Poe's Saturday Cartoon and Flashback: Robot Rabbit (1953)

Waking up on Saturday morning as a kid used to be a ritual for children who grew up in the 70s and 80s. First, you make sure the folks were still in bed, second, you grab your cereal and milk (hopefully it was a sugar cereal like Froot Loops or Sugar Smacks) and finally you settle down in front of the television for a morning of cartoons! And no cartoon show was more fun than the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner show on CBS. Kids knew they were in for a whopping 90 minutes of good times as soon as Bugs and Daffy busted into "This Is It", followed by Bugs introducing his fast feathered friend: The Road Runner. Other cartoons produced exclusively for Saturday morning could be fun, but none touched the greatness of this collection of old Warner Brothers shorts.

Today's cartoon is a 1953 Bugs Bunny short entitled Robot Rabbit. It features Bugs in another one of his long running battles with Elmer Fudd. Directed by the great Friz Freleng, the short is one of the few Freleng cartoons to have a science fiction theme. Friz wasn't a fan of pitting Bugs against Elmer, thus his reason for creating Yosemite Sam. He always felt that Elmer was too dumb to butt heads with Bugs and that the rabbit came across as a bully when heckling him. With that being said, all of his Bugs/Elmer cartoons are still incredibly funny, this short being no exception. Try not to laugh out loud at the bit with the donkey. Enjoy!