Cartoon Propaganda

Back in the early 1990s, Warner Brothers ran a new cartoon series called Tiny Toon Adventures, and it was presented by Stephen Spielberg. Instead of the iconic Warner Brothers cartoon characters, they featured their nephews, Buster Bunny, Plucky Duck and Hampton J. Pig, among many others.

There were 98 episodes done over three seasons from 1990-92, with the animation done by seven different studios. Some were of middling humor, though the animation quality was often less than stellar. Few, if any, ever came close to the earlier Warner Brothers cartoons prior to 1964.

Episode #68 from the 2nd season was animated by AKOM in South Korea (famous for animating The Simpsons) and was called Elephant Issues. It aired only once in the U.S. (on September 18, 1991) and was thereafter banned. I’m not entirely sure why, though the last of three segments is a horrible piece of anti-alcohol propaganda called “One Beer.” At the YouTube page where it was posted, RayOfHope612 gave only the following information:

This is a banned cartoon from the banned episode, Elephant Issues. It’s about the dangers of alcohol. This cartoon was only shown once in America, when it first aired, afterwards, it was never shown again on TV in America in later channels like Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network.

But watch it for yourself and see if you can spot the propaganda.

Their descent into madness is swift indeed, taking no more than the first slug of beer to turn them into complete degenerates. And curiously, throughout the entire episode that “one beer” lasts all three of them, meaning 4 oz. per person was all it took to get them drunk and keep them that way. So drunk, in fact, that they steal a police car, drive off a cliff and actually die. How subtle. What a great message for kids. And so honest, too. This should keep the wee ones off the sauce. Reefer Madness redone for the toddler set, ’cause they’re the age group at risk. WTF?!? Anybody have a theological take on why after committing so many “sins” they still got their wings and went up to heaven?