Animaniacs - Variety Pack (CD)

All Music Guide

The third album of songs from the mid-'90s children's TV show Animaniacs (one of the few kids' shows since The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle to direct its humor as much toward adults as kids) is proof that the show was a nonstop fount of brilliant musical parodies and silly tunes. Opening with a cute reworking of Harry Belafonte's calypso standard "The Monkey Song," the CD gathers a few odds and ends that somehow hadn't made it to the earlier discs, like "Pinky and the Brain" and "The Slappy Squirrel Theme," and adds the three-part self-parody "All the Words in the English Language," a takeoff of earlier polysyllabic gems like "Yakko's World." Some of the songs, like "The Anvil Song" and "At the Big Wrap Party Tonight," don't work as well without the visuals, a flaw the earlier Animaniacs collections don't have. Still, this is pretty much essential for fans.

- Stewart Mason, All Music Guide