Looney Tunes Collector's Vault Vol. 2 (Blu-Ray Review)

 I just received my copy of the newly released Looney Tunes Collector's Vault: Vol. 3 a few days ago. I'm still working my way through it, but personal life commitments have gotten in the way of me finishing the set. The review will be up in a few days, but in the meantime here's my review of Collector's Vault: Vol. 2 from back in April 30.

Overall… Looney Tunes Collector's Vault: Vol. 2 is REALLY GOOD, and MUCH BETTER than the admittedly somewhat disappointing, (but still worth buying) Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology set.

If you’ve bought the previous Collector’s Choice / Vault volumes, you pretty much know what to expect.

Disc 1 contains 26 cartoons (Warner Archive added an extra cartoon for the accidental double dip on the previous volume) that have never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray before.

The overall selection of cartoons on this disc is REALLY GOOD – and contains most of the ones I personally would’ve picked for this set. There are cartoons on here that I’ve been WAITING for Warner Archive to be released ever since the first volume of Collector’s Choice. My favourites on this set include, A-Lad in His Lamp (1948), Ain’t That Ducky (1945), Boston Quackie (1958), The Daffy Duckaroo (1942), Dr. Jerkyl's Hide (1954), The EGGcited Rooster (1952), Fastest with the Mostest (1960), I Taw a Putty Tat (1948), A Street Cat Named Sylvester (1953) and To Itch His Own  (1958).

There’s also a lot more politically incorrect cartoons than on the previous volumes: most notably The Daffy Duckaroo (which has never been on ANY home video format before) with its Native American stereotypes, the aforementioned A-Lad-In His Lamp with it's depiction of Arabs, and the blackface gags Ain’t That Duck and I Taw a Putty Tat.

For this reason this is the first Collector’s Choice / Vault volume to use the standard “products of their time” disclaimer at the beginning of each disc. Some people have “criticised” this (despite the fact WB has been issuing disclaimers like this on their animation releases for almost 20 years), but honestly I think it’s good, since it shows the WB is finally loosening their standards. I honestly think I should've done it a lot sooner, so we could’ve gotten more politically incorrect cartoons out - I don’t know why the previous volumes of Collector’s Choice / Vault were avoiding them.

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather sit through for a 15-second disclaimer and have a beautifully restored, uncut print of The Daffy Duckaroo - than have it either censored or not released at all like it had been for the past 40 years.

The only downside to this selection on Disc 1, is that they may have blown their load a bit too early, and they probably should’ve saved some of these cartoons – like Pests in Guest, Sock a Doodle Doo, Woollen Under Where and Zoom at the Top – for Volume 3. Now that all the 24 Chuck Jones Road Runners have been released – we’re officially out of GOOD unreleased Road Runner cartoons. Does that mean on future volumes we’re going to the handful of unreleased DePatie-Freleng Road Runners…. UGH!

Overall, the restoration quality is REALLY GOOD – for the most part. Four of these cartoons were specifically restored by Warner Archive for this collection: A-Lad-In His Lamp (1948), Ain’t That Ducky (1945), The Daffy Duckaroo (1942) and I Taw a Putty Tat (1948). They’re all up to Warner Archive’s usual level of excellence. ESPECIALLY I Taw a Putty Tat. That cartoon has looked like total garbage for decades but now looks FANTASTIC!

The rest of the cartoons on Disc 1 were made for HBO Max back in 2020 - and are not too far behind in terms of restoration quality. The only downside to these transfers is that Max decided to recreate and extend their opening titles in Photoshop, for some un-Godly reason. To their credit, Warner Archive with their Collector’s Choice / Vault releases have TRIED their best to crop out these abominations… but on this Volume they seem to have got a little bit lackadaisical.

There are five cartoons on this set: The Bird Came C.O.D (1942), Bone Sweet Bone (1948), Boulevardier from the Bronx (1936), The EGGcited Rooster (1952) and Little Blabbermouse (1940) - which don’t seem to have their bad Photoshopped titles cropped at all. The most egregious of these is Boulevardier from the Bronx - since the cartoon is noteworthy for being the first Merrie Melody to use the iconic “Merrily We Roll Along” theme… and the fact that opening has been massacred REALLY stings.

