Screwy Squirrel Day (4/01/97)
By: Matthew Williams
4/9/03
We're about a week removed from this event, but it's still one of the watershed moments of Cartoon Network-- when the network's very sly, silly side came out to play, with probably the biggest April Fools' Joke ever pulled by a television network.
At 6 AM on the morning of April 1st, the Screwy Squirrel cartoon "Happy-Go-Nutty" came on. Not very unusual; the mornings, which were turned over to "Down wit' Droopy D" at the time, usually tended to show some of the non-Tom & Jerry MGM cartoons.
And then, after that, it appeared again. And then again. And again and again and again until soon, one hour passed and the same exact cartoon was still being played. Again, innocently enough, it was probably a computer error-- helped in part by the fact that commercial bumpers and all were left intact.
But by midday, it became obvious that this was completely planned. A visit to the Cartoon Network area at AOL revealed that Screwy Squirrel had taken over Cartoon Network, taken the programmers hostage, and forced them to run the same cartoon-- over and over and over and over. Something that was only confirmed by the presence of several "scrolls" appearing across the screen to explain what was going on-- scrolls that got more and more ludicrous as time went on.
Yeah, by then it was obvious that the programmers had pulled a fast one on us. The only question from this point, was "how long"?
The cartoon kept repeating as the hours rolled by. Noon. 1 PM. 2 PM. 3 PM. At 4 PM, fans of the then-new Toonami tuned in to find Happy-Go-Nutty hurtling past its 60th consecutive airing. The scrolls continued, by this time pleading with viewers to stop calling the network so that the "phone lines could remain open so they could communicate with Screwy."
Finally, at 6 PM, the madness stopped. The scroll released a statement from Cartoon Network-- "April Fool's". Viewers were thanked for their patience, and told that regular programming was about to resume... with the Screwy Squirrel Marathon, coming up next. Actually, that didn't happen; "Haredevil Hare" started a 6-hour "makeup session" filled with classic Warner Bros. cartoons to apologize for the inconvenience viewers endured. Even afterwards, the marathon was over -- a voiceover promo for the Tex Avery Show teased,. "Maybe they'll show a Screwy Squirrel cartoon!! ...uh, seen any good ones lately?"
They never did anything like this again, choosing to remain with normal programming or pre-announced stunts, like a BeetleJuice *double triple shudder* marathon the next year and the Monkey Marathon from this past year. It's sad, in a way; that stunt was one of the most memorable events ever at Cartoon Network.