'Looney Tunes' reboot ditches guns for Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam

Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd are now unarmed, thanks to the reboot of the classic Looney Tunes characters on HBO's new streaming platform.

Neither the irascible prospector nor the befuddled hunter will carry their trademark pistol or double-barrelled shotgun in the new cartoons, being shown on HBO Max.

Strangely, however, Fudd is still a hunter in the new shows, and is still hunting his nemesis Bugs Bunny, but instead uses a serious-looking scythe.

Speaking to The New York Times, the series' showrunner Peter Browngardt confirmed: “We're not doing guns, but we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff.

“All that was kind of grandfathered in.”

Later in the article, animator Johnny Ryan adds: “We’re going through this wave of anti-bullying, everybody needs to be friends, everybody needs to get along.

“Looney Tunes is pretty much the antithesis of that. It’s two characters in conflict, sometimes getting pretty violent.”

The decision to remove firearms from the classic cartoon series has been met with some... interesting reactions online.

Others noted that the move is a notable about face from more recent Looney Tunes material...

There’s no news about if and when the new Looney Tunes cartoon will be made available for UK audiences.