Looney Tunes Collector's Choice: Volume 3

At HDD, we may not have been as diligent as we’d like to have been about covering these Looney Tunes sets over the years. The simple reason is that we had hoped that, as these cartoons changed hands from either Warner Bros. proper or to Warner Archive, some of the more troublesome shorts would see new work, while also aiming for a Complete Collection opportunity for all of the shorts. A bit of both has happened. 

We’ve had greatest hits come to disc, and with the Collector’s Choice line, some of the more obscure fan favorites got their time to shine. But why are we jumping in on Vol. 3 but not 1, 2, 4, or the 1-4 collection? The answer there is slightly more stupid - we were only sent Vol. 3 out of the four discs that came out between 2023 and 2024. We’d hoped to get the whole 1-4 set to churn out the whole batch in one go, but alas, that didn’t happen either. With this being the one we’ve got, this is some seriously overdue homework in my review doom pile, and it was well past time for me to dig into it. 

Now, the dodge I have for reviewing any classic Looney Tunes cartoons is that I just don’t know how to review them, really. Each short is but a few minutes long. Nearly all of them are incredibly entertaining. If there’s a bad one in the bunch, who cares? It doesn’t matter because the short isn't long, and there are plenty of funny shorts to go. I think that’s why I genuinely love Looney Tunes cartoons above all other classic cartoons. Sure, I get a kick out of Tom & Jerry, and I’ll always love Scooby-Doo! but there’s something about the run of Looney Tunes that I never tire of. I put on a disc, I’m smiling wide whenever I’m not laughing. Every year, my local revival house theater has a free screening of Looney Tunes cartoons on the first Sunday after Christmas, and it’s a blast to experience these shorts in a full theater of kids and adults. And with sets like this, I get to enjoy them whenever I'd like and now my boy gets to have a piece of the fun too.

And as I plugged in for this Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice Vol. 3 set, the same thing that always happens happened - I had a blast. At just shy of three hours, the time flies through these 25 shorts. Sure, some aren’t as great as others, but damn, I’d be lying if they’re not all a hell of a great time. The 25 shorts in this collection are:

1. A Feud There Was
2. China Jones
3. Cinderella Meets Fella
4. Dumb Patrol
5. Egghead Rides Again
6. Elmer’s Pet Rabbit
7. Hobo Bobo
8. Honeymoon Hotel
9. Hop, Skip, and a Chump
10. I Only Have Eyes for You
11. Mexican Joyride
12. The Mouse on 57th Street
13. Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name
14. Of Rice and Hen
15. Pre-Hysterical Hare
16. Punch Trunk
17. Quentin Quail
18. Riff Raffy Daffy
19. Saddle Silly
20. Sheep Ahoy
21. The Sheepish Wolf
22. There Auto Be a Law
23. Tugboat Granny
24. War and Pieces 
25. Wet Hare

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 
The laughs hit 1080p when Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice Vol. 3 comes home. A single-disc Region Free BD50 disc serves up the good stuff. Housed in a standard case, the disc loads to a static image main menu with standard navigation options.

Coming out of the gate, this collection of Looney Tunes shorts, more or less, follows the path of previous releases. Some shorts look razor sharp and authentic to a quality restoration. Others look like an effort was made to “clean up” aspects of the transfer with a little pressure on the noise-reduction button. On the latter scale of some of these shorts, it’s thankfully not a smeary waxed-out affair. When a short looks great, it’s terrific and a benchmark for others to follow. The great thing to report is that colors generally look quite lively and robust. I share the frustration of many fans with how some of the Looney Tunes shorts have been treated, and I do hope they’re given proper ground-up restorations, where needed, but for now, this set is pretty damn good. 

If there’s been a riding issue with these shorts on disc over the years, beyond the transfer quality and source, it’s been the audio. Some can sound great and right on the spot. Others either sound like they’re mixed too low or way too high. So you can be sitting there with a disc running and have to keep a thumb on the volume from one short to the next, not knowing if you feel like you’re going deaf because it’s so quiet, or made deaf because it’s mixed so loud. 

The very welcome news for this set is that volume discrepancy isn’t really an issue for the DTS-HD MA 2.0 tracks. Or if there are volume variances, the differences are a bit more subtle. I didn’t feel the need to keep the volume anywhere over or under my normal listening range. Dialog is generally clean without a problem. Music cues are right in the sweet zone while antic-driven sound effects land nicely.

Given how this disc is maxed out for shorts at almost three hours, it’s no real surprise that there aren’t any extras on board. 

If there’s one thing I enjoy in life, it’s kicking back to some great classic cartoons. Now that I have a young son, there’s little better than relaxing to a whole slew of adventures with Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, and the whole gang. Just because one of our favorite characters doesn’t top the chart of a particular short doesn’t mean it isn’t worth your attention. Sure, one short might not be as great as the next, but there are very few outright duds, and looking back at the 25 making up this Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice Vol. 3 set, I don’t remember any dead weight. Overall, the transfers for each short are quite good, along with solid audio for each. I didnt’ feel like I saw any that were DNR’d into oblivion nor did I feel like there were any tone balance or volume level issues between them. If you’re a Looney Tunes fan, this set is Recommended - even though you may want to just go ahead and snag that Four-Volume collection that’s out there rather than buying them individually.  

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