Tiny Toons Looniversity - Season 2

Stream on HBO Max

Runtime: Ten 23 Minute Episodes and two 42 minute “special” episodes

Rated TV-PG

Bugs, Babs, Hamton, Plucky, Sweetums, and the gang return for season two! This season introduces Elmyra, who was noticeably absent from the first season. If you grew up with the original show, you’ll quickly notice that Emyra is a bit different in this one. She is an animal photographer, instead of a kid who kidnaps animals and forces them to become her pet…sometimes to lethal ends. She now finds ways to manipulate animals into letting her take photos of them.

Themes: 

College life, roommates, art, animal photography, the big city, always being the person that takes the pictures, ACME, picture day, pimples, bad hair days, being honest, self discovery, yearbook, space travel, classes, video game addiction, homesickness, twins, fame, memes, secret societies, pledge week, fears, weak ankles, monarchies, and sight gags.

Language:  “I came here to eat bird seed and kick butt, but I’m all out of seed.”

Minor name-calling, such as ding-dong doodle-heads.

Typical exclamations of Daggum, dang, and jeez.

Stuff to be aware of:

‍ ‍Grossiness - Hampton pukes multiple times in episode one, but you only see him with his head in a trash can. Babs gets a pimple (that talks), and she tries to pop it. In episode three, there are some evil aliens that have heads that look like brains, similar to the aliens in Mars Attacks.

In episode six, a character turns into a mosquito, but all of his parts aren’t transformed. He kind of looks like a half-pig, half-bug with slime.

‍ ‍Scary - Episode six is a spoof of campfire-style horror story anthologies. In this episode, there are characters that act like zombies, with yellow eyes and sharp teeth, words spelled in blood-looking letters, close-up shots of characters with bloodshot eyes, giant evil mosquitoes,

‍ ‍Sexual - A pigeon construction worker makes comments on different parts of the character’s physical features (like their ears) and gets flak about it. One example is, “you ain’t seen ears like these before.” There is some typical Looney Tunes cross-dressing here and there. Some aliens talk about a friend of theirs who gets married, divorced, and married again. One character mentions, “that cold water must have felt pretty good on your buns.” The response is, “Don’t talk about my buns!”

In episode eight, a male character kisses the hand of a female character.

‍ ‍Other - In episode six, one character mentions that they love to “pee outside.”

Overall:  “Maybe, no, yes…”

Seeing It With Your Family

You won’t find much different in this season than the first.

What I Thought

‍ ‍Tiny Toons Looniversity finds its groove a bit more in its second season. The humor lands more consistently, the puns are stronger, and I found myself laughing out loud a few times. While I'm still not a fan of Hamton's voice, the rest of the cast does an excellent job bringing these classic characters to life.

A personal highlight of the season is the appearance of one of my favorite Looney Tunes characters, Marvin the Martian. However, one of my biggest complaints is that many of the supporting Tiny Toons receive very little screen time. That's great if you're primarily invested in the five main characters, but fans of characters like Furball, Dizzy, Little Beeper, Calamity, and others may come away disappointed.

Part of the issue is the show's full-length episode format. Unlike the original series, which featured multiple cartoon shorts in each episode, Looniversity focuses on a single story. As a result, there's less opportunity for the larger cast to shine, and the series ends up feeling more like a modern animated sitcom than the fast-paced, variety-style cartoon that made the original Tiny Toon Adventures so memorable.

There's certainly fun to be had with this reboot, and season two is an improvement over the first. Still, it never quite captures the charm, energy, or creativity that made the original series such a classic.