Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit

Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit were a pair of Warner Bros. cartoon characters, created by Robert McKimson, who appeared in only one cartoon, Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too![1] Future cartoons featuring the characters were planned, but were cancelled following the shutdown of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Animation in 1969.[2]

Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too!
Directed byBob McKimson
Produced byBill L. Hendricks
Story byCal Howard
Music byWilliam Lava
Edited byHal Geer
Animation byTed Bonnicksen
La Verne Harding
Jim Davis
Ed Solomon
Norm McCabe
Layouts byBob Givens
Jaime Diaz
Backgrounds byBob McIntosh
Color processTechnicolor
Production
company
Distributed byWarner Bros.-Seven Arts
Release date
  • June 7, 1969 (1969-06-07)
Running time
7 minutes
LanguageEnglish

Characters
  • Rapid Rabbit, a small brown rabbit (who's not to be confused with Rapid T. Rabbit), is every bit as fast as his name implies; a pantomime character, he never says a word, but uses a bicycle horn to express himself. He is inspired by the Road Runner, a famed Looney Tunes character created by Chuck Jones.
  • Quick Brown Fox, another pantomime character, is a fox who wants to eat the fast-running rabbit, but consistently fails to catch him despite using a variety of traps and devices. The fox's name is derived from the popular pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." He is inspired by Wile E. Coyote, another Looney Tunes character who is the aforementioned Road Runner’s co-star; also created by Chuck Jones.

Cartoon

Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too! is a 1969 theatrically-released cartoon, one of the last few cartoons of the Looney Tunes series (which, at that time, was owned by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts). It was a "chase" cartoon along the same lines as the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons; a predator tries and fails to catch his intended prey, despite using a number of ingenious or comically absurd traps. It was intended to be the first of a series of Rapid Rabbit cartoons which had been planned, but no more were produced as the animation department folded soon after its release.

Synopsis

Quick Brown Fox wants to make rabbit stew, with the elusive Rapid Rabbit as the main ingredient. To this end, he tries several different traps — simple ones at first, but they gradually become ridiculously elaborate — and all of them fail to ensnare Rapid, and some of them end up hurting Quick - some including a spring-loaded hammer set to whack Rapid when he grabs a carrot tied to the trap (Rapid struggles to grab the carrot, resulting in an impatient Quick unintentionally setting the trap off), and a "Free Trip to the Moon" via a cannon, that is also unintentionally set off by Quick - which results in him getting shot into the air and then hit on the head with a cannonball. Ultimately, Quick sets up the most elaborate trap of them all, a large Rube Goldberg-style contraption that will land Rapid into a heated frying pan, positioned next to a dining table for convenience. However, Rapid uses his horn to startle Quick, who takes a short leap backwards in surprise, lands into the contraption's trigger, and ends up suffering everything his trap has to offer, finally landing flat onto the table, breaking it apart. Rapid finishes the job by bundling Quick in the tablecloth and tying a helium balloon to the cloth’s corners, lifting Quick into the sky.

References
  1. Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 367. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
  2. "Warner Bros Animation - The Seven Arts Years". Anime Superhero Forum. Retrieved 12 September 2019.
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