YMMV / Bonkers

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Lucky Piquel. An Expy of Eddie Valiant, he seems notoriously, for a Disney cartoon, bigoted against Toons. Fandom can't decide if he's a Noble Bigot, a Straight Man, or just an exasperated cop working a particularly annoying beat; imagine having to work security at a Fan Convention filled with particularly dedicated cosplayers who never break character. Regularly. Now imagine they can actually do the crazy stuff their characters do. He has to deal with the Rule of Funny regularly overriding the laws of physics, getting his car and possessions trashed, being personally humiliated and sometimes even hurt by Toons. And despite this, he keeps showing up for work and actually enjoys himself on occasion - once when he and Bonkers are chasing a suspect through Toon Town, they come to the intersection of Squash and Stretch Streets; he's actually sort of amused by the contortions Bonkers pulls off under their influence. Slightly less so when it turns out to have a similar (but fortunately less extreme) effect on humans. The last interpretation is backed up by the fact that Lucky doesn't want to be in the Toon Division, but his attempts to communicate this and get transferred or promoted are completely lost on Chief Kanifky, a Pointy-Haired Boss of the highest order.
• Base-Breaking Character: Bonkers' over-the-top voice and antics are either seen as charming or annoying to viewers.
• Broken Base:
  • Over whether the Lucky or Miranda episodes are better. People who like Lucky's episodes tend to like the opposite personalities playing off each other plus having extra characters like Fall-Apart, whereas Miranda fans prefer the greater emphasis on humor and her less abrasive personality.
  • The show itself. Was it an underrated classic that never got its due and respect, or was it a poor replacement for Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers?
• Common Knowledge: A belief that keeps spreading around is that the show started life as a Roger Rabbit spinoff, but legal issues made it never see the light of day, and Bonkers is simply a retool of that idea. However, Word of God has proved otherwise, even though this theory still remains afloat to this day.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Wacky Weasel has a good amount of screenshots and fanart of him online despite being a one-shot villain.
  • TJ Finger also gets some of this for being a badass.
  • The Collector and Pops Clock are both pretty memorable to the fans despite only being one-shots due to being far darker natured villains than the rest. It can't be a coincidence that they were the two main villains of the SNES game.
• Fandom Rivalry: Many fans of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers despise this show for replacing Rescue Rangers in the time slot.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In 'Toon With No Name' Fall-Apart tries to recount a film of Bonkers' to help Lucky find him but keeps getting the details wrong like adding an alien invasion, leading to Lucky remarking that they don't have aliens in Westerns. Come The Noughties and look what turns up.
  • Grumbles Grizzly comes across as a grumpy neighbour, a role his voice actor Rodger Bumpass would become famous for again.
  • "A Woolly Bully" has its Villain of the Week as Mammoth Mammoth, a tiny toon mammoth playing a superhero who is convinced that he actually has superpowers. Disney would later make a whole movie out of this basic concept.
  • "In the Bag" has the titular bag steal the D from the Hollywood sign, leaving it as Hollywoo.
  • A Disney cartoon about an animal who's a police officer.
  • While fans debated over its replacement of Chip 'n Dale, the franchise's own 2022 movie features another toon who got kicked off his big project and went into crime prevention—Ugly Sonic, the initial design for Sonic The Hedgehog 2020's titular character.
    • Also the fact that Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) has the feel of a Bonkers movie, only with Chip 'n Dale as the main characters instead.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Collector was pretty scary to begin with, and that's to say nothing of the laminated toons crying.
  • The Father Time episode fits this too.
  • Also, Z-bot from Tokyo Bonkers. A really ugly and nasty brain monster.
• Popular with Furries: Fawn Deer has more than a fair amount of fanart dedicated to her for reasons that aren't hard to piece together.
• Presumed Flop: Bonkers is regarded as trying and failing to take on Animaniacs despite the fact that, in most big markets, its direct competition was Batman: The Animated Series, which was an entirely different kind of series. Rather, Disney's decision not to make any more episodes beyond the initial order is likely more because of its Troubled Production than anything else.
• The Scrappy: The Grapevine from the Lucky Piquel episodes. All they ever do is insult the police and make really lame jokes.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Due to its similarities, it has been seen as the closest to a Roger Rabbit TV series.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The show has been accused of being a Who Framed Roger Rabbit rip-off due to its amount of similarities.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Alto, voiced by Cree Summer, is a young, male, toon saxophone... that has facial hair... and is still confused as being a girl, by some fans. The Gender-Blender Name might have something to do with it; an alto is a female singer with a low voice.
• The Woobie:
  • Jitters.
  • Bonkers himself has had his moments where he really could use a good cuddle. Especially in the two-parter pilot episode, Basic Spraining and New Partners On The Block.
  • Skunky Skunk from 'Is Toon Fur Really Warm?'. Poor guy was framed for murder. He could also count as a Jerkass Woobie.

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