It's Bugs Bunny 85th Anniversary! What makes Warner Bros' star so enduring?

Some of the most enduring movie stars are animated; and several of them have been rabbits. Principal among these movie rabbits has been Bugs Bunny.

Read my roundups of the best cartoons of the 1950s and the best cartoons of the 1960s for more inspirational animation. And our list of the best animation software if you want to get creative.

Two dates around Bugs come together in 2025. First, this year marks the 85^th anniversary of Bugs Bunny's first official screen appearance in the short A Wild Hare (1940, directed by Tex Avery). In this short, Bugs is named for the first time and has the fundamental character design that we now know so well.

Additionally, April 30^th (today) has been recognised for some time as Bugs Bunny Day on account of the date of the first, ‘unofficial’ appearance, in 1938, of Bugs in the cartoon Porky’s Hare Hunt.

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Originally created by Bob ‘Bugs’ Hardaway, Bugs was developed as a design and character by Tex Avery and further evolved by directors Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, Bob McKimson and Chuck Jones in the format of the chase cartoon.

A Bugs short such as Hare Raising Hare (1946) is something of an apotheosis of the chase cartoon genre. It’s worth noting here that the classic short cartoons were first screened at cinemas before the main feature film was shown. Only in the 1960s did the shorts transfer to the tv screen.

You might know Bugs from his short cartoon classics that have played on tv for decades, or you might know him from the Space Jam movies (released in 1996 and 2021) and the Joe Dante movie, Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). You might yet know Bugs from Looney Tunes merchandise and maybe never have seen a Bugs cartoon.

Following his 1940 official debut, Bugs went on to star in over 160 shorts that were produced until 1964 when Warner Bros stopped producing theatrically released animated shorts. Bug’s final short was False Hare, directed by Robert McKimson.

After that, Bugs Bunny cartoons would be seen in regular rotation on TV internationally. Indeed, so familiar was the design of Bugs that if you look at the cover of the original paperback edition of the novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (1982), by Gary K. Wolf, the depiction of Roger looks significantly Bugs-inspired.

What Chuck Jones says

Of the ‘classic’ Bugs design, Chuck Jones once had this to say: “My Bugs doesn’t look like a rabbit; he looks like Bugs Bunny. I have often told my students that the easiest way to draw him is probably to draw a carrot and then hook a rabbit onto it.”

To close out this big picture background and context it’s worth quoting the writing of animation historian Norman M.Klein, from his book 7 Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon.

Of the animated short, Klein writes that: “Cartoons are, above all, a narrative built around the expressive possibilities of the anarchic.”