The Animators Were Drunk

I was born in the 1980's but most of my memories start around 1990. And unless you weren't around or an idiot, the 1990s had the best cartoons ever! You didn't realize it at the time because if you were like me, it was a cartoon and any cartoon was a good cartoon. But as you got older and with the advent of YouTube, you realized how amazing shows like Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, Gargoyles and Pinky and the Brain were better than most of the stuff we've got today. Plus, you finally got some of the jokes you wouldn't get when you were four years old.

However one of the first cartoons I can remember watching was Tiny Toon Adventures, another beloved gem from the 1990s. This morning at around 5:30 (Shut up, I work odd hours and I have even odder hours when I'm not working), I was stumbling around YouTube looking for obscure videos when I saw a link to a video declaring itself to be a banned episode of Tiny Toon Adventures.

One of the many contributing factors of me being the man-child I am today

I clicked on it, expecting it to be a bad dubbing hoping to catch a little bit of notoriety like the guys who made The Juggernaut Bitch! but it turns out that no, what I'm seeing is real. A segment called One Beer where Buster, Plucky and Hamton find a bottle of beer, drink it and spend the rest of the episode totally wasted actually aired back in 1991.

I'm not kidding. Buster even says at one point, "Are we wasted or what? HAAAA!", which I find funny simply because it's a blue rabbit with a duck and a pig admitting they're drunk and also because Buster's line has become my younger sister's catchphrase.

What I also find hilarious is that it's clearly stated that this is the only beer that they've had. I mean, yeah, I'm a lightweight but holy hell, one beer, split between three cartoon animals and suddenly they make Amy Winehouse look like...uh, you know what, they're not as drunk as Amy Winehouse.

After Tiny Toons went off the air, Buster Bunny partied hard with Robert Downey Jr until an accidental overdose took his life in 2001

So you might be thinking, "OK, they get drunk, learn how damaging alcohol can be to their bodies and minds and in the end they vow never to drink again", right?
Wrong!
Instead, our heroes decide that they need to make life a lot more exciting by stealing a police car and pulling a DWI. Yeah, they're still drunk after splitting one bottle of beer three-ways and decide to steal a police car.

Why can't we have more cartoons like this? I'm not joking, air it in prime time and have all the stars of Tiny Toons just acting like total assholes, stealing cars, getting drunk, picking fights with people smaller than them. Why the hell isn't anyone making this a reality yet?

Plucky Duck made a decent living as an amateur photographer, however nothing could help his gambling addiction. He was later executed by a loan shark for failing to make payment

By now you're thinking, "OK, they steal a car, go on a high speed chase OJ style, get arrested and learn the evils of alcohol, right...right?"
Well if by that you mean they drive up a spiralling road and then fly off the edge to their deaths...then yeah, that's exactly what happens.

So, Buster, Plucky and Hamton are dead...or are they?
No, of course not. It turns out that they were just filming a sketch for the show...sorta like breaking the fourth wall. It turns out the whole episode dealt with PSA-ish type sketches including illiteracy and bullying.

After years of dealing with obesity and depression, Hamton J. Pig finally snapped and robbed a bank in 1997. He was later arrested and is currently serving 20 to life.

Naturally concerned parents freaked out because now children were watching their favourite cartoon characters get plastered and eventually kill themselves, so it was never aired again in the United States. So let's get this straight, we can show people getting hit with blunt objects which would cause severe brain damage and survivng explosions every other episode but once we show someone drinking, that's a step too far?

I don't see the harm in that segment and personally find it funny. It's not preachy, beating you over the head with it's message. Although to be fair, they should have warned kids not to start drinking until they were in high school and could get a fake ID.

And that last sentence is another reason why I should not be allowed to have children.