The Day Cartoons Took Orders From the White House

Inside the wild true story of a government-funded crossover featuring Bugs Bunny, the Ninja Turtles, and... McDonald’s?

June 02, 2025

I was ten when I entered The Twilight Zone of Saturday morning cartoons.

On April 21, 1990, I hopped out of bed and ran to the living room in my Superman pajamas (cape included) to claim my spot in front of our old TV. I grabbed the remote, still sticky from last week’s spilled soda, and flipped through the channels.

However, something was wrong.

Every channel played the same cartoon. The Smurfs walked out of a book. Alf climbed out of a picture frame. Alvin and the Chipmunks were… wait, how were Alvin and the Chipmunks talking to Garfield?

Wait, how are ALF, Garfield, and the Chipmunks in the same hallway?
(Your brain in 1990.)

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was old enough to know that these characters lived in different worlds, on different networks, owned by different companies. Seeing them together was enough to make my head hurt.

What I didn’t know then was that I had just witnessed the most expensive psychological operation ever conducted on American children.

Case of the Week

Operation Toon Squad: The Impossible Collaboration

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was a $1.6 million propaganda campaign disguised as a Saturday morning cartoon.

Think about it. Warner Bros. and Disney don’t share characters.

The Big Four networks aired the special on the same day, a media miracle rarely seen before or since.

They are mortal enemies. Putting Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse in the same cartoon would require lawyers, contracts, and licensing fees that would leave you dizzy.

I remember getting a Mike, the Sewer Surfer action figure, in a four-way trade involving Raph, the Space Cadet one, along with snacks, Power Rangers, and a temporarily loaned Tamagotchi. I’m not kidding!

It took a week of negotiation and the help of two other kids to make the trade happen… for an action figure. Yet, over twenty competing animation studios played nice and loaned their most valuable intellectual property for free.

How?

The answer is simple: money. McDonald’s Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities dropped $600,000 on production, the largest grant in company history. Then, McDonald’s Corporation itself added another $1 million for distribution.

But money wouldn’t be enough to get the train moving. Someone had to be the conductor.

Enter Roy E. Disney, Walt’s nephew, who called every studio head to make the impossible happen.

Roy E. Disney made the calls. Twenty studios said yes. Mickey said no.

The cast list reads like a fever dream: The Smurfs, ALF, Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, the Muppet Babies, Slimer, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Michelangelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Huey, Dewey and Louie from DuckTales all crammed into a thirty-minute cartoon warning kids about drugs.

This aired. In prime time. All these characters. One cartoon.

Notice who’s missing from the list? Mickey Mouse.

Disney’s flagship character was absent despite Roy Disney serving as executive producer.

Why would Disney leave out the biggest star from their project?

Because Mickey was too valuable to risk. I remember watching The Prince and the Pauper, where Mickey plays a peasant and a prince’s lookalike.

In The Prince and the Pauper, Mickey was royalty and a moral compass. Maybe that’s why Disney kept him far from the drug talk.

When Mickey switches places with the prince, he doesn’t use his status for personal gain. Instead, he uses it to help the poor and stand up to a corrupt guard captain.

There’s a telling scene when, as a “fake” prince, Mickey refuses to punish someone unfairly. He shows empathy, courage, and selflessness. These are qualities of a good ruler and a good person.

Mickey’s image is sacred to Disney. They were right not to put him in a gritty, drug-themed public service announcement.

The Missing Pieces That Reveal Everything

The Simpsons were also missing from the Saturday morning special. Fox agreed to broadcast Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue along with their competitors, but drew the line at letting Bart, Homer, or any other character from their number one animated show be part of the crossover.

Matt Groening felt The Simpsons’ satirical adult tone didn’t mesh well with the PSA’s anti-drug message. He was right.

Oscar-winning actor George C. Scott joined the ensemble. Scott, who famously refused his Academy Award for his portrayal of George S. Patton, lent his raspy voice to the cartoon’s villain, Smoke.

Yes, that’s a skull. Yes, he’s made of smoke. Yes, he’s voiced by George C. Scott.

I tried imitating Smoke’s voice for a week straight, but never got it down pat. It was a good thing, too, because Smoke was genuinely frightening for a Saturday morning cartoon.

Funny enough, Scott did two voice acting jobs in his career: Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue and Disney’s The Rescuers Down Under in 1990.

Not to be outdone, Jeff Bergman entered the multiverse of mascots as the new voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Mel Blanc, the legendary voice of Looney Tunes, had died the previous year in 1989.

Jeff Bergman became the new voice of Bugs and Daffy after Mel Blanc passed.

Bergman gave new energy to Bugs and Daffy, introducing millions of children to the post-Blanc era.

The production was fast. Wang Film Productions, a Taiwanese animation studio, took eight weeks to produce the special, from script to final animation.

I want to emphasize how ridiculous the timeline was. Most cartoons can take months to years to see the light of day.

Delivering a thirty-minute cartoon in eight weeks, especially considering the studio had to blend different animation styles, is beyond impressive.

I remember when I shot a short film as part of my college thesis assignment. It took an entire semester to make a five-minute film.

Two days before the broadcast, Senators Biden (yes, the 46th President), Thurmond, Hatch, and others met with television executives during a joint congressional hearing to examine how cartoon characters could support anti-drug efforts.

If you were wondering how seriously the government took this, here’s the intervention squad.

President George H.W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush recorded a personal introduction for the VHS release.

Let’s take a second to appreciate what took place. Congress held a special hearing, and the President of the United States recorded an introduction… for a cartoon.

The governmental attention devoted to Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was unprecedented.

The Aftermath: What Happened Next

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue received little attention after its advertised debut as a historic television event.

The VHS was only available as a free rental and never for sale, likely due to the licensing agreements that made the special possible in the first place.

This VHS was never sold. It was only rented. And never reprinted.

Despite the supposed success of uniting America’s biggest cartoon icons, there were no follow-up collaborations. The animation studios retreated to their corners, never attempting a crossover of this scale again.

While the special did air internationally, it only stuck around in one place: it became “a popular annual repeat on Ireland’s RTE2 from 1994 until 2004” before vanishing from mainstream broadcasting.

As one reviewer put it, “whoever wants to re-release this will have to make deals with the companies who own said characters,” some of whom have changed hands over the years.

The very licensing deals that enabled the special now prevent its resurrection.

McDonald’s never backed a similar project again, returning to what it knew best—Happy Meals and playground sponsorships.

But the real question isn’t whether the special succeeded as anti-drug education.

The real question is: what else was the government testing?

Not your average cartoon treasure chest.

How effectively could beloved cartoon characters be used to shape children’s behavior?

How easily could propaganda be smuggled into Saturday morning programming?

Was Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue just a one-off public service announcement, or was it a proof of concept? A beta test for something much bigger?

Quick Hits

  • Oscar-Winning Soundtrack: Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, Academy Award winners for The Little Mermaid, wrote the theme song “Wonderful Ways to Say No.”

  •  International Propaganda: Australia (introduced by Prime Minister Bob Hawke), New Zealand (Prime Minister Jim Bolger), Canada (Prime Minister Brian Mulroney), and Mexico screened the special, which later aired in Japan (Emperor Akihito), Brazil, and Chile.

  • Censored for Home Video: Editors removed a Playboy magazine visible in the broadcast version from the VHS release to avoid controversy among viewers.

Poll of the Day

P.S. Next week: “Nickelodeon’s Stickiest Secret: The Rise and Fall of Green Slime” (Spoiler: It started as a Canadian horror show gag and ended up defining an entire generation’s childhood...)

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