There’s only one other minor restoration gripe on Disc 1: as great as the restorations of both Bone Sweet Bone and I Taw a Putty Tat look - unfortunately they do still use their Blue-Ribbon re-issue titles. Normally I wouldn’t complain about this, since for most cartoons the Blue-Ribbon re-issues are the only versions still in existence, and there’s not much they can do to fix that - but for these two very specific cartoons, their original titles ARE KNOWN TO EXIST. 

Hell, the version of Bone Sweet Bone on the old Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdiscs HAD its original titles, I don’t know why they couldn’t have just restored them for this release. Sure, the restoration for that cartoon was done by HBO Max, but so was Hobo Bobo (1947) which Max originally restored with its Blue-Ribbon titles, but Warner Archive reinstated the original credits on Collector’s Choice: Vol. 3. Why couldn’t they just do that for Bone Sweet Bone?

Maybe there were problems with the materials for these opening title sequences. If so, it would’ve been nice if the curators of this set - Jerry Beck and George Feltenstein - would’ve explained this when they appeared on The Extras podcast. Instead, Tim Millard just made a passive-aggressive remark at the end of the show about “...somebody else who thinks they can just a critic of everything these two gentlemen do.” (Which may or may not have been a swipe at me).

Anyway, these are mostly minor issues – and only on the opening titles. All the cartoons themselves look perfectly fine.

As for the second disc, it’s mostly double-dips from the previous Golden Collection and Super Stars’ DVD sets – making their Blu-Ray debut. They’re pretty much the same transfers from those sets – which range from Good to Excellent. They even seem to have slight quality improvements on the cartoons Mouse Menace (1946) and The Pest That Came to Dinner (1947).

Like the recent Tom and Jerry Blu-Ray, Warner Archive does seem to have applied a bit of unnecessary grain reduction to a few of these cartoons, but it’s nowhere near as egregious as it is on that set. It’s barely noticeable and thankfully (like the T&J set) doesn’t remove any linework or animation, at least as far as I can tell. The only cartoon that DOES seem to be affected by digital noise reduction is Frigid Hare, but to be fair that was also present on the print made for the Golden Collection: Vol. 1 DVD back in 2003. It would’ve been nice if they fixed it, but it’s probably baked into the master at this point.

The most notable cartoon on Disc 2 is Hop and Go (1943). This cartoon was technically released on Vol. 6 of the Golden Collection DVDs, but only as an unrestored extra. Here they present the HBO Max restoration (albeit with the audio error from the DVD FINALLY FIXED) - meaning this set has a total of 27 previously unreleased cartoons in restored form.

One of the few criticisms I (and others) had towards the first Collector’s Vault volume is that - is that while the second disc contained many cartoons from the Golden Collection DVDs, they didn’t port over any of their associated bonus material. Thankfully they seem to have (partially) responded to that criticism, and carried over 5 excellent and informative audio commentary tracks from those sets.

While I appreciate this effort, unfortunately they seemed to have only gone half-way since there’s three audio commentaries they didn’t carry over: Claws for Alarm, To Beep or Not to Beep and Whoa Be, Gone! The commentary for Claws for Alarm may have been left off because it was co-hosted by the now-disgraced Ren and Stimpy creator John K. (but IMO still should be included for completionism sake) but the other two commentaries by Greg Ford had no reason to be excluded.

In addition they also didn’t carry over any of the excellent Music-Only Tracks - which I think should’ve also been included. Plus (and I know this is a bit of a nit-pick) - but the commentaries don’t have a ‘Play All’ button and you have to individually select each one.

Anyway, these are mostly minor complaints - this set is still VERY GOOD. The reason I bring up these criticisms is in order for them to improve in the future, and to their credit, Jerry and George seem to be responding to criticisms with the previous volume.

With Volume 3 now out, let's hope we get a Volume 4. I hope Warner Archive keep making these Collector’s Vault sets for however long Warner Archive continues to exist (sigh….)

[Looney Tunes Collector's Vault Vol. 2 is available to purchase on Amazon and MovieZyng]