Last week, free ad-supported streaming service Tubi made some big news. Starting March 1, it’s gaining a large volume of Warner Bros. animated TV shows. Dozens of older shows are coming to the streaming service, including ones by Hanna-Barbera, the 90s Amblin co-productions (“Tiny Toons,” “Animaniacs”), and the 90s/2000s Cartoon Network shows (“Dexter’s Laboratory,” “The Powerpuff Girls,” “Teen Titans”). Some of the shows will launch on March 1, while others will be added over time.
Tubi announced this on their Twitter account (versus a non-Musk-owned means like a press release), but it’s been confirmed by others. Below is a list of what’s coming to Tubi.
Cartoons coming to Tubi
- Abbott & Costello Cartoons
- Addams Family (1974)
- Adventures of Batman, The
- Animaniacs
- Aquaman
- Astro and the Space Mutts
- Atom Ant
- Baby Looney Tunes
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold
- Be Cool Scooby-Doo!
- Beetlejuice
- Ben 10 (2005)
- Beware the Batman
- Captain Caveman
- Captain Caveman & The Teen Angels
- Captain Planet
- Codename: Kids Next Door
- Courage The Cowardly Dog
- Cow & Chicken
- Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines
- Dexter’s Laboratory
- Dorothy & the Wizard of Oz
- Dragon’s Lair
- Duck Dodgers
- Dukes of Hazzard: The Animated Series
- Dumb & Dumber (Animated Series)
- Dynomutt, Dog Wonder
- Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy
- Evil Con Carne
- Flintstone Family Adventures
- Flintstone Kids
- Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends
- Freakazoid!
- Great Grape Ape
- Help, It’s the Hair Bear Bunch
- Hong Kong Phooey
- Jonny Quest
- Justice League
- Justice League Action
- Krypto the Superdog
- Legion of Super Heroes
- Loonatics Unleashed
- Looney Tunes 3D Shorts
- Looney Tunes Cartoons
- MAD
- Magilla Gorilla
- Mucha Lucha!
- New Looney Tunes Show (aka Wabbit)
- New Scooby Doo Mysteries
- Paddington Bear
- Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm
- Perils of Penelope Pitstop
- Pinky and the Brain
- Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain
- Powerpuff Girls
- Pup Named Scooby Doo
- Quick Draw McGraw
- Ricochet Rabbit
- Scooby and Scrappy Doo
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated
- Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue
- Smurfs
- Snagglepuss
- Static Shock!
- Super Friends
- Supernatural: The Anime Series
- Taz-Mania
- Teen Titans
- The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo
- The Batman
- The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley
- The Frankenstones
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
- The Heathcliff and Dingbat Show
- The Mask (Animated Series)
- The New Adventures of Batman
- The New Adventures of Gilligan
- The New Fred and Barney Show
- The New Scooby Doo Movies
- The Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show
- The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest
- The Secret Squirrel Show
- The Super Globetrotters
- The Yogi Bear Show
- Tiny Toon Adventures
- Tom & Jerry
- Tom & Jerry Comedy Show
- Tom & Jerry Kids
- Tom & Jerry Show, The
- Tom & Jerry Tales
- Top Cat
- Unikitty
- Wacky Races
- Wacky Races (2017)
- Xiaolin Showdown
- Yo! Yogi
- Yogi’s Galaxy Goof-Ups
- Yogi’s Gang
- Yogi’s Space Race
- Yogi’s Treasure Hunt
Cartoons launching on March 1
- Animaniacs
- Powerpuff Girls
- Teen Titans
- The Batman
- Ben 10 (2005)
- Pinky and the Brain
- Justice League
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold
- Dexter’s Laboratory
- Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy
- Courage The Cowardly Dog
- Taz-Mania
- Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends
- Codename: Kids Next Door
- The Mask (Animated)
- Yogi’s Gang
Tubi: The new “Boomerang” streaming service?
