WB execs hate Porky?

[speedy fast]

Somehow I'm not surprised. He's hardly in Looney Tunes: Collectors Alert!, he's not a playable character in Looney Tunes Racing, he's hardly in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he's not in Baby Looney Tunes at all (though Petunia is).

Porky has been ignored/maligned for decades. Take another look at the original Bugs Bunny Show opening and see who's NOT part of the roster...

I've always noticed that (on the early Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show opening).

[J. B. Warner]

Don't you people know better than to take the word of a Spumco alumnus at face value?

But if it's on TV Tropes, it must be true!

[larriva9/11]

You know, it's strange... I was thinking about Porky Pig just today, and about how, throughout his pen and ink "career", the staff at WB appear to have not really known what to do with him.

Maybe because his sole raison d'etre in the beginning was as WB's "flagship character"--though his ironic morph over a generation into WB's ultimate secondary/sidekick character says a lot about how they made the most of an awkward circumstance. Whatever the case, he was never allowed to sink into being a bland cipher...

[J. J. Hunsecker]

WB has never by any means hated Porky Pig, the directors just got sick of him after a while. Porky pig was the single most popular WB cartoon character in late 30's and at that time, they were making alot of PP cartoons, that is untill Bugs Bunny came in and somewhat "pushed" him out of the spotlight. Because of that, the number of single Porky Pig cartoons being made each year started to decrease as the directors starting focusing on Bugs as well as creating and developing there own characters.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Clampett was quoted to saying he got sick of the character after making so many Porky Pig cartoons in his B&W LT unit (Almost all of the films he made in that unit were PP cartoons).

The original post was about present day executives at Warners, and their apparent antipathy towards Porky, not about the directors of the past. I wonder if it has anything to do with Porky's stutter, in that it might render him politically incorrect with today's more fearful executives? Just speculation on my part.

[zavkram]

The original post was about present day executives at Warners, and their apparent antipathy towards Porky, not about the directors of the past. I wonder if it has anything to do with Porky's stutter, in that it might render him politically incorrect with today's more fearful executives? Just speculation on my part.

That actually reminds me of the backlash following the release of the live-action version of "Mr. Magoo", starring Leslie Nielsen. There was a newspaper or magazine article about a woman, who was legally-blind and who reportedly tried to launch a class-action suit against the film's producers because it poked fun at visually-impaired people.

Apparently this woman had been ridiculed by classmates, when she was little, about her affliction and had actually been called, "Mr. Magoo" by them.

As sad as her situation may have been (kids can be so cruel); she was really missing the point of the character. The character was originally based on a relative of one of the UPA staff and was more crotchety than anything else... the near-sightedness was played up for comical effect in the theatrical shorts, of course, but Magoo was a three-dimensional character (look at his reaction near the end of "Fuddy-Duddy Buddy").

Porky Pig, so the story goes, was based on a real-life person, a staff member, who just happened to have a speech-impediment... It wasn't Leon Schlesinger, was it? I thought he had a lisp that was parodied by Daffy Duck.

On a side note: actor Joe Pesci apparently does a good impression of Porky Pig. One time, when he was a guest on "Late Night with Conan O' Brian", he played a recording that he had done years before in which he speaks (or sings) in the character's voice.

[Brandon Panther]

Porky Pig, so the story goes, was based on a real-life person, a staff member, who just happened to have a speech-impediment... It wasn't Leon Schlesinger, was it? I thought he had a lisp that was parodied by Daffy Duck.

Freleng never said if Porky's stutter was based on anyone in real life, that I know of. In an interview from the late 80s, or 1990, he said he gave Porky a stutter, simply to try something different, as most other cartoons during that period had voices that were trying to be falsetto like Mickey Mouse.

[speedy fast]

I don't know how long the supposed studio hatred has gone on for, but I wonder if this might explain the lack of Porky Pig VHS releases after 1991. I don't know if the existing Porky videos sold less than some of the more major ones, or if it was something else. I think that pretty much every Porky Pig cartoon in color was released by then, but Warner Home Video did release a few computer colorized cartoons on VHS during the 1990s, and quite a few video releases from the late-1990s featured previously-released cartoons (especially two of the Road Runner videos). Still, if they made a new Porky Pig short in the 1990s, I wonder if it would have headlined a Porky Pig video like some of the other 1990s shorts did for their main characters or themes.

Also, there was only one Porky Pig video game. I don't know if it's just hard to think of video game ideas for Porky or what, though I think a game based on "Porky in Wackyland" would have worked.

[looneyboy]

I think WB just likes to pretend the pre-48 and post-64 cartoons don't exist, and that all Looney Tunes were drawn in the 1948-1953 Jones style, including characters who never appeared in Jones' cartoons and characters who were created after 1953.

[Mr. Semaj]

I think WB just likes to pretend the pre-48 and post-64 cartoons don't exist,

Maybe...

[captchucky]

I don't think that the current execs care that much about Porky. But, if they saw all the old cartoons (which will never happen, because they don't care that much) they would rather approve Porky merchandise over Bosko merchandise.