Also, not to get too much off topic, but it seems that Disney is trying to embrace their classic characters a bit more.
It's a definate improvement over the last years of Eisner. You can actually walk into a Disney store and find Mickey stuff. For the longest time, if you weren't a fan of 101 Dalmatians of Pooh, you were out of luck. No wonder they almost closed them all down. It's just that they need a big project to really make the connection. Problem is trying to think up what it should be.
Speaking of the Looney Tunes, I have a theory as to why they are such a hard sell these days, but that's for another new thread sometime...
I think the problem is that they rely on movies. Movies of Looney Tunes characters are a tough sell. To quote a Tiny Toons episode "When it comes to cartoons, Us old timers have a 7 minute attention span." Even the early Bugs Bunny movies were just rehashed shorts with linking footage. Other than their cameos in Roger Rabbit, they just haven't had any luck. They do well on television though. I just think they need another Taz-Mania, Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, or Duck Dodgers (woefully underrated, by the way)... they might just get that with the Looney Tunes show. They aren't going to get that with CGI Bugs/Marvin/Pepe movies.
Then of course I blame the cable and local channels for that too. Bugs Bunny cartoons were a staple of Weekday (and even Sunday Morning) line ups, both local packages like the Bugs and Woody Show and network official packages like The Bugs and Daffy Show or even Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon. There was a time in the 70's, Saturday Mornings when networks aired their own packages. Sometimes Looney Tunes shows actually ran
against each other. Even up through the 90's. Then CN got first rights, and they they just gave up showing them.
Those characters shouldn't be that hard a sell. Unlike Mickey cartoons (which didn't have any syndicated or network package at least until the Disney channel), LT cartoons were always on somewhere, even locally. Sure, Disney has a LOT of things LT doesn't have (I don't want to list), but I only saw Disney cartoons as part of VHS collections or TV specials when I was younger. Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, and especially LT were always on in syndicated packages. We need to get the local packages back somehow. They shouldn't cost all that much, outside of royalties... but then again, local stations LOVE infomercial money... but that's another story. Personally, I just think whoever runs Warner Bros' animation department is clearly an unhappy person who was unhappy with the job they wound up with. It just shows so obviously. I'm not listing anything.
Yet, they manage to Keep Scooby in the public eye. he has never been without a show expect for a period in the 90's, where they had nonstop reruns and semi-annual DTV movies. He's been going strong since 68! Even before the WB buyout of Turner.
This ties in to the whole Magilla, don't worry. It takes a very special project to relaunch a popular entity. Disney is focusing on the movie, no doubt... but they've done beautifully since 2008 with online shorts, comics, that one special and everything else. They want this to happen, and this specific web series is proof they're reaching out to people beyond the fanbase while staying true to the fans without the awkward reaching and grabbing for different focus groups in a more jaded manner like a certain TV movie, which shall remain nameless.