This is a huge announcement. Basically, Tubi will now be the main streaming home for the Warner Bros. animation catalog that isn’t DC Comics or Adult Swim. For now, anyway, the 2010s-era Cartoon Network shows like “Steven Universe” (plus, for some reason, “The Jetsons”) are still on Hulu; Netflix and Amazon Prime Video also will still carry shows like “Batman: The Animated Series.”
Still, Tubi now has nearly every major cartoon, plus a few minor ones, that were on the old Boomerang streaming service. Tubi already has the Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and some of the major Hanna-Barbera shows: “Yogi Bear,” “Scooby-Doo,” and “The Flintstones.”
Analyzing the shows
To analyze what’s coming to Tubi…
Reboots aside, “Tiny Toons,” “Animaniacs,” and “Pinky and the Brain” haven’t had much of a presence on streaming, so this is a big change for those shows.
Some of the “shows” listed are backup segments to other characters’ shows. For example, Snagglepuss was a supporting character on “The Yogi Bear Show,” while Ricochet Rabbit was a backup on “Magilla Gorilla.”
As for why Captain Caveman is listed twice, my guess: it’s the backup segments (along with the separately-listed “Flintstone Family Adventures” and “The Frankenstones”) from the 1980s “The Flintstone Comedy Show” (also known as “Flintstone Frolics” in some non-US syndication markets/on the old Boomerang service). 70s and 80s Flintstone spin-offs “Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm,” “The New Fred and Barney Show,” and “Flintstone Kids” are also joining Tubi. No sign of “Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs,” unfortunately.
For Scooby-Doo, this brings nearly every Scooby-Doo series to the service. Even “Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get A Clue,” which to date doesn’t have a full DVD release. One show missing is “Scooby’s All-Star Laff-A-Lympics,” which is currently airing (for the Olympics) on MeTV, plus getting a Blu-ray release in March. It’s sometimes been on Tubi, however, so it might show up again in the future.
“Quick Draw McGraw” stands out as a major Hanna-Barbera addition. It’s largely been missing from streaming or physical media, supposedly due to music rights. If accurate, this would imply those have finally been straightened out?
For Looney Tunes, Tubi has seen success with the original shorts, so adding some other spin-off material is appropriate: “Duck Dodgers,” “Loonatics Unleashed,” “Wabbit” (aka “New Looney Tunes”), “Baby Looney Tunes,” and the made-for-HBO Max “Looney Tunes Cartoons.” That final one’s surprising, given how hyped those were at the time for the service. But I’ll have more to say on HBO Max below.
Yogi Bear’s various spin-offs are also coming to Tubi—even “Yogi’s Space Race,” “Yogi’s Treasure Hunt,” and “Yo! Yogi.” Not among the shows, however, are “The New Yogi Bear Show” from the 80s.
A number of DC Comics related shows are also coming: the 70s Batman stand-alone series, “Super Friends,” “Justice League,” “Teen Titans,” “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” and even “Beware the Batman.” “Batman: The Animated Series” and “Superman: The Animated Series” aren’t coming to Tubi; the former is currently on Prime Video and HBO Max while the latter is on HBO Max. However, this is still a pretty decent amount of classic DC cartoons.
A few Boomerang originals also are coming to Tubi: “Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz,” and the 2017 “Wacky Races” reboot.
Finally, one major gain (and a major reason for the attention) is the 90s and 2000s Cartoon Network shows. These include the major shows of those decades: “Dexter’s Laboratory,” “The Powerpuff Girls,” “Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy,” “Courage the Cowardly Dog,” “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends,” even “Evil Con Carne.” While there’s no “Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?,” “Camp Lazlo” or similar secondary shows, these cover most of the biggest classic (pre-”Chowder”) Cartoon Network shows.
Pros and cons of Tubi
Tubi’s seen success with airing some of Warner Bros.’s cartoons, so I can see why they’ve decided they’re open to airing more. I didn’t expect it to be this many, however, making them Warner’s de facto classic animation home. Of course, this assumes some of these shows don’t get rotated off of Tubi when new ones arrive.
