Wackiki Wabbit

Wackiki Wabbit
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Airdate:	3 July 1943
Series:	Merrie Melodies
MPAA Number:	8779
Production Number:	MM-18-12
Vitaphone Number:	1051
Runtime:	6 minutes, 42 seconds
Starring:	Bugs Bunny
Crew
Voice Characterizations:	Mel Blanc Tedd Pierce Michael Maltese Augie Goupil (all uncredited)
Director:	Charles M. Jones
Written By:	Tedd Pierce
Producer:	Leon Schlesinger
Animated By:	Ken Harris Ben Washam (uncredited) Robert Cannon (uncredited) Phil DeLara (uncredited) Lloyd Vaughan (uncredited)
Layout Artist:	John McGrew (uncredited)
Background Artist:	Gene Fleury Bernyce Polifka (both uncredited)
Film Editor:	Treg Brown (uncredited)
Musician:	Carl W. Stalling

Wackiki Wabbit is a 1943 Merrie Melodies short directed by Chuck Jones.

Title

The title is a double play on words, with "Wackiki" suggesting both the island setting, as in "Waikiki", as well as suggesting "wacky", along with the usual Elmer Fudd speech pronunciation of "rabbit", although Elmer does not appear in this picture.

Plot

Two castaways are adrift on a small raft in the middle of the ocean, underscored with "Asleep in the Deep". Delirious from hunger, they start imagining each other, or even their own limbs, as food items. They spot an island in the distance and rush ashore, underscored by "Down Where the Trade Winds Play", where they meet Bugs Bunny. To his friendly greeting, "What's the good word?", they answer "FOOD!" and start after Bugs, who swings away on a vine with a Tarzan yell.

Chasing Bugs through the jungle, they spy him dancing, semi-disguised as one of the "natives." Bugs welcomes them with "Ah! White men! Welcome to Humuhumunukunukuapua'a'a'a island." He then proceeds to speak in Polynesian-accented nonsense, a long stretch of which is subtitled simply "What's up Doc?" and a very short segment is subtitled, "Now is the time for every good man to come to the aid of his party." The tall and skinny man says, "Well, thanks!" and the short, fat man, actually seeing the peculiar subtitle, "Ofa eno maua te ofe popaa", says "Gee, did you say that?" The skinny man shrugs. Bugs begins dancing as the two castaways dance along as Bugs walked away leaving them distracted until the skinny man smacked the fat man.

After boiling some water in the cooking pot, Bugs steals it for himself mistaking it for a bath. The two castaways prepare to cook Bugs, but the rabbit tricks them by substituting a skinned chicken for himself in the large cooking pot. He taunts them with the chicken, using it as a marionette, until the strings become tangled (the chicken ends up giving away Bugs' hiding spot) and he has to make a quick escape and pulled the skin off the chicken.

As the castaways sobbed in frustration, they hear a steam whistle from a ship. The men leap for joy at the prospect of being saved and trot toward the gangplank. Bugs kisses them goodbye and presents them with leis, then pulls his time-honored switcheroo trick and boards the ship himself. The boat pulls out, leaving the two men on the island, still waving goodbye to Bugs. The Skinny Man slaps the Fat Man for still yelling "Goodbye!" The two once again imagine each other as a hot dog and a hamburger, chasing each other into the distance as "Aloha Oe" plays.

Availability

(1990) VHS
The Very Best of Bugs

(1992) LaserDisc
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Vol. 3, Side 2: Bugs Bunny

(1993) VHS
A Taste of Cartoon Network

(2001) VHS
Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition, Volume 11: Wabbit Tales

(2005) DVD
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc One (uncut and restored, with optional audio commentary by Eddie Fitzgerald and John Kricfalusi)

(2005) DVD
Looney Tunes Collection Best of Bugs Bunny Volume 3

(2018) DVD
Looney Tunes Collection Volume 3

(2020) DVD
Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny Golden Carrot Collection

Streaming

Boomerang App (2017 - 2024) (restored)

HBO Max (2020 - 2023) (restored)

Max (2023 - 2025) (restored)

Tubi (2025 -)

Notes

• This short continues to experiment with strongly graphic, nearly abstract backgrounds, seen throughout Jones cartoons from late 1942–1943.
  • This is the last cartoon with layouts done by John McGrew.
• The castaways are caricatures of Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce. One of Cartoon Network's 2001 June Bugs marathon bumpers confirms this fact. Maltese and Pierce also supply the voices for their caricatures.
• This cartoon is currently in the public domain as of 1971 after United Artists failed to renew the copyright in time.
• A few clips from this, "Fresh Hare", and "Case of the Missing Hare" were used in the documentary Square Roots: The Story of SpongeBob SquarePants.
• During the sequence where Bugs, dressed in a Hawaiian outfit, speaks Hawaiian to the castaways, subtitles appear in this scene. In the 1995 dubbed version prints (both USA and EU) a blue border appears in this sequence. While the USA dubbed print has the video properly scaled to fit the border in this sequence, the EU dubbed print (pictured at the bottom of the image below) does not, resulting in part of the subtitles in this sequence to get cropped off, most notably in the scene when the subtitles "NOW IS THE TIME FOR EVERY GOOD MAN TO COME TO THE AID OF HIS PARTY" appear onscreen. On MeTV and MeTV Toons airings, the scene is slightly zoomed out, similar to how certain shorts' opening titles are aired on both networks.

  

  USA print (top) and EU print (bottom) of this scene

Gallery

Credits

Lobby card #1

Lobby card #2

References

also see the List of Bugs Bunny cartoons