Like most folks born during the last several decades, I grew up watching syndicated Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies whenever possible. These bite-sized cartoons set the bar extremely high for American animation during the 20th century, rivaled only by other long-running classics like Popeye the Sailor and Tom and Jerry. Utilizing a full studio orchestra, terrific sight gags, first-rate comic timing, versatile voices (most provided by Mel Blanc) and, of course, a gaggle of colorful and unique characters, these Academy Award-winning shorts have remained relevant for generations. In short, hearing this song pretty much guarantees you're about to forget everything else for seven minutes.

Unfortunately, Looney Tunes' home video release strategy has been confusing at best and downright irritating at worst. Dozens of titles have been unleashed on DVD and Blu-ray thus far: Golden Collections, Spotlight Collections, Premiere Collections, character-themed piecemeal discs...and now Platinum Collections, each with almost random assortments of classic cartoons from the hundreds upon hundreds created as part of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies from 1930-69. Four decades of material is a lot to dig through, and I certainly can't blame Warner Bros. for avoiding chronological sets (at least from a business standpoint). This third and final installment of the Platinum Collection line serves up another 50 shorts (150 total) with a fine assortment of vintage bonus features, but there's a catch: like the first two installments, most of this material has been available before. Of course, now the classic shorts are in high definition and they look predictably amazing, but the paltry amount of "new" material here---one short, one audio commentary, and one documentary---runs for less than 45 minutes, which doesn't exactly end this run with a bang.

But hey, let's focus on the positives: new or not, Looney Tunes: Platinum Collection, Volume Three serves up roughly six hours of classic shorts in 1080p. Warner Bros. has once again done a great job in making sure they look great on Blu-ray, although their continued track record of using lossy Dolby Digital audio ensures that these don't sound any better than their DVD counterparts (but hey, at least we weren't saddled with 5.1 remixes like the Charlie Brown holiday specials). There's plenty of classic material to dig through here: the best are over a dozen Bugs Bunny shorts, including a few team-ups with Yosemite Sam. Sylvester, Tweety, Daffy Duck and more are also well-represented, although it's obvious that some of these shorts (especially those on Disc 2) don't represent high points in the Looney Tunes library. But like before, you'll have an awful lot of fun digging through this stuff, and the confidence that these are all presented in their original, uncut format is another small victory in the fight against hyper-sensitive outsiders.

Not surprisingly, these classic shorts look pretty darn good on Blu-ray...but if you've seen the first two Looney Tunes Platinum Collections---or heck, even the Golden Collections on DVD---you shouldn't be surprised. Though an unavoidable number of source material issues are on display here (including plenty of dirt and debris, as well as an overabundance of grain on some shorts), they aren't at all distracting compared to older editions. Colors are bold and bright, image detail and textures are extremely crisp, and no blatant digital imperfections could be spotted along the way. Short of a triple-checked, exhaustively detailed 4K restoration, I couldn't imagine some of these shorts looking much better than they do here...so if it weren't completely obvious by now, animation purists and even casual fans should be absolutely thrilled with the dependable, robust visual strengths of Looney Tunes on Blu-ray.

The audio continues to slightly underwhelm, which may or may not be entirely due to Warner's practice of using lossless, DVD-resolution Dolby Digital 1.0 tracks. A lossless presentation might beef up the experience a little...but on the other hand, it might have just eaten up more disc space for minimal improvements. Looney Tunes has always sounded very thin and dated from an audio standpoint; a real shame, especially considering the terrific orchestration and voice work that went into each and every one of them. So while these shorts don't sound nearly as strong as they look, it's almost impossible to determine if they can (or should) sound any better than they do here. Optional English SDH, French and German subtitles are included, as well French and German dubs during selected shorts.

As for the rest, it looks to have been collected from various installments of the Golden Collections on DVD. This recycled material leads off with 26 Audio Commentaries (although one new track accompanies "Honey's Money", which is new to either format) featuring the likes of director Bob Clampett, animators John Kricfalusi and Bill Melendez, historians Jerry Beck, Daniel Goldmark and Michael Barrier, writer Paul Dini, voice actress June Foray, and more. We also get nine Music and Effects audio tracks, eight "Behind the Tunes" Featurettes, four more Documentaries ("The Golden Age of Looney Tunes", " "Drawn for Glory", "Man of a Thousand Voices", and "The Boys from Termite Terrace"), a Storyboard Reel for "Hair-Raising Hare", and two Storybooks by director Frank Tashlin ("Little Chic's Wonderful Mother" and "Tony and Clarence"). This material is good if you haven't seen it yet, but die-hard collectors will be frustrated.

If you favor new content over A/V quality, Looney Tunes on Blu-ray has been a disappointment. This third and final Platinum Collection brings the high-def total up to 150 classic shorts and a mountain of bonus features...but those who already purchased most or all of the Golden Collections on DVD should be familiar with 90% of this content. To make matters worse, several hundred shorts from the Golden Collections have not and will not make the jump to Blu-ray, while the non-linear organization of Looney Tunes on both formats has made if tough to weed out the missing, recycled, and exclusive content. But hey, three volumes are better than two, so anyone who bought the first two Looney Tunes Platinum Collections will want to pick this up if they haven't already. Newcomers should get either of those two first: this is the least essential volume as far as content goes, but it's still terrific stuff. Recommended.