A biography of Honey Bunny, a girlfriend of Bugs

Before we start, let's make a short description of our fembunny. So...

Name: Honey Bunny
In other languages: Króliczka Honey (Polish translation for Honey Bunny), Novia Bugs ("a girlfriend of Bugs" in Spanish), Bunnita (in Italy)
Height: 3 feet, 4 1/2 inches
Weight: None of your business!

Honey Bunny wasn't very lucky as she had been created too late to appear in animation along with Bugs Bunny (the Warner Bros. animation unit was already closed for few years). Honey Bunny's career was mainly in comic books, merchandise and in theaters in amusement parks where she had many successes.

Her first comic stories showed her as somewhat giddy teenager, however, over years, when her appearance was changing, her personality matured to such an extent that eventually she became the sanest member of the Looney Tunes family (which is interesting as Honey Bunny is the only Looney Tunes character to NEVER appear in animation!). Her sensible nature provided perfect counterbalance for mischievous personality of Bugs Bunny.

Honey has many talents. She's graceful. She loves sports, loves to dance, sing and play musical instruments.

This is how we can describe in a few words this unusual character which in 1996 for the aims of "Space Jam" for some reasons had been changed into today's Lola Bunny. But let's start from the very beginning.

1953 - a "proto-Honey" era

Honey Bunny has been brought to life in 1953 by Robert McKimson, great director and animator, the same who made a model sheet for Bugs Bunny which was used for many years. Our fembunny first appears in a comic book titled "Bugs Bunny's Album". It was a series of comic books in which Bugs Bunny presented stories of his ancestors and relatives. Every comic story, with few exceptions, describes adventures of one bunny.

In one of these stories there appears Honey Bunny. When we meet her, she is a small white bunny who has a blue bow on her head and is dressed up with short blue dress with white spots. In this story Honey is Bugs' cousin.

In first few pages we learn quite a lot about her. She dreams about career of a famous African explorer hunting for elephants. Quite credulous, she gets her caught in a joke by Bugs who introduces her "into African world" and between elephants... at the back of a circus. However, there appears a man who helps Honey make her dreams come true and soon Honey travels to Africa, accompanied by Bugs. However, she quickly realizes that she aims too high...
In this version Honey appeared only once and didn't play important role. Until some point in time...

Official debut

In the early 1960's artists working on comic stories featuring Looney Tunes characters reminded about Honey Bunny and decided to introduce her permanently into the world of Bugs Bunny and his friends.

However, a problem arose because in her hitherto existing form Honey Bunny looked too outdated. Such way of presenting female characters was characteristic for cartoons and comic books from 1940's and early 1950's. That's why Honey had to be changed, modernized, "updated".

A "new" Honey Bunny debuted in November 1966, in "Bugs Bunny Comic Book" No. 108. Apart from name and personality, everything has been changed, since then Honey was a yellow fembunny, dressed up with purple t-shirt and green tight shorts. A bow on her head has been replaced with blonde hair. Honey Bunny had floppy ears and small powder-puff tail. Through most time Honey's visual appearance wasn't changed, usually the only changes concerned different shades of color of her fur.

However, along with comic model of Honey Bunny there appeared a promotional model sheet which looked quite different. In this version Honey has a short dark green skirt and light-green sweatshirt. She also has different haircut and a red bow on her head. Depending on artist's preferences, her fur was gray or yellow. Her tail is much larger and her pupils are surrounded by blue eyelids.

Sometimes there appeared a third version of Honey as well which looked much like her comic model, except from a bow instead of hair and gray fur instead of yellow one.

Let's return to a comic version of Honey Bunny. Her debut story was "Showdown at Carrot Gulch". Here, Honey is no longer Bug's cousin but a great fan who met a TV star when he found himself in a wrong time in a wrong place. A moment earlier some thief robbed a local bank and tried to run away. A local sheriff misidentified Bugs with that robber and wanted to arrest him, however, Honey Bunny arrived, explained to sheriff who Bugs Bunny is and convinced him to let Bugs run after actual robber. Bugs captured that robber and put him into arrest which he was awarded for, taking over a function from sheriff who was going to retire. Honey and Bugs found common ground immediately and soon Honey became the head of Sheriff's Department for Carrots.

