Warner Bros. Cartoon Characters

So of course in the great cartoon wars that exist only in my mind, the Disney stable would square off against the Warner Bros. team, with Hanna Barbera and whoever else mere bystanders. And, of course, Warner Bros. would win, with pluckier and more individual characters, with a sharper sense of humour and of surreal whimsy.

Just as Mickey Mouse is the jewel in the Disney crown, Bugs Bunny is the sun around which the other characters, like so many planets, orbit. So when I decided to look at five Warner Bros. characters, and how much they've been Googled, I went into it expecting Bugs Bunny would be the most Googled. I don't think I realised by how much, though.



That's a huge difference. What intrigues me, though, is where these characters are most Googled. Here's the top five for each:

• Bugs Bunny: Turkey, Philippines, Canada, Peru, Greece. A more random list I could not imagine. Apart from Turkey and Greece being neighbours, the countries on this list are nowhere near each other. Perhaps each has a city or a major political personage with this name?
• Daffy Duck: the USA, Australia, Turkey, the UK, Canada. A much more explicable list: with the exception of cartoon fan Turkey, this is primarily the Anglosphere, which brings up the question of what these characters are called in other languages.
• Porky Pig: United States, Canada, the UK... that's it. Interesting. The Anglosphere, sure, but Porky, the guy who says "that's all, folks" at the end of every Warner Bros. cartoon, doesn't even register on searches outside of these three countries (the rest of the top ten in just countries in alphabetic order).
• Elmer Fudd: Canada, the United States, Australia, the UK... that's it. Same as Porky, sadly - except the Australians show up.
• Speedy Gonzales: Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada. And now for something completely different. I don't know whether or not I was surprised to find Mexico absent from the top ten, but the sudden preponderence of European countries threw me for a loop.

Here's a few translations, according to Wikipedia:

• English, German, Spanish, French, Bahasa Indonesia, Itlain, Swahili, Dutch, Portuguese, Romanian, Turkish: Bugs Bunny.
• Serbian: Duško Dugouško.
• Danish: Snurre Snup.
• Croatian: Zekoslava Mrkva.
• Norwegian: Snurre Sprett.
• Polish: Królik Bugs.
• Finnish: Väiski Vemmelsääri, or apparently Pelle Pupu.

 

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