For years, many people have sworn that "Looney Tunes," the iconic Warner Bros animated cartoon series, was once spelled "Looney Toons." In summer 2025 alone, multiple popular posts (archived) on Instagram (archived) made the claim. Older posts making the same claim have also spread widely on TikTok (archived), YouTube (archived), Reddit (archived) and Facebook (archived).
The reason for this discrepancy in spelling, people on social media have claimed, is the Mandela Effect, a term Snopes has defined as "a collective misremembering of a fact or event."
In replies to some of the social media posts, people claimed the "Looney Toons" spelling simply made more sense because the animated shorts were cartoons.
Contrary to the claims, however, the animated Warner Bros cartoon series has always used the "tunes" spelling in its title — never "toons."
The Internet Archive has a record of "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" episodes beginning with the very first from 1930. Although both began in black-and-white, during much of the franchise's first decade "Looney Tunes" was for cartoons in black-and-white while "Merrie Melodies" were in color. Later, when every new episode in the series was in color, the titles were used interchangeably.
The very first episode from 1930, "Sinkin' in the Bathtub," begins with a title card that reads "Looney Tunes." In 1937's "Porky's Duck Hunt," the first episode in which Daffy Duck appeared, the black-and-white title card reads "Looney Tunes." In the first episode to feature the rabbit who became Bugs Bunny, 1938's "Porky's Hare Hunt," the title card again reads "Looney Tunes."
When "Looney Tunes" began appearing in color in 1943, the title cards still used the "tunes" spelling. The franchise was still called "Looney Tunes" in the 1950s, as well as the 1960s. The title card reads "Looney Tunes" in the most recent short on the Internet Archive's record, "Box Office Bunny," which aired in theaters in 1991.
Although the term "animated cartoons" already existed at the time, "Looney Tunes" was never meant to be a reference to cartoons. Instead, "Looney Tunes," as well as the synonymous "Merrie Melodies," was a paraphrase of Disney's "Silly Symphonies," a series of cartoons Disney released between 1929 and 1939, according to Leonard Maltin in his 1987 book "Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons." Each episode of "Silly Symphonies" was based on musical themes, which was the reason for the musical title. The same was the case for "Looney Tunes" at its inception, as Warner Bros. had its music publishing company at the time.
While it is possible that an episode or dub could have aired with a typo that read "Looney Toons," or there could have been promotional material with the same typo, the franchise's official title has always been "Looney Tunes."