YMMV / Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid

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• Fanon: After they were redesigned on Tiny Toon Adventures, some fans headcanon that Bosko and Honey are Yakko, Wakko, and Dot's real parents, seeing as how Wakko's Wish most likely isn't canon to the main Animaniacs series.
• Fair for Its Day: Still hotly debated today, and it's complicated by the fact that Bosko's race is sometimes unclear (and complicated further by Word of God claiming they didn't see him as black); but when he is portrayed or seen as black, while his look and feel are based on blackface minstrel shows that are generally seen as heavily offensive today, he's also generally portrayed as intelligent, kind, and heroic, while sometimes fighting and defeating villainous white antagonists.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In "Bosko's Picture Show", there is a short scene of Adolf Hitler (in what is now considered the first time he's been caricatured in a Warner Bros. cartoon) chasing a caricature of Jimmy Durante with an axe. Although Durante was Catholic, not Jewish, it still stood that his most prominent (and thus, most comically exaggerated) feature was his large nose, which is associated with Jewish caricatures.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The newspaper Bosko reads in "Bosko's Mechanical Man" is called the Daily Bugle.
• Replacement Scrappy: Buddy is universally disliked by fans of the series, with both the character and his cartoons seen as a bland as wheat replacement for the fairly fun Bosko cartoons.
• Seasonal Rot: The later Bosko cartoons got a lot blander and had much less frequent, tamer gags than the earlier Bosko shorts, in spite of the animation getting more polished. The Happy Harmonies Bosko shorts are likewise considered inferior to the earlier shorts, mainly for their cloying, sluggishly paced nature and weak gags, despite their exquisite artwork.
• Squick: In "Bosko's Party", one of the guests hides in a chamber pot.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Bosko (and Buddy) shorts were run alongside other Looney Tunes shorts on Nickelodeon for a time. At some point they removed them and ADVERTISED IT, with an ad that went like: "See all your favorite characters! More Bugs! More Daffy! ...and no Bosko! Sorry, Bosko!" This accompanied a short animation of Bosko in a closing Iris Out. No Bosko (or Buddy) cartoons were ever shown again.
  • Buddy's return in Animaniacs got him an entire episode that gave him this treatment.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The MGM shorts featuring him due to his redesign as a black human boy with bright, pronounced lips.
  • The early Looney Tunes entries gave him a stereotypical Southern drawl, but later shorts gave him that Mickey Mouse falsetto voice every cartoon character in that era had.
  • Even when putting aside the controversy over whether or not Bosko was meant to be a black caricature, the scene in his debut short where he performs a stereotypical Jewish song and dance is very offensive by modern standards.

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