Kansas City, MO - Cartoon character Elmer Fudd will have to hunt wabbits without his double-barreled shotgun now, and Yosemite Sam is no longer "the fastest gun north, south, east, aaaaaaaand west of the Pecos!"
Both characters are hanging up their guns in the new series "Looney Tunes Cartoons" on the new HBO Max streaming platform.
However, there's still plenty of 'cartoon violence' and Acme mayhem allowed.
"We're not doing guns," Peter Browngardt, the executive producer and showrunner of the series, told the New York Times in a recent interview. "But we can do cartoony violence - TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in."
On occasion, writers have to revisit what makes the character funny and mold them to better fit the social norm at the time, says Rick Stasi.
"All these cartoons mirrored society, and when society changed, cartoons really had to change with it," says Stasi.
Stasi is a KC Metro-based artist and writer who has worked with Warner Brothers on previous Looney Tunes projects.
Stasi says drawing these cartoon characters without their guns isn't a bad thing, rather he says it can drive discussion about what was okay then, versus now.
“Those things do not mirror social norms now. As society evolves, we’ve got to make sure those characters evolve, too," he said.