Loonatics Unleashed

The weekly, half-hour animated Loonatics Unleashed was basically a Teen Titans-style makeover of such familiar Warner Bros. cartoon characters as Bugs and Babs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote and the Tasmanian Devil. The action was set in the year 2772, when the descendants of the famous Warner Bros. "toons" were living in Acmetropolis, a city-state where the paranormal was normal. When a meteor knocked the earth off its axis, the protagonists were exposed to cosmic dust, whereupon they re-emerged as superheroes with new names and talents: Ace and Lexi Bunny, Danger Duck, Rev Runner, Tech E. Coyote and Slam Tasmanian. Following the orders of Acmetropolis' self-appointed ruler Zadavia, the "Loonatics" used their remarkable powers to save the rest of the world from such villains as Professor Zane, Dr. Dare and Black Velvet. Although the series provoked controversy with its radical new character designs, the Loonatics were at heart the same characters we'd grown to know and love from their theatrical-cartoon adventures, and of course were beset by the same slapstick calamities. Loonatics Unleashed (a title that was attacked by certain special-interest groups because it allegedly "stigmatized" people with mental illness!) made its WB network Saturday-morning bow on September 17, 2005.