Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam to no longer carry rifles, pistol in HBO Max's reboot series Looney Toons Cartoons

Elmer Fudd has many means for violence and mayhem in HBO Max’s Looney Tunes Cartoons, the reboot of the classic Warner Bros cartoons.

But the infamous rabbit hunter will not be blasting his cartoon rifle.

"We're not doing guns," Peter Browngardt, the executive producer and showrunner of the series, told The New York Times in a recent interview. "But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in."

Yosemite Sam will also lose his iconic double pistols in the series. However, neither Browngardt nor WarnerMedia, HBO Max's parent company, has stated the exact reason for the decision to drop guns from the new show.

The new episodes harken back to the Looney Tunes, which had their peak in the 1940s and 1950s heyday. Though no guns or rifles in sight, it still features the campy violence fans have grown to love — including dynamite explosions, anvils dropping on characters' heads, and complex booby traps — is still part of the new series, according to The New York Times.

Warner Bros TV had previously released a short on its YouTube channel titled, Dynamite Dance, which appeared to be from the new series. In the short, Fudd chases Bugs Bunny with a deadly scythe, and Bugs turns the tables on the hunter by stuffing dynamite sticks in his mouth. Over the course of the short animated video, the explosives get bigger as Bugs keep finding multiple creative ways to beat Fudd in this chase with hoards of dynamites.

The Looney Tunes Cartoons shorts run one to six minutes long, and feature classic characters such as Bugs Bunny, Elmer, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and more. Currently, there are 10 episodes on HBO Max, the new streaming service from HBO that premiered on 27 May in the US.

Nonetheless, there was an outcry on social media about the lack of guns.

Here are some reactions