Another positive aspect is that Tubi is a free service, so these aren’t being paywalled behind an obscure secondary service like Boomerang, or on an expensive service like HBO Max.
Tubi gaining the Warner catalog is also part of Warner Bros. reverting its status quo for cartoons back to (basically) the pre-Turner merger era, when third parties would air their cartoons (the Big Four networks, syndication, Nickelodeon, etc.). I assume part of this ties into Warner’s plans to spin off the cable channel side into a separate company.
Warner Bros. has also been making high-definition prints of many of these shows; since it’s 2026, broadcasters like MeTV and streaming services like, well, Tubi, are likely requesting such. Licensing out the cartoons (as well as the Warner Archive Blu-ray releases) might be one way of paying for such HD upgrades.
As for Tubi’s downsides:
- Tubi has commercials, so there’s no ad-free streaming option available for these shows.
- Tubi itself is owned by Fox Corporation, and thus it’s owned by the Murdoch family/is a corporate cousin of Fox News.
Those bothered by commercials and/or wanting to boycott anything owned by the Murdochs might want to consider getting these shows on DVD/Blu-ray instead. For that, see my previous posts about how to get Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo/Hanna-Barbera on physical media. (I’ll probably cover Cartoon Network/Adult Swim shows in a future post.) Fortunately, physical media is still one of the few things Warner Bros. does well.
What about HBO Max?
Warner Bros. as a company has always been mercurial toward animation, even pre-dating Zaslav’s tenure, with a series of bean counter owners usually indifferent-to-hostile about cartoons. (The original Warner brothers couldn’t care less about the Looney Tunes, despite their success.) The studio heads’ default attitude of “who cares, it’s just a cartoon” definitely has shown under Zaslav’s tenure, as seen by the “Coyote vs. Acme” saga making headlines.
At one point, HBO Max felt like it could’ve become a “catch-all” service, with a catalog strong enough one could replace one of the classic “Big Three” catch-all streaming services: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Disney+/Hulu. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, Warner Bros. and HBO Max have clearly veered away from such, thanks to content purges and other changes.
As such, nowadays, HBO Max is just a more popular secondary-tier service like Apple TV+, Peacock, or Paramount+. Unless you’re an HBO fan, a fan of a specific show/franchise (that hasn’t been removed), or get HBO Max on sale, there’s no reason at this point to subscribe. Netflix buying Warner Bros. also just further cements HBO Max’s secondary status.
Never mind I’m someone who once paid for Boomerang’s streaming service. Although it might be more profitable to license the catalog out, basically being told “don’t bother paying $11 a month (with ads)/$18.49 a month (without ads) for HBO Max, use this free third-party ad-based service instead” still feels odd.
Being fed up over Zaslav’s management and HBO Max’s changes are part of why I started buying physical media again several years ago, as well as set up my own media server—not to mention canceling HBO Max, which won’t get a dime from me anytime in the foreseeable future. Having my own “Netflix” has been enjoyable; I’ve even made “Boomerang,” “DC Comics,” and “Looney Tunes” categories on my server. And of course, nothing will get purged unless I chose to do so. I know this isn’t for everyone, but it’s an option for more “techie” types.
In the long run, I’m hoping Netflix as Warner Bros.’s new owners are better stewards of its animation library, or at least exhibit less of Zaslav’s callous slash-and-burn approach. If (somehow) Paramount ends up as their new owners, there’ll be a lot more things to worry about than just cartoons.
Conclusion
Overall, while I’m still not pleased with Warner Bros. purging animation from HBO Max, I am glad that this content finally has a streaming home on Tubi. While I already own some of these shows on DVD, knowing they’re available for others to stream for free is a good thing. Of course, since it’s streaming, nothing’s truly permanent, but for now, Tubi’s where to go for Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo and the Powerpuff Girls.
Image: Tubi. (Tubi)
