Bugs Bunny that another proposed name for the character was "Happy Rabbit." In the actual cartoons and publicity, however, the name "Happy" only seems to have been used in reference to Bugs Hardaway. In "Hare-um Scare-um", a newspaper headline reads, "Happy Hardaway." Animation historian David Gerstein disputes that "Happy Rabbit" was ever used as an official name, believing that the only usage of the term was from Mel Blanc himself in humorous and fanciful tales he told about the character's development in the 1970s and 1980s; the name "Bugs Bunny" was used as early as August 1939, in the Motion Picture Herald,
The Bugs Bunny Show in unison. For the final chorus, a lineup of "Looney Tunes" characters joins Bugs and Daffy onstage (Porky Pig is absent from the procession). "The Bugs Bunny Show" proved beneficial to the Warner Bros. cartoon staff, as it allowed the studio to remain open despite the shrinking market for theatrical animated shorts. The final first-run episode of the original "Bugs Bunny Show" aired on August 7, 1962, and the Warner Bros. animation studio closed the following spring. ABC began re-running "The Bugs Bunny Show" on Saturday mornings in mid-August 1962 until September 1967 when it was moved to Sunday mornings