As it happens in relationships, Honey's relations with Bugs varied. Most times they were presented as a pair of lovers. It sometimes happened, however, that they were angry at each other, other times they were fighting like enemies. However, such situations were extremely rare. In most comic stories we see two lovers who are very engaged in their relationship and who helped each other in hard moments.

Honey's appearances in comic stories were quite irregular. Usually her appearances aimed to fulfill the fable. However, it sometimes happened that Honey initiated a chain of events (a similar role is fulfilled by today's Lola Bunny, a "newer version of Honey Bunny"). For example, such situation occurred in a story titled "Two's a crowd" printed in "Bugs Bunny Comic Book" No. 150 from July 1973. In this story Honey searches for a candidate for wife for her widowed father Horatio Q. Bunny. However, candidate's arrival has unforeseen effects...

1980's

Through most time there existed two versions of Honey Bunny - comic one and promotional one. Both versions looked quite different. The same situation occurred in 1980's when Warner Bros. sent a new Looney Tunes model sheets to their licensees. This time Honey Bunny was visually closer to her boyfriend Bugs Bunny. Her fur was gray and blonde hair on her head has been replaced with a bow. Depending on artists' preferences, Honey was depicted with standing or floppy ears. Sometimes in pictures Honey Bunny, Bugs Bunny and Clyde Rabbit (Bugs' nephew who appears in few animated shorts) were depicted as a family.
Although there appeared a new official model sheet, in comic stories Honey Bunny remained yellow. Such situation lasted until middle 1980's when comic books series ended up because of falling sales.

Since then, in comic books Honey appeared only once on a cover of "Looney Tunes Magazine" No. 2/1991, however, this time Honey was depicted in a way that she was visually closer to Bugs.

Honey's visual appearance was treated very freely by Chuck Jones, great animator and creator of most Looney Tunes animated shorts, in his series of paintings relating to the theme of marriage. In 1981 Chuck Jones married Marian Dern and he expressed his happiness in artistic way, creating a series of works presenting Honey and Bugs' marriage. In every of these pictures Honey has different color of fur, from gray, through yellow, ending on pink.
An interesting fact is that a fembunny we see in these pictures remains unnamed and just referred to as "bride", however, it is known that it is Honey Bunny. Moreover, this character much resembles later Babs Bunny from Tiny Toons. It is quite possible that her visual appearance was inspired by Honey Bunny from Chuck Jones' paintings.

Late 1970's and early 1980's is also a time of Honey's debut on the stage. She appeared in shows presented in many amusement parks in US, including Great America Amusement Park and Six Flags Amusement Parks. Honey's costumes have been prepared according to abovementioned model sheet issued in 1980's. On stage Honey was probably voiced by Desiree Goyette. On the Internet there available at least two videos in which Honey Bunny dances and sings along with Bugs Bunny and their friends from Looney Tunes gang.

1990's

In early 1990's there appeared another official model sheet for Honey Bunny. In this version she is visually much closer to Bugs, however, she has got more feminine and delicate shapes as well.

1990's is a time when Honey Bunny debuted in another entertainment area of life, that is, in games. She first appeared in "Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle" issued by Kemco. Honey appears in two first versions of this game, for NES and GameBoy (in two later ones there appears Lola Bunny). In this game we control Bugs Bunny whose task is to complete 60 stages of middle level of difficulty to free Honey Bunny who has been imprisoned in a tower by other characters from Looney Tunes.
Honey Bunny also appeared in a pinball game "Bugs Bunny's Birthday" released in 1990 for Bugs Bunny's 50th Birthday.

To think that Warner Bros. didn't plan to put Honey Bunny in a movie would be a mistake. Such plans were made in middle 1990's when they started working on a full-length film with Looney Tunes characters. Of course, it was "Space Jam".

