I'm Thinking About It

I've got "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" stuck in my head now.

My neices, three-year-old Norah and year-plus Lucy, love Mickey Mouse. Well, Norah might like Donald Duck better, but her question is always "Can I watch Mickey-Mouse?". They have a couple of Mickey DVD's, and a Donald DVD, the inexpensive impulse-purchase-priced editions that run ten bucks a pop for six cartoons.

The girls don't know Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, or the Road Runner yet, because the Vast Time-Warner Empire, in all their infinite wisdom, have not put out such discs. Nope, the only way to enjoy the classic Looney Tune/Merrie Melody* goodness is to shell out for the big fancy Golden Collection sets (or the slightly lesser, but still goofily-expensive Spotlight Collections). Disney has the big, fancy sets (and lots of them), but, it seems to me, they still realize the way to hook the adults is to get them as kids. Thus, the affordable mini-collections, which, unless I'm doing the math wrong, a complete set would cost more than two of the big sets.

That rambled a little more than I meant it to.

Yes, I do realize that there are some cheap discs out there with Bugs and Daffy and others (including Superman, but that's a whole other rant). Those DVDs you find at the Dollar Tree or up front by the registers at the Wal-Mart, but there is generally very little of the alleged title character, and lots of oddball filler instead. It's all public domain stuff on those discs, and while I generally love the concept of the Public Domain, there's a reason certain cartoons (even Bugs and Elmer Fudd stuff) were allowed to lapse. Those ain't the epitome of classic animation.

*On an odd little tangent, "Looney Tunes" was originally the series name for the stand-alone Warner Brothers cartoons. "Merrie Melodies" was home to the recurring characters. Funny how things change.