There are dozens of Looney Tunes DVDs and Blu-Rays for sale. Warner Bros has released four "Collections" that contain some unique episodes but contain a majority of dupliates. Some individual compendiums are 100% duplicates of existing sets, while some have unique episodes. Unfortunately, Warner Bros hasn't provided a guide on how to maximize the Bugs Bunny for your buck. So, what's the best way to acquire all of the Looney Tunes episodes available on DVD today?

Fortunately, Wikipedia editors have built episode lists! Episode lists for each DVD were scraped from Wikipedia and analyzed with Python. A CSV (tab-delimited) file containing the scraped content is available here with sample code at the end of this post.

The following were excluded from this review:

DVDs that were only TV specials containing mixes of clips and not full episodes (Cupid Capers)

DVD releases that were explicity subsets ("and Friends", "Center Stage", "Showcase: Volume 1", "28 Cartoon Classics Premiere Edition", etc)

"New" episodes (Looney Tunes Reality Check, Taz-Mania, etc) not from the "classic" 1930-1969 runs

TV Specials were treated as a single episode when included as an extra feature

Porky Pig 101 which contains 99 black and white and 2 Technicolor Porky the Pig episodes

Note: No attempt was made to catalog full vs wide screen episodes. Some, but not all, of the episodes in the Super Stars Collection were improperly cropped. Some, but not all, of the skewed episodes were fixed and rereleased in the Platinu

Summary : There are 548 unique episodes available on disc (and over 500 that are not). The Golden Collection and 7 of the 8 DVDs from the Super Stars Collection have a combined 477 unique episodes, or 87% coverage. Adding the Platinum Collection results in 507 uniques for 93% coverage. Both the Best of Warner Bros and Spotlight Collection Volume 6 contain one unique episode. The Academy Awards Collection and Unleashed discs contain no unique episodes.

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DVDs Included in this Analysis

Dohtem provides a comprehensive history of Warner Bros release of Looney Tunes DVDs (and has organized the #FinishTheWabbit campaign).

Collection Comparison

From the table it is apparent the fastest way to build up unique Looney Tunes episodes is to start with the collections. The Golden Collection was targeted at collectors with lots of bonus features. The Spotlight Collection was released in tandem with the Golden Collection but was cheaper and aimed at families. The Spotlight was nearly a perfect subset of the Golden Collection, but it contains two additional episodes: Rabbit Rampage and Sniffles Takes a Trip. Spotlight Volume 6 is the only instance of Rabbit Rampage on disc. The omission of Rabbit Rampage from the Golden Collection will be ignored going forward; it is assumed that there is no reason to buy the Spotlight Collection when the Golden Collection is a much larger superset.

A Venn diagram of the three remaining collections (Golden, Platinum, and Super Stars) shows the overlap between the collections. The Platinum Collection has significant episode overlap with the Golden Collection; it only provides 37 new episodes. The Super Stars Collection, on the other hand, contains 108 episodes not in the Golden Collection.

Warner Bros included the following 14 episodes in all three collections:

Gorilla My Dreams

Birds Anonymous

Rabbit Fire

Tortoise Beats Hare

Canary Row

Broom-Stick Bunny

Tweetie Pie

Satan's Waitin'

For Scent-imental Reasons

Rabbit Seasoning

Rabbit of Seville

Long-Haired Hare

High Diving Hare

Gift Wrapped

A Note On the Super Stars Collection: Not all of the discs in the Super Stars Collection introduce new material when compared to the Golden Collection; all of the episodes on Feline Fwenzy and Wascally Wabbit (Europe-only release) are repeated in the Golden Collection.

Standalone Disc Comparisons

Due to the nature of Venn diagrams, it is not easy to show how 11 releases interact. The Venn diagrams below have the Golden & Super Stars Collections or the Golden, Platinum, and Super Stars Collections grouped as one set to show how the standalone discs add to the unique episode count.

Adding the Essentials

What happens to the unique episode count if the Essential Bugs Bunny and the Essential Daffy Duck are added?

Note that adding the Platinum Collection to this diagram does not affect how many episodes are added!

Adding the Awards

What happens to the unique episode count if the Academy Award Winners and the 50 Best of Warner Bros are added?

Recommended Purchasing Order

The fastest way to get the most Looney Tunes episodes is to purchase the Golden Collection.

1. Looney Tunes: Golden Collection Vols 1-6

If there is only one spot on the shelf (or budget) for a Looney Tunes collection, it should be filled with the Golden Collection . The Golden Collection contains 369 of the available 548 episodes (67%) as well as numerous commentaries and bonus features.

2. Looney Tunes Super Stars Collection

After owning the Golden Collection, more unique episodes are added by the Super Stars Collection than any other set. However, Feline Fwenzy adds no new episodes and can be ignored. Owning both the Golden and Super Stars Collections results in 477 unique episodes (87%).

3. Looney Tunes: Platinum Collection Vols 1-3

There are significant diminishing returns once the Golden and Super Stars Collections are owned. The Platinum Collection features some full frame fixes from the Super Stars Collection and adds an additional 30 unique episodes to the queue (92.5%). The DVD variants of the Platinum Collection volumes are missing the third special features disc, but many of the special features overlap with the Golden Collection.

4. The Essential Daffy Duck

Although Bugs is superior to Daffy, the Essential Daffy Duck adds nine unique episodes to Bugs Bunny's five. Adding this set to the collection increases the episode coverage to 94%.

5. The Essential Bugs Bunny

The Essential Bugs Bunny set adds 5 new episodes to the pool (95%).

6. Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles: Chuck Jones Collection

The Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles contains 24 unique episodes (80% of the episodes in the set), but many of them don't feature the "usual gang", hence its lower ranking. Adding the Mouse Chronicles brings the episode coverage to a significant 99%.

7. Looney Tunes: Spotlight Collection Volume 6

Volume 6 of the Spotlight Collection adds one unique episode: Rabbit Rampage, resulting in 99.6% of the available episodes being owned.

8. Best of Warner Bros. 50 Cartoon Collection: Looney Tunes

If it is meaningful to own The Dover Boys at Pimento University or if it's meaningful to have 100% of the Looney Tunes episode available on disc, then the Best of Warner Bros set is needed.

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