The Bugs Bunny Show — the one that began with Bugs and Daffy singing that wonderful "This Is It" tune — debuted on ABC prime-time in 1960 and later segued to Saturday morning. It was a pretty big hit in both venues…and I always thought that glorious opening had a lot to do with it.
In 1964, Warner Brothers took a package of old cartoons that had not been used on The Bugs Bunny Show and assembled them into a 26 episode series than ran on ABC, first on Saturday morning, then on Sunday morn. The cartoons were, of course, fine…but I remember at age 12 being disappointed with its opening titles. The song was forgettable and the animation looked cheap and wrong. Years later, I learned why. The Warner Brothers cartoon studio had just been dismantled so a deal had been made — presumably through ABC — to have the titles done by another company. The Hal Seeger Studio in New York was selected and…well, you can see that Porky, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam and the gang don't look or move the way they did in the heyday of Jones, McKimson and Freleng.
Shortly after this, the Seeger studio produced a fun series called Milton the Monster for ABC that was more in their ballpark. Dave Mackey, who's an expert on the company, has speculated that the Porky Pig Show titles represent the work of veteran animator Myron Waldman. I sure hope not — for reasons that will now become evident…
