STATIC SHOTS

Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

AURORA S.

Tyson Looney Tunes Meals

Here's a serving of microwavable nostalgia that no one ever seems to care or talk about. Or maybe they do and I've missed it. But right now we're here, and I'm getting hungry.

The year was 1990: Mel Blanc had just died, Tiny Toon Adventures debuted on television, and Bugs Bunny had just turned 50. There was adequate hoopla around these events, but nothing as monumental as these: Tyson Looney Tunes Meals - frozen TV dinners with box art featuring all the prominent (and some supporting) players from the original Warner Bros. animated shorts. This was still pre-Space Jam era so there was still a purity in the imagery and the characters. Though surprisingly, the biggest draw for me was the actual food contained within. 

It was weird and exciting to me even then to see cartoon characters shilling something other than candy or beverages. As an experience, this was like "make your own Happy Meal," complete with ornamental packaging and hot trash disguised as cuisine. (Not to mention some kinda paper prize slipped inside, encased in a freezer-burnt plastic wrapper.)

Sure, you could choose them based on your favorite character, but first and foremost you had to consider what supper was gonna be. 

No I didn't try them all - there are some pathways to the dark side that I consider to be unnatural: namely artificial tomato sauce, which took Daffy right off the list, but was manageable in the Coyote's hamburger pizza. I'm also not thrilled on any microwaved mac & cheese, so I passed hard on Bugs and Tweety, and Speedy's beef enchiladas were way too far out for me - probably still are. But it's a good time to point out how cute and clever they were to sorta match each character with an appropriate main course. 

Obviously a cat gets a fish-related meal, and Yosemite Sam gets barbecue sauce (which was one of the best assortments on this list). Though my favorite - the Road Runner chicken sandwich - was questionable in its correlation; were we to imagine that the fowl served to us was actually the Road Runner? If that were the case, wouldn't it be better suited to Wile E. Coyote? It might seem like a superficial observation, but in actuality it's a conundrum that's plagued me since I was 7 years old. 

They stopped making these in '93, at which point I graduated to the more mature Swanson TV Dinners. But for a time, these were it; I never bothered with the Kid Cuisine crap because it felt like a cheap knockoff of the real thing. If they'd held out 5 more minutes they would've totally benefited from the mysterious rise in popularity of Marvin the Martian; maybe a saucer-shaped steak-like foodstuff, or some "Out of This World Franks 'n' Beans." Point is the Tunes never go outta style, but they hit some weird stride in the 1990s that was almost-unfairly valuable to my generation and I'm entirely grateful. 

- Paul

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