The Return of the Acme Acres Zone is the 52nd episode of Tiny Toon Adventures.
Wraparounds[]
Toady's episode is another trip through the Acme Acres Zone, but this time, Babs Bunny takes on the role of Rod Serling.
Segments[]
Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli[]
Buster tells about Acme Acres, in the Year 2038, where the city is covered in smog. One night, while relaxing in his office with his assistant Hamdroid, a robot version of Hamton, there is a knock at the door. Buster tells Hamdroid to open the door. As Hamdroid walks up to the door, he tries to open it, but after a few failed attempts, the door is finally opened, with the person on the inside opening it, who slams the door into Hamdroid, breaking him to tiny pieces. The person who enters the room is none other then Miss Bunny (played by Babs), a hot-pink bunny who comes saying she's looking for Buster Bunny, the Gum-shoe (which he replies to while getting a piece of gum out of his sole). As he tells her she found him, he asks her to make herself at home, in which she turns a small part of his office into what seems to be a part of her home. After calling him a bunch of names for a detective (a shamus, a slout, a P.I. and a peeper, and he replies calling her a thesaurus), she comes to hire Buster to find her missing droid, to which he says he'll take the case, by which he means he'll take a case of carrots she has early, and then accepts the job. Just as he is about to go on the case, he tells Hamdroid to put himself back together and get the door for the lady, to which Hamdroid puts himself back together in the wrong places, then takes the door out and gives it to her.
Buster drives his hovercar as he narrates that not just Miss Bunny's, but all the droids in town are gone, and decides to head to the Acme Hologram Arcade, a place surrounded by a pack of losers, a guy with a hanging curveball, where he meets Plucky (with a orange mohawk), who was known as a stool pigeon who would sell information for money. We then see Plucky reaching down, trying to get a quarter that rolled under a game. Just as he is about to get it, Buster appears asking about the whereabouts of the droids. As Buster is seen tossing a coin up and down, Plucky tells him he'll tell him the information for the price of one game, to which Buster agrees and places the coin into the slot. Just before the game begins, Buster asks Plucky who the mastermind of the missing droids is, to which Plucky doesn't know who he is, but does say where the droids are; Club LaAcme. After giving out the information, Plucky begins to play his boxing game, where he goes against a large muscular robot and gets knock out. Just as Buster is about to leave to the club, he gives Plucky a free game on him, where an even larger muscular red robot comes, and Plucky runs away, saying he'll never play video games again.
Buster drives to the Club LaAcme, a club where the Acme elite used to meet, but now it's just a place where punks and junkies meet and he adds that the bodyguards are pushovers (in which case, he literally pushes them over). Inside the club, we see some familiar faces, Including Fifi, who is drinking a milkshake. Buster decides to meet up with Fifi and tries to make a conversation with her about the missing droids. Upon hearing that, Fifi first takes tiny bites of a small piece of broccoli, then takes him to the dance floor. There, while dancing, someone tries to kill Buster with an anvil and a axe. After the dance, Fifi kisses Buster, which causes him to dance all silly-like, and then someone drops his car on him, knocking him out, and Buster dreams of a happy place of anthropomorphic Rabbit-Satyrs and Rabbit-Centaurs.
Later, Buster wakes up to see Miss Bunny (as he describe her as an angel) and the other toons as they surround him, while they are all eating broccoli and wearing colorful clothing. When Buster asks what happen, Miss Bunny explains that all of the droids have returned home and the case is over. Just then, Buster notices that something is strange about the toons. Just as Miss Bunny was going to give him his payment, Buster removes her mask to reveal that she isn't Miss Bunny, but her droid, and that the toons were also the missing droids. Miss Bunny's Droid tells Buster that the Droids are planning to take over Acme Acres and make all of the citizens their slaves, but first they must kill Buster, who knows about their plan. After a short chase, Buster is up against a wall and is about to be attacked, but before he can be attacked, Buster tells the droids that he didn't come unarmed. At first the Droids thought they were going to be attacked by a normal weapon, which they can't be harmed by, But Buster reveals to have the one thing that can hurt a droid; a computer virus, which he throws to them, causing them to explode. Afterwards, Buster walks up to them and says, "Hope I didn't bug you."
