Looney Tunes
Collector's Vault
(and Collector's Choice)
True to its name, the Collector's Vault sets represent several shorts released on Blu-ray to fill in notable gaps for shorts that have not been restored on home media beforehand. It was previously labeled as Collector's Choice for the first four volumes before being retooled into Collector's Vault in subsequent volumes. Due to the sets having practically the same goal and even internal workings, the Collector's Choice and Vault lines are merged for the purpose of this website, with any future disc 1 releases of Collector's Vault being considered a continuation of Collector's Choice.
Background
As Collector's Choice
Following the lukewarm reception of the Bugs 80th Anniversary Collection set, Blu-ray releases for the series were held off for a while. The pandemic at the time also halted work done at both of Warner Bros.' home divisions. However, after much convincing with the Warner Home Video division, the Warner Archive division managed to obtain full control of the library. Thus, the first official Looney Tunes series of home media releases from Warner Archive was born.
The goal of the Collector's Choice series was to move away from Warner Home Video's direction of attempting to sell the preexisting shorts to the "family market." The new goal was to cater to collectors while giving the casual market fresh, new shorts that might have rarely been seen before. The result was to be seen, especially prior to the release of the first volume's cartoon list, which had some fans skeptical of it being yet another double dip set. Cartoons included in the series generally ranged from some of the most memorable shorts without a restored release to animated unknowns that were only resurfaced with HBO Max and MeTV at the time. The series became a modest success overall, achieving the top charts for Blu-ray releases during their release weeks.
The series faced increasing long-term tensions as the volumes came out; one commonly pointed out issue was the smaller amount of Bugs Bunny shorts compared to earlier series. Most of Bugs' shorts were already released restored in previous sets, leaving barely anything left for him to be included without double dipping. Out of the entirety of the series, a grand total of ten Bugs shorts were included; however, by the time the series ended, only 10 Bugs shorts were left to be released restored (in an uncropped state) on home media. Putting that aside, the majority of the Bugs shorts were considered as "last and least" additions, as they are some of the weaker Bugs cartoons.
Other things pointed out are that because most of the shorts are their 2020 restorations, they may be prone to having photoshopped titles; the History page provides a better explanation of why this was the case. While most shorts were zoomed in on title cards to limit the amount of Photoshop work, it can sometimes have obvious errors, such as an irising-in Warner Bros. shield on "There Auto Be a Law" and a fake cutaway to the title card on "Leghorn Swoggled". Despite these title card errors, the actual cartoons themselves tend to be largely untampered and are presented in pristine condition, being scanned to 4K beforehand. Some were actually fixed or cleaned up beforehand, with one example being "Punch Trunk" having a fake fade-out in the opening (which is still present on current television airings and international streaming prints) being removed in this collection, making for a much more faithful representation of the cartoon.
To say the series was cancelled as Collector's Choice after the fourth volume might be an overstatement. Around the same time, there was a surprising demand for more cartoons that were on DVD to be upgraded to HD on Blu-ray. This practice was previously done with the Platinum Collection, which released early in the Blu-ray market but sold poorly due to prioritizing upgrades over new shorts. Warner Archive was conceived to do this practice again as an advantage, though, being much later in the Blu-ray timeline, having a large backlog of unreleased shorts that were already restored, and having a bigger library of Bugs Bunny shorts that way. This would become the Collector's Vault series, which started in June 2025.
As Collector's Vault
The Collector's Choice series would be rebooted in June 2025, now named the Collector's Vault. Although often pointed out as a new series, it is still a continuation of the Collector's Choice series at heart, with the developers of the series pointing out that the first disc of each set is what Collector's Choice would've been with an additional disc.
From this point forward, the series expanded, with the first disc continuing to follow the suit of previous volumes. However, the first disc still saw a reduced number of major characters, with Bugs being nearly absent from that disc by the first set of volumes.
To remedy this, a second disc was also included - 25 cartoons that were never made available on HD media in a restored state, despite being available restored on SD DVD media, with a few touch-ups as necessary or even full upgrades when warranted (shorts originally restored for SD, such as 1998 dubbed versions or I Love Tweety prints). Bugs' better-received cartoons were back, with several other acclaimed shorts from other characters included to boot. Pepé and Speedy, who were both largely absent in previous volumes (largely because Speedy was left with the "last and least" Daffy pairings, while Pepé was already fully restored on a Super Stars release), were finally added back into the series. Now comparable to the Platinum Collection, the series benefitted from being released later in the Blu-ray lifespan (meaning more people likely have Blu-ray players or disc drives) while maintaining an even balance of new-to-disc and new-to-HD shorts. Combined with the reissue of the Platinum Collection Blu-ray sets, a bright future was set for both new and ongoing avid collectors and completionists.
