Happy 72nd birthday (July 27)
 

...to Bugs Bunny.

The Bugs we all know and love first appeared unnamed in Tex Avery's 1940 Oscar nominee A Wild Hare (retitled The Wild Hare in Blue Ribbon reissues). Bob Givens was the artist who created the first design of the rabbit. His name, coined in Elmer's Pet Rabbit, was either taken from a model sheet of the screwball rabbit in the two cartoons that came before (Hare-Um Scare-Um; Elmer's Candid Camera) which was labeled "Bugs' bunny' ("Bugs" being the nickname of director Ben Hardaway); or producer Leon Schlesinger's secretary pulling the name from a hat. Tex wanted to call him Jack E. Rabbit.

The rest is the stuff of cartoon legend.

Happy 72 to that "wascally wabbit!"8D:frankiesmile: