Looney Tunes
PLATINUM COLLECTION
Intended as a successor to the famed Golden Collection, excessive double dipping for shorts (particularly for DVD releases) and a minimal amount of new shorts, combined with its early release in the Blu-ray lifespan, resulted in the Platinum Collection suffering from poor sales and ending after only three volumes.
Background
Around the end of the Golden Collection was the rise of the Blu-ray format, which presented media in full-on HD widescreen format that television was beginning to slowly adapt towards. In spite of the concurrently running Super Stars sets having shorts attempted to be formatted for widescreen televisions, cropping the shorts to fit the format wasn't cutting the mustard.
Released as the first official set of Looney Tunes on the Blu-ray format, the series started in 2011 with perhaps an all-out attempt to introduce newcomers to the Blu-ray format. The first volume was shipped in Digibook packaging, including merchandise for the extreme collector. Things dampened down deeply, however, when sales for the first volume were rather poor.
Many reasons could be pinpointed towards this divisive reception. Being very early into the Blu-ray lifespan, not many people had Blu-ray players, and with Golden Collection being relatively recent, many weren't willing to double dip on the shorts in this collection, even if they were generally upgrades. This is to say nothing of the fact that there was still a good number of people who were largely stuck with SD television, couldn't afford a Blu-ray player, or didn't care much about the increased resolution and preferred the DVDs as they were.
It slowly became apparent that the series was on its last legs even early on. Volume 2 did away with the Digibook packaging and used a slipcover case for the Amaray case. By the final volume, a third disc of bonus features was no more, and the series unceremoniously ended from there.
As a result of the restoration budget being dried out by the end of this release and Super Stars, the end of the series marked the end of any new restorations for over 6 years. In spite of this, the series has garnered much more favorable attention in recent years as Blu-ray players became more widely available and affordable and TV displays were being upgraded heavily to the point of 4K being the new maximum standard.
All volumes also have a DVD counterpoint that largely strips out the bonus features, including removing the third disc on volumes 1 and 2. The Blu-ray versions of the first two volumes would become out of print not long after volume 3 was released and wouldn't come back to print until June 2025, after the success of the Collector's Choice/Vault series and heavy requests from fans and even internal staff alike.
