For a brief time, on Saturday Mornings, viewers could find Warner Bros. Cartoons on not one but two networks. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, which had been on the air in different formats and on different networks since 1962, could be found at CBS.
Meanwhile, on NBC, Daffy Duck was featured in a series that began airing in 1978, in the well-titled The Daffy Duck Show. Airing from 1978 through 1982 (it was retitled The Daffy-Speedy Show in 1981), the series showcased many of the classic Warner Bros. Cartoons, a majority of which came from the later years of the Studio, when DePatie-Freleng produced them.
During this era of “NBC Daffy,” the character appeared in prime-time specials, and one of them, Daffy Duck’s Easter Show (a/k/a Daffy Duck’s Easter Egg-citement), aired forty-five years ago this month, on April 1, 1980.
As the special opens, a paintbrush paints the background yellow. Daffy appears and complains to the off-screen artist (a la 1953’s Duck Amuck) that there are no titles or Easter decorations. After a back-and-forth, where sloppy titles are splashed on the background and color is splashed onto Daffy, the titles appear: written by Friz Freleng, Tony Benedict, and John Dunn, voice characterization by Mel Blanc, produced by David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng and directed by Friz Freleng.
Daffy then returns to discuss how Easter means the Easter Parade, and when he asks the artist for a fancy outfit, the artist first dresses Daffy in a diving suit and then changes to a tuxedo. Foghorn Leghorn then comes on screen and ushers Daffy off to be in the first cartoon.
This first cartoon is The Yolks on You, although none of the titles are displayed in the show. In it, Foghorn Leghorn is the foreman of sorts for the chickens on a farm and informs them that they all need to speed up egg production for Easter.
He’s especially giving Miss Prissy a hard time, as she is laying odd-shaped eggs. However, she then lays a golden egg. Thinking it’s a mistake, she throws it out of the henhouse, and it rolls down a hill, where Sylvester and Daffy are searching for food in trash cans (they must have fallen on hard times).
When they come across the gold egg, they think it’s the fortune they’ve been waiting for, and the two begin battling over the egg. Sylvester and Daffy ultimately paint it white and hide it in the henhouse. However, it’s loaded into a delivery truck with other eggs.
The two get their hands on all the eggs and crack them one by one, looking for the golden one as the cartoon ends.
From here, Daffy argues again with the off-screen artist, asking them to paint an Easter basket, which they do. When Daffy asks for an Easter chick to go with it, the artist paints a chicken costume on Daffy (he of course, says, “Get me out of this chicken outfit!”). After the artist terrorizes Daffy with an anvil and a torpedo, we segue to the next cartoon, The Chocolate Chase.
This one is a match-up between Daffy and Speedy Gonzales. It takes place at a chocolate factory, where Daffy has taken a job as a security guard, protecting the factory’s chocolate Easter bunnies against the town’s kids.
When Daffy takes money from the mayor but refuses to part with any chocolate bunnies, the townspeople elect Speedy Gonzales to get them. What follows is Speedy running into the factory and retrieving chocolate bunnies and Daffy, in vain, trying to catch him.
This is followed by another interstitial where Daffy once again tangles with the artist, who erases Daffy’s body and re-paints him as a giant spring flower, who is then terrorized by a giant bee, before the last cartoon, Daffy Flies North.
Here, Daffy is having difficulty keeping up with the “V” formation of his fellow ducks (and their drill sergeant leader) as they fly back North after the winter. He breaks away from them and attempts to hitchhike back up North, but after a series of mishaps, he looks to ride a horse that he comes across.
After multiple sight gags, where the lazy horse isn’t willing, Daffy is chased by a bull and runs into an airplane, which takes him back South all over again, as the cartoon concludes.
In a final segment, Daffy brings out an electric razor to shave the artist’s paintbrush, but the razor runs amuck, shaving all of Daffy’s feathers. After this, the paintbrush paints Daffy into an egg with a sign that reads: “Do Not Open Until Next Easter,” which Daffy gladly agrees to, and the special concludes.
Daffy Duck’s Easter Special featured all-new animation, differentiating it from the Bugs Bunny specials on CBS at the time, which used clips from classic shorts bridged with new animation.
The animation may not be the rich animation of the Warner Bros. theatrical shorts, but it’s fuller than most television fare at the time. While the pairings of Daffy with Sylvester and Speedy seem mismatched, the gags that come out of them are well-played.
This is thanks to the number of veteran talents who worked on the special, such as Gerry Chiniquy, Art Davis, and David Detiege, who served as sequence directors, along with Freleng and Benedict, as well as animators like Art Vitello and Don Williams. Also, the special has the familiar, comforting look of DePatie-Freleng’s shows of the era, thanks to the layout from Martin Strudler and Jesse Santos.
Daffy Duck’s Easter Special isn’t just an offbeat way to celebrate the holiday; it’s also a flashback to a time when there was a lot to choose from when it came to Looney Tunes offerings on network TV.
