Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Retro Review

     Back in ancient times, when I was but a boy. My parents had this massive burgundy van with a 13-inch picture tube television, a VCR and a Nintendo Entertainment System. See what I mean when I say ancient times? We used this van to go everywhere. One summer we drove all the way from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to New York, New York. We kept travel journals, played games, camped out, had family time and we watched a ton of movies. To this day I’m not sure how my parents handled driving so far with four rough boys causing a constant ruckus in the back seats.

In honor of National Siblings Day, I wanted to highlight a movie my brothers and I watched frequently as kids. That left a lot of options. “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey,” “Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters,” “The Transformers Movie,” “Pryde of the X-Men,” “The Brave Little Toaster” and just so many more. There were none that stood above this one though (Brave Little Toaster came pretty close), so I wanted to highly this special movie. Especially since it brings back memories of our own summer vacation.

I don’t know how many of you remember Tiny Toon Adventures, but it was another brilliant gift Paul Dini gave to my childhood. It was the next generation of Looney Tunes for kids whose parents grew up with the classic characters. It was all about fun and taught valuable lessons about friendship, self-mage and growing up. They were children who grew up idolizing their predecessors and The Looney Tunes were actually their teachers at “Acme Looniversity.” That’s how old the Looney Tunes are. My parents watched them as kids. Heck, Tiny Toon Adventures ended with its fifth season twenty years ago!

In the middle of this classic series that many have forgotten about was this feature length movie. It was a brilliant idea, because the show had always focused on showing what the gang was up to at school. This movie finally showed us what they all did during the summer. They all separated an went on their own adventures and everyone was shown on vacation.

Babs and Buster Bunny (no relation), in the midst of an overboard water fight, spent their time with the lazy Byron Basset floating down a river on an overturned table. They meet various creatures that hunger for rabbits and have to escape situation after situation to survive and they learn to rely on each other in tough situations. They get a Superman cameo and even bring back Banjo Possum, who ends up being a cast member for the rest of the series.

Plucky Duck begs his way into a trip with Hamton J. Pig’s family to HappyWorldLand, an amusement park like no other. The trip is very difficult, as Hamton’s family is both cheap and clueless. They pick up a hitchhiking serial killer who targets Plucky and barely get away with their lives even though only Plucky pays enough attention to see it. Once they finally arrive, the family rides the monorail around the park and then heads back home. It’s a very interesting commentary on how wanting something so badly can sometimes end in disappointment. Plucky’s covetous behavior gets him nowhere as usual.

The rest of the stories are much smaller. Fifi Lefume manages to get a date with her celebrity crush Johnny Pew. Fowlmouth finally convinces Shirley the Loon to let him take her to the movies. Elmyra Duff loses Furball and visit a nature park, terrorizing the animals there and Dizzy Devil can’t spin anymore because he sheds in the summer. The rest of the cast makes appearances, but they don’t get their own stories.

The commentaries are endless here. I’m sure watching this added to my personal morality, but I don’t think I realized it back then. This was when cartoons taught you things instead of just keeping children quiet. Every cartoon I can remember from my childhood was at least partially educational. Nowadays cartoon characters are just jackasses for the sake of enough laughs to sell big. I won’t say any names *cough, cough* Spongebob *cough, cough,* but there are so many that are super successful now, but seem to make children dumber and less socially appropriate. It all comes back to parenting though. What you let your kids watch and interact with is what shapes them into who they will become. It’s the simple laws of nurture.

I’m glad my parents cared about my future and I’m sure my brothers feel the same way. I only wish someone would remaster and rerelease this series so I can show it to the kids whose upbringings I contribute to. Unfortunately for now, the only video I could find was grainy and had terrible audio. It still brought back lots of pleasant memories and made me laugh after so many years. Oh, the feels!

Jonathan Jones

Jonathan Thomas Jones is a speculative fiction author and founder of geekhavenreviews.com. He has been passionate about all things geek for his entire life. See more about him at jonathanthomasjones.com and follow him on twitter @jtgloryjones.