Animaniacs

The off-the-wall cartoon series Animaniacs was produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, making its broadcast debut on the Fox network on September 13, 1993. Detailing the comic exploits of the anthropomorphic Warner siblings -- brothers Yakko and Wakko and their sister Dot -- the series was a hit with audiences and critics alike, earning the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award. A key component of Animaniacs' success was its music, authored primarily by supervising composer Richard Stone -- the winner of two Daytime Emmy Awards for Achievement in Music Direction and Composition in addition to Original Song, the show was scored by a 30-piece orchestra on the same Warner Bros. studio sound stage which housed the legendary WB music director Carl Stalling decades earlier. The program also launched a series of soundtrack LPs, among them 1994's Animaniacs: Songs from the Hit TV Series, Yakko's World, 1995's A Christmas Plotz and 1997's Hip-Hopera Christmas. ~ Jason Ankeny