Let’s start with a classic, "Be Careful What You Eat": Stone, who died tragically young (47) of pancreatic cancer in 2001, was behind the themes to Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain (an Animaniacs spin-off), Freakazoid! – all of which he won Emmys for – amongst others.Ĭoupled with the sharp lyrics of Ruegger and writers such as Randy Rogel (who was behind "Yakko’s World"), and the voice work of Rob Paulson (Yakko, Maurice LaMarche (Brain), Billy West (Pinky) and the rest of the cast, Animaniacs offered up a jamboree of tongue-in-cheek showtunes that were as subversive as they were informative. Composer Richard Stone channeled classic Merry Melodies composer Carl Stalling to create a symphonic soundscape of slapstick punctuation and musical pun alliteration. Key to Animaniacs (Groucho) Marxist punkery was its music.
Its creator Richard Stone cooked up a world of hypomanic shit-stirrers who critiqued children’s broadcasting and the pop-culture at large, while offering up a genuinely witty street-smart educational alternative to the pedantic ‘2 + 2 is 4’ pedagogy of Barny the Dinosaur and co.
Animaniacs, for the uninitiated, was a 90s cartoon that brought the post-modernism of Chuck Jones era Loony Toons into the embittered self-regurgitating cultural landscape of the late 20th century.
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