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Minerva Mink deemed too sexy for 2020
5 years ago
Yes, 2020 has been bad.... real bad. Now Minerva Mink has been dumped from Animaniacs!
I'm sure everyone here is fine with this! (sarcasm)
Yes...sexy characters are way to evil for the WB cartoons. WB has learned their lessons.
https://www.cbr.com/animaniacs-char.....1990s-cartoon/
They are saving us from our sins! PRAISE!
I'm sure everyone here is fine with this! (sarcasm)
Yes...sexy characters are way to evil for the WB cartoons. WB has learned their lessons.
https://www.cbr.com/animaniacs-char.....1990s-cartoon/
They are saving us from our sins! PRAISE!
First they take away Elmer Fud's rifle... now this?!
Get out WB.. like really...
In other counties, sexy drawings are fine. Here, it is the work of Satan!
Death and Mayhem = Good!
Sex = Very Bad!
never understood that....
Wait a tick... did you read this? Even at the time she was effectively useless as a character. She had no real personality and did nothing new or interesting. Hello Nurse had a point. And she'll be back. Minerva would only be pandering to the kind of horny losers most of us, like me, used to be back before we had brains. I'm not an incel neckbeard and I'm not going to fall for outragemongering by people holding up toxic nostalgia like a weapon. We don't need another TheQuartering. One of him is more than too many.
TL;DR: She's not being cut out because she's too sexy. She's being removed because she's sexy without a point. She adds nothing. Her role is effectively handled by Hello Nurse who had more appearances, lines, and an actual purpose. This isn't political correctness gone mad. This is people taking a ahrd look at a great but flawed product and excising a flawed element. It's literally just the evolution of art. I thought we were all some type of artist here. Or are we nostalgia-poisoned children?
It is obvious to me that she was dropped because she was too sexy. WB is full of one-note characters, Taz, Sam, Tweety, Speedy, The Roadrunner, and Pepe. They aren't going to drop them for artistic purposes, they are keeping them for merch.
Betty Boop was a sexy character in the 1930's. Minerva could be handled the same way if corporations didn't tip-toe around the Moral Majority.
If I'm nostalgic for anything, it's the underground comics of the late 60's thru the mid-70's when cartoonists could draw almost anything. Cartoonists haven't had such freedom of speech since those days.
The reboot personalities really worked well to advance at least Speedy. Helps that he's popular in Mexico. Taz was rebooted in Taz-Mania by making him an ensemble player that made his schtick absurdist among his articulate family. I also think Sam got some great decon-recon in TLTS as a symbol of trashy Americana and excessive machismo. The Roadrunner was never a character, they're an idea. They exist to make Wile E. the supreme character that he is, the strangely compelling antivillain or even tragic hero. Tweety IS useless, though. Pepe is just something else. And they know it. They've been turning hard into rehabbing him, and I'm more than okay with his new depictions as being not-objectionable or even overtly chosen by Penelope.
Taking away Elmer's gun/rifle was the stupidest thing they ever did. I never heard of hunting without a rifle/shotgun or any weapon. totally out of context.
She had no shtik, gimmick, or comic routine, she was sensual because she was designed as such. We tried and tried; I was normally given her to blueline if clothing was involved, which I did some nice Rio Samba designs which could have gone with the LT International line, but she too sexy and the other problem was that she was an Abbott, not a Costello, so she was pretty and buxom, not funny, and we couldn't use her by herself or any of the other LTs.
Somebody did a space opera parody storyline that could have worked (with Newt, but Newt worked with it). She would have been a Buzz Lightyear (and I have early WBTA designs that sez she worked), but there were rumors of bringing Duck Dodgers back, so out she went with this premise.
Eventually, she was cut out of any WBCP merchandising projects (then again, so did Katie KaBoom, bleh), but this issue was revisited when the Space Jam's writers wrote in Lola Bunny into the script ("Gee, really?. Lola has got them protrusions?. What do think Minerva's ones were?, Gallician's tetillas?").
Luckily Lola had a personality that did not limit her, but there were still WBCP/Brand Assurance design "conflicts" (her first styleguide was completely redone with a severe frontal cut), but that's another story...
