Daffy Duck made his first appearance in 1937 and became one of the most popular Looney Tunes in the years that followed. Still a Tune today, and one of my favorites, Daffy’s zany, crazy nature garners new fans generation after generation. That first cartoon, in which he gave Porky Pig such a hard time on his first duck hunt, introduced the world to the unpredictable insanity that would define Daffy over the course of several decades. His character began to change in the decades to come, though, largely due to the booming success of Bugs. This Essential set includes a few cartoons of this later era as well.
The complete list of cartoons in this two disc set are as follows:
Disc 1:
Porky’s Duck Hunt
Daffy Duck and Egghead
The Daffy Doc
Plane Daffy
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
Nasty Quacks
Book Revue
Duck Amuck
Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century
The Scarlet Pumpernickel
My Little Duckaroo
A Star is Bored
Deduce, You Say
Ali Baba Bunny
Robin Hood Daffy
Disc 2:
The Duxorcist
The Night of the Living Duck
Duck Dodgers Jr.
Superior Duck
Duck Dodgers in Attack of the Drones
The Green Loonturn
I have seen most of these numerous times and the best of them (Plane Daffy, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, Robin Hood Daffy, etc) are timeless gems that are still entertaining and funny today. Others, like Book Revue, are decent. Overall, the episode selection isn’t bad, but it would have been nice to see a much larger or complete collection of Daffy. Granted, this would increase the price of the set, but if it were a complete collection from 1937-1990, for example, I think Daffy fans would go daffy for that.
That said, both discs contains English and Spanish spoken audio, with English, Spanish, and French subtitles. Image quality varies slightly from the different decades of cartoons, but is most certainly acceptable. Extra features are contained solely on the second disc and shape up like this:
-Daffy Duck: Ridicule Is the Burden of Genius (24m) – This is actually a new feature made for this set. It’s full of scenes from a variety of Daffy cartoons. While light-hearted, it does include some documentary elements about Daffy’s origins and his career over the years.
-Daffy Duck’s Easter Special (24m25s) – Daffy and other Tunes are featured in this special Easter program. Foghorn Leghorn, one of my other all time favorites, is also part of the fun.
-Daffy Duck’s Thanks-for-Giving Special (23m26s) – A good cartoon about Daffy going into his boss’ office, wanting to make a Thanksgiving piece. Lots of clips from previous Daffy cartoons are shown as Daffy tries to tell his boss that he deserves a chance to make such a show.
-Daffy Duck for President (4m22s) – A short cartoon in which Daffy runs for President.
To the summary…