In this movie Honey Bunny was planned to be Bugs Bunny's female counterpart and it is even proved by early sketches. On these sketches we see an athletic fembunny with a bow on her head, wearing a dress referring to the flag of the United States of America. However, an artist who prepared those sketches drew Honey in so unfortunate way that she looked like Bugs' twin sister (another artist even commented it saying "is it just Bugs in drag?"). They decided to change her visual appearance. Artists working on "Space Jam" probably decided to return to earlier yellow comic version of Honey Bunny and to modernize and update her.

It also seems that from the very beginning they planned to change her name as well. Among proposed new names there appeared Bunni Bunny, Lola Buni (it's not a mistake!), Lola Rabbit, and even Daisy Lou. Eventually this "newer version of Honey Bunny" has got the name of Lola Bunny.

Technically speaking, we should consider Lola and Honey the same character who has just been redesigned. The same thing happened to Melissa Duck, a Daffy Duck's girlfriend, who in now televised animated sitcom "The Looney Tunes Show" is called Tina Russo Duck.

The introduction of Lola Bunny caused some controversies. Some fans protested against her, pointing out that Bugs Bunny was earlier in love with Honey (though those protests were probably an effect of lack of knowledge about how Lola was created). Other fans wondered about some details of Lola's appearance as she has got quite huge breasts and, so to say, a sexy bottom. Some fans came to the conclusion that Warner Bros. introduced into the world of Looney Tunes a character whose role was to look like... a symbol of sex.

Looney Tunes fans were divided into three groups, fans of Honey who don't accept Lola, fans of Lola who don't tolerate Honey, and those who accept both characters. Some of them express their feelings in artistic but quite brutal way, portraying both fembunnies as obstinately fighting enemies. What's interesting is that in practically all works of such kind honey is depicted as visually similar to Bugs. No picture shows Lola fighting with yellow comic version of Honey Bunny.

Lola's introduction caused Honey's popularity to decrease for some time. For few months it was Lola who appeared in merchandise, however, she appeared only in products related to "Space Jam". Soon her popularity started to fall and again Honey Bunny took her place.

Once again the model sheet for our fembunny changed. Now Honey has somewhat shorter teeth and smaller and more delicate palms and feet. It is especially seen on a sericel "A Little Slice of Heaven" issued in 1999, showing Honey and Bugs just married. This sericel was a part of a larger series of products relating to marriage, including mugs, glasses, figurines and water balls depicting marriage of our enamored bunnies.

It seems that the visual appearance of Honey Bunny in this sericel is based on Lola's model sheet as, apart from clothes, both characters differ only in color of fur. It is more probable, however, that in this collectible Honey Bunny has been depicted in a version which was to be used in "Space Jam".

Although Lola's comic debut was in 1996 in a comic adaptation of "Space Jam", it was just in 2000 when she started regular appearing in comic books. In this time Honey Bunny was still present in merchandise and for long time both characters coexisted. And they coexisted peacefully.

After 2000

When Warner Bros. Studio Stores have been closed down in 2002 Honey Bunny almost completely disappeared from comic books and most of products and Lola Bunny took over her place. Essentially, Lola Bunny fulfills the same role as Honey Bunny - her irregular appearances in comic stories mainly aim just to fill up the fable and it is very rare that she initiates the chain of events.

It doesn't mean, however, that Honey Bunny disappeared completely. Though rarely, she still appears in sericels and other collectibles. Naturally, she appears along with Bugs.

Once again, however, Hone's look changed. Now she's visually closer to Lola as she has blonde hair and blue eyelids. Some of the most recent collectibles featuring Honey Bunny are paintings by Kirk Mueller, an artist who works for Warner Bros.

No one knows what the future of Honey Bunny is. Now Lola Bunny is at her place. And this situation will last... until artists working for Warner Bros. remind about old good classic Honey.

For full version of Honey Bunny's biography with illustrations, model sheets, etc. see honeybunnyworld.com A new unofficial website of Honey Bunny