Buster returns to his office with Miss Bunny's Droid on his table and the real Miss Bunny in his office. He tells her he found her missing Droid. When she asks how he knew she was a Droid, Buster tells her that the Droids were eating broccoli and that (in a reference to this cartoon's title), "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli."
Boo Ha Ha[]
During a rainy night in the countryside, Hamton and Plucky are riding a tandem bike down the road. As they ride through the rain back to Acme Acres, Hamton says he's soaked and Plucky suggests to use a phone at the nearby country inn, which is really a mansion. Upon arriving, Hamton and Plucky walk to the main office to ask to use the phone. As they do that, the Ghost, who has just woke up, begins to punch in to do his shift, puts on his suit, complains that no one has visited the mansion in a while, and wishes that someone would visit. Just then, he sees Plucky and Hamton, and, happy to see his first victims in a while, appears as the manager behind the counter.
When Plucky asks to use his phone so his and Hamton's parents can come pick them up, the Ghost tells him that their phone is dead; in fact, the dead phone is connected to a heart monitor. After seeing that, Hamton grabs Plucky and tries to make a run for it, but the Ghost stops him and tells them both that they can't leave because of the storm, and tells them they can stay the night. Upon opening the guestbook, Plucky writes his name in it, which causes the book to burn up. The Ghost tells them that the bellboy will appear to get their bags. As he goes down the counter, he appears again as the bellboy and tells them to follow him upstairs.
As they are going upstairs, Hamton notices some strange things about the Mansion, such as an eyeball following them, two paintings of humans turning into skeletons, even saying that the hotel reminds him of a certain ride at a certain amusement park. As they walk though a hallway, the Ghost tells them that they both got the Presidential Suite, and when he stops, Hamton walks through him, causing him to wear his clothes and carry the bags. The bellboy walks through him again and gets his clothes and the bags back and begins to open the door. Before he lets them in, he checks it out and sees that the room already has guests, the ghosts of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt, who are playing a game of go fish.
The bellboy tells the guests that they need to leave because their room is given to live ones. The guests leave to attend a party at Grant's tomb. After the guests leave, the ghost lets Plucky and Hamton in, and reaches his hand out for a tip. As Plucky reaches down to give him a tip, The Ghost turns into a brown-scaled demon with horns, which only scares Hamton, while Plucky still looks for the tip. As Plucky asks what's wrong, Hamton tries to show him the demon, but the ghost transforms back into the ghost bellboy, with his hand still waiting for his tip. Plucky takes out a set of keys, a comb, a brush, and an anvil. While still searching, the ghost transforms into a green-scaled demon with a snake tail, who again, only scares Hamton and just as he is about to grab him, Plucky finally finds a quarter and gives it to the ghost bellboy, who transforms back into his normal self and leaves, with him walking through the door.
Hamton puts on his pajamas and heads towards the bathroom to brush his teeth. As he walks to the bathroom's scary doorway, he opens the door to see it filled with fire and brimstone and little demons with pitchforks. Hamton closes the door, but Plucky goes inside to brush his teeth. As Hamton tries to stop him, he sees that the bathroom has become a normal one, with the ghost dressed like a maid. When Plucky turns his back, the ghost transforms into a tree monster with five mouths, but when Plucky turns around, the Ghost transforms back to his maid form again and walks out with Plucky following him.
Hamton walks up to the sink and begins to brush his teeth, not knowing that the ghost transformed into a tube of toothpaste, which was a mistake. As he applies the paste to his brush, Hamton begins to brush his teeth, drinks mouthwash, and spits both the mouthwash and the ghost into the sink. After Hamton leaves, the ghost pops out of the sinkhole, looking all furry and, then begins to scare Hamton and Plucky. As Hamton gets into bed and Plucky turns off the light, the ghost goes inside Plucky's pillow. However, Plucky begins to fluff up both the pillow and the ghost, then puts a sleep mask over his eyes. Suddenly, Plucky notices something wrong about the pillow, so he puts the sleep mask over the pillow's eyes and and begins to go to sleep. Just then, the pillow begins to shake and Plucky sees it's a ghost. He grabs Hamton and begins to run for their lives.
