Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection

Due to the success of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection and Popeye DVD series, Warner Home Video issued a 3-DVD set on February 12, 2008 showcasing the various animation properties that they own, including their home-grown Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Other animation properties represented on this set were Tom and Jerry, Droopy, and other classic MGM cartoons as well as entries from Max Fleischer's Popeye and Superman series (both originally released by Paramount Pictures). All cartoons selected for this release were nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film, with the exception of the film So Much for So Little which won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. A total of 41 cartoons (completely uncut and unedited) were chosen for this set, 15 of them being winners.

Many of the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts featured on this collection have also been released on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD sets, but this set also includes a handful of cartoons that have not been released on these Golden Collections. The cartoons A Wild Hare and Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt which were previously reissued as Blue Ribbons have their full original titles restored. The cartoon From A to Z-Z-Z-Z previously released as a Blue Ribbon, but retaining its full slate of credits was also presented on this set in its original format. All the Tom and Jerry shorts have been previously released on the Spotlight Collections, but most of them are presented here in remastered versions (the copies sourced for Mouse Trouble and Quiet Please! were badly restored transfers with washed-out colors and grainy pictures, similar to the ones that will be seen in the Tom and Jerry Golden Collection DVD & Blu-ray sets years later). Three MGM cartoons, Touché, Pussy Cat!, Good Will to Men and One Droopy Knight are presented in their original Cinemascope aspect ratios.

To this day, this is Warner's only DVD release of classic animation to feature a variety of different cartoon studios. Aside from this 3-DVD set aimed towards collectors, Warner has also released each of the discs separately.

Disc 1

All 15 cartoons on this disc won Academy Awards

Special Features

Audio Bonuses

• Music-only tracks
  • Speedy Gonzales
  • The Dot and the Line
• Audio Commentaries
  • Mark Kausler on Quiet Please!
  • Eric Goldberg on The Cat Concerto and The Dot and the Line
  • Greg Ford on For Scent-imental Reasons
  • Jerry Beck on So Much for So Little

Disc 2

All 14 cartoons on this disc were nominated for Academy Awards, but did not win

• ** Original opening restored, because The Golden Age of Looney Tunes had recreated opening titles, but this copy has the original.
• **** Public domain cartoon

Special Features

Audio Bonuses

• Audio Commentaries
  • Jerry Beck, Leslie Carbaga, Ray Pointer and Bob Jacques on Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor
  • Greg Ford on Peace on Earth and A Wild Hare
  • Mark Kausler on Puss Gets the Boot
  • Paul Dini on Superman
  • Eric Goldberg on Blitz Wolf
  • Jerry Beck on Walky Talky Hawky

Disc 3

All 12 cartoons on this disc were nominated for Academy Awards, but did not win

Special Features

Audio Bonuses

• Music-only tracks
  • Little Johnny Jet
  • Touche, Pussy Cat!
  • Tabasco Road
  • One Droopy Knight
• Vocal Chorus section isolated audio track
  • Good Will to Men
• Audio Commentaries
  • Amid Amidi on From A to Z-Z-Z-Z and Now Hear This

Documentary

• Drawn for Glory: Animation's Triumph at the Oscars

Bonus Short

• Bugs Bunny in What's Cookin' Doc? (Dubbed 1995 Version, from Bugs Bunny: Superstar)