Taz-Mania

[Avaitor]

So we got all of Animaniacs on DVD recently (Wakko's Wish aside), we're about to get all of Tiny Toons, and we recently got the first season of Duck Dodgers out. Apparently this is coming out on DVD too.

Any fans on here?

[Spark Of Spirit]

I haven't seen this in... wow, a looong time. I remember almost nothing about it.

It's nice it's getting released though, now all the GOOD Silver Age stuff is getting released. ( )

[Avaitor]

I have to admit, I've never been a fan of this one. Taz just never did much for me.

Dig the theme song though. Yep, that's Jess Harnell.

[Daikun]

Does anyone remember that service that AOL had a few years back called In2TV? AOL thought they would stream some of their Time Warner stuff since they were merged with them at the time, so they streamed a bunch of movies and TV shows from the T-W library.

Taz-Mania was one of the shows they streamed on that service, and I thought I'd revisit it after not seeing it for so long since I saw it on Fox Kids.

I think it's actually pretty decent. It's not as great as WB's other Silver Age stuff from that era, but it was still decent.

It's nice to see that WB is finally bringing this show out of the vault. It remained in obscurity for too long; it didn't even air reruns on Kids' WB! when all their other Fox Kids shows migrated.

[Silverstar]

Taz-Mania was an ambitious effort, and Art Vitello and Warner Bros. really tried with this show, but there were always a couple of inherent problems which prevented me from really getting into it:

1. The Tasmanian Devil, as awesome as he is, is just too 1-dimensional to headline an entire series. When you get down to it, Taz is just a feral eating machine. He's a great wacky neighbor (or a crazy pet like he is on The Looney Tunes Show) but he just doesn't have what it takes to carry an entire show on his own. The producers had to rely heavily on the other characters and inside jokes to carry the show, which brings me to my next issue with Taz-Mania...

2. As the show progressed, it began to get too self-referential for its' own good. The characters began breaking the 4th wall all the time, with some entire stories being built around the fact that the characters knew they were just characters in a TV show. It became less a show about Taz in the outback as it was an animated version of It's Gary Shandling's Show.

[Daikun]

Taz-Mania is airing on Boomerang for the first time next week.

Wow. The network is actually doing something for the first time in years.
I certainly didn't expect them to air this show, either--I just thought they would let it languish on their now-dormant streaming service.

[Avaitor]

They've really been utilizing their library, arguably more than the app did. Hell, I think Jabberjaw is going to air during Shark Week!