After running through the halls, Plucky tries to open the door, only to see it transform into the ghost, who says it tickles him. While still running, they encounter strange things such as a dead body, monsters in the closets and even a giant horned demon, who bears a striking resemblance to Chernabog, devil from "Night on Bald Mountain". As they both run down the long stairs, they discover that the stairs are actually pulling them towards his mouth. Just as Hamton and Plucky are about to be eaten, the clock strikes midnight and the Devil turns back into the ghost, who tells Hamton and Plucky that his shift is over and he's going home. As Plucky and Hamton walk with the ghost to the graveyard, he explains to them that he doesn't work the graveyard shift, to which zombies rise from their graves.
To make up for frightening both Plucky and Hamton, The Ghost decides to be nice to them and offers them a ride home. They rush into his car and drive into a face-like cave. Hamton discovers that when the ghost said he'll take them home, they didn't realize he was actually taking them back to his home, which looks like Hades. They have tea.
Duck Dodgers Jr.[]
Plucky and Daffy are fighting with Marvin the Martian, and his niece Marcia the Martian. Marvin and Marcia are trying to take the world and they argue.
Allusions[]
- As a sequel to "The Acme Acres Zone", this episode is also a parody of The Twilight Zone.
- "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli" is a parody of The Maltese Falcon and Blade Runner.
- In "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli", when Buster becomes unconscious after getting hit by a falling car, he has a vision parodying the Beethoven Sixth Symphony segment of the 1940 Walt Disney film Fantasia.
- The chase scene from "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli" is similar to the one from "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery".
- The yellow jacket and hat Buster wore in "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli" is similar to the one in the 1990 film Dick Tracy.
- In "Boo Ha Ha", Hamton said that the hotel reminds him of a certain ride, referencing The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland.
- In "Boo Ha Ha", Plucky and Hamton encounter a giant horned demon that resembles Chernabog from Fantasia.
- "Boo Ha Ha" was inspired by "Scaredy Cat", "Claws for Alarm", and "Transylvania 6-5000".
- "Duck Dodgers Jr." was inspired by "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century".
Trivia[]
- In "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli", the masks of the droids are based on the Tiny Toon character they are played as.
- "Boo Ha Ha" was originally an unfinished episode, "Hi, Spirits", created by John Kricfalusi and other Ren & Stimpy staff members, namely Jim Smith and Bob Camp, who are the ones that worked on the storyboards, while they were waiting for Nickelodeon to greenlight Ren & Stimpy. After working on the storyboards and voice recording (with Don Messick as The Ghost), Steven Spielberg took over and replaced it with the newly-made "Boo Ha Ha". "Hi, Spirits" would later become the Ren & Stimpy episode "Haunted House", with Ren and Stimpy in the roles of Hamton and Gogo.
- Most of the scenes, such as the safe filled with money, the ghost being mistaken for a cat when Hamton and Gogo first encounter him, and the song near the end "Nobody Fears Me", were omitted.
- Some were altered, like in the planned storyboard for the ending where Hamton is scared off by Gogo wearing a moose head and then the ghost looks at his own reflection, thus leading to the reflection being afraid of the ghost and floats away. This was changed in the final version for Ren and Stimpy, where the ghost instead commits suicide by drinking poison and is reincarnated into Rudolph the Jazzman.
- "Duck Dodgers Jr." marks the first and only appearance of Marcia the Martian.
- The animator at the end of "Duck Dodgers Jr." is a caricature of writer and director Kent Butterworth.
- "Duck Dodgers, Jr." was co-written and designed by Maurice Noble, layout artist for the original "Duck Dodgers" cartoon.
Cast[]
| Voice Actors: | Character(s): |
|---|---|
| Charlie Adler | Buster Bunny |
| Tress MacNeille | Babs Bunny, Marcia the Martian |
| Joe Alaskey | Plucky Duck, Marvin the Martian, George Washington |
| Don Messick | Hamton J. Pig |
| Maurice LaMarche | Ghost, Abe Lincoln |
| Danny Cooksey | Montana Max |
| Jeff Bergman | Duck Dodgers, Dr. I.Q. Hi |
Gallery[]
- Main Article: The Return of the Acme Acres Zone/Gallery
Home Video Releases[]
