No more gun for Elmer Fudd in HBO Max reboot of ‘Looney Tunes’ cartoon

Elmer Fudd has many means for cartoony violence and mayhem in HBO Max’s “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” the reboot of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons.

But the infamous rabbit hunter will not be blasting his cartoon rifle.

Like all characters on the throwback animated series that started last week on HBO Max, Fudd will be gun-free. The new episodes harken back to the Looney Tunes, which had their peak in the 1940s and 1950s heyday, in every other way – filled with cartoonish dynamite explosions and intricate ACME-brand booby traps.

“We’re not doing guns,” Peter Browngardt, the series executive producer and showrunner, told the New York Times. ”But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in.”

As the Times explains, in one short “Dynamite Dance,” Elmer Fudd comes at Bugs Bunny with a deadly scythe, an attack stopped as the hare jams a stick of lit dynamite into Elmer’s mouth.

Over the course of the short animated video, the explosives get bigger as the rabbit jams dynamite in Elmer’s ears, on top of his bald head, and down his pants. The relentless assault moves from rowboat to unicycle to biplane.

Despite the lack of guns for Fudd, and characters like pistol-shooting Yosemite Sam, Browngardt vowed to keep to the original feel of the cartoons, considered some of the greatest in animated cartoon history.

“I always thought, ‘What if Warner Bros. had never stopped making ‘Looney Tunes’ cartoons?’” said Browngardt. “As much as we possibly could, we treated the production in that way.”

Nonetheless there was an outcry on social media about the lack of guns.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE THE NEW LOONEY TUNES CARTOONS *cough* which are actually great, go check them out *cough* WON’T LET ELMER FUDD USE A GUN,” wrote one Twitter user.