This Memorial Day weekend, Cartoon Network's series TOONHEADS offers a look at what happened when animated characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Popeye were enlisted by the war effort in TOONHEADS: THE WARTIME CARTOONS. While soldiers were fighting overseas, cartoon characters kept Americans laughing on the home front, finding humor in such wartime realities as energy conservation, rationing, recycling scrap iron for munitions and the widespread fear of enemy bombing raids on American cities. They also served in an official capacity when Warner Bros. created a special character, Private Snafu, to appear in more than 26 shorts that served as training films for U.S. troops. After the U.S. entered World War II, characters such as Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tom and Jerry, Superman and Popeye were depicted heading into battle against the nation's enemies. Often, these cartoons utilized outrageous caricatures and exaggerated stereotypes of its enemies. TOONHEADS: THE WARTIME CARTOONS contains clips from more than 100 cartoons and will show four rarely-seen wartime cartoons in their entirety: "Blitz Wolf" where the three little pigs face off against a treaty-breaking, German-speaking wolf; "Scrap Happy Daffy" featuring Daffy promoting the recycling of scrap metal and butting heads with a goat that bears a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler; "Herr Meets Hare," where Bugs Bunny tangles with Nazi minister Hermann Goring; and in "Russian Rhapsody," a plane full of "gremlins from the Kremlin" attack a bomber piloted by the Nazi leader himself. TOONHEADS: THE WARTIME CARTOONS, airs on Cartoon Network Sunday, May 26, 2002 from 9-10 p.m. (ET/PT).