So Minerva stays in the small WB vault.
Lola did not suffer from this flaw. She worked funny, sad, expressive, any other emotion because she was not encased in a body that prevented such emoting. Yes, she is a female, there is curves, and that still brought problems between my department and Brand Assurance/Quality Control (or whatever they call themselves now), but the problems weren't because she did not express herself in our designs.
"It seems to me that WB could use more female characters." And they were coming out, then not...: The point of no fully explored female LT on the line that could stand with their male counterparts was often talked about. In mid-1994, WBCP launched the tentatively called "Females of WB" style guide project, which would explore some of the classic female B characters and redesign them as foils or companions for the main LT line, and the separate "Honey Bunny" (Robert McKimson's version) style guide, see if she would work in the incoming 21st Century.
Penelope Pussycat, Daisy Lou, Melissa Duck ("The Scarlet Pumpernickel" version), Sylvia Cat (from "A Mouse Divided"), and Petunia Pig were the first characters worked on the FOW projet. Tasmanian She-Devil, Fowl Fatale (from "The Super Snooper"), Miss Prissy, and Millicent were on the roster just as standby characters. No humans were selected (no, no Granny). Roughs sketches and turnarounds were created until the project was put on hold due to Target's Daisy Lou style guide project, which also axed the (barely worked on) Honey Bunny job.
Target commissioned WBCP to come up with a female companion to Bugs Bunny, while creating a children's female line, so Daisy Lou was chosen. There were three distinct styles worked on: I worked on a young female version of Daisy (not teenage, but close, actually, think Lola). The project went on until Lola Bunny and Space Jam came around, so it was also canceled (my bosses informed us that it was because of Daisy that Lola came to be). Daisy was actually only used on two instances, one in a WB poster, and the other as a standby character on an LT comic issue by Dave Alvarez.
So, as you see Fiala, it wasn't for the lack of trying that more females were used on the WB line. Minerva, as all these works, just were canceled for diverse reasons, Minerva just because she wasn't properly designed for a true LT world, that's all.
After I left, I don't know what transpired merchandise wise. I used to check every year on Xmas what the big two (Disney and DC [a division of WB]) would put out, and while Disney were there with new merch every season, DC was Batman, Superman (and sometimes)Tweety, Taz, and Scooby's via WB or Hallmark (repeat, rinse).
Oh, Bugs in drag have come and gone several times under the WBCP pencils, mostly for non-US merchandise partners, which could display Bugs in lace without worry about parents and church, so he has been used a lot... elsewhere. (*)
([*]exception: The 80th anniversary of Bugs Bunny)
For WB comics, I was glad that they chose the Bob Clampett model Petunia with hair on her head. The Tashlin version of Petunia never seemed very likeable (even though his cartoons were VERY funny). I was only aware of Honey Bunny because of Gold Key Comics. I was surprised when I was given model sheets of her at D.C. Comics. I didn't think she still existed as a thing in the 1980's.
Honey Bunny was always a viable character, the problem was she superseded by Daisy Lou merch wise, which she then was superseded by Lola Bunny.
Yeeah, I call it lazy blue lining, really.(*)
Is not that hard to pencil them in a new pose (Bugs and Lola), and she is human, which means she should be taller in relation to Bugs (which could have been a sight gag there!), and if you are gonna swipe, swipe all the way and just put a reworked version of Betty Boop, for example (Make it memorable!, not something you can do a Google Image Reverse Search in two seconds).
Jeez, gave poor Bugs camel toe and the girl's mid cleavage line doesn't even connect to the breast contour...
(*)https://www.pinterest.com/pin/534309943280859272/
I was trying to figure out who the human girl was. Could she be Cookie? (as in the Buddy series?)
Can it be done? of course! look at MLP!. They were completely rendered asunder by Lauren Faust, leaving the original concepts in the dust, but with new looks and personalities. But that wasn't what we normally do at WBCP (unless strictly ordered: see all the projects mentioned). We were asked to use the character (Minerva) as is, another one of the Animaniacs subjects. We couldn't change her while the show was on, and what she had, well, how do you work her on the LT world as she was? a sexy tease with greedy foibles?.
Is more complicated than that, sry.