Tom Ruegger

Tom Ruegger (born April 4th, 1956, in Metuchen, New Jersey) is an American animation writer, producer, and director. He was once an executive producer/creative director for Warner Brothers Animation. In the 1980s he worked for Hanna-Barbera, writing and producing various shows--most notably "Yogi's Treasure Hunt", "The Snorks" on NBC, the short lived "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" on ABC all in 1985, "Pound Puppies", the whole "Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo" series and the runaway hit "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo". But he is most famous as a producer, writer, show-runner and cartoon-creator for Warner Brothers Animation from 1989-2001, working alongside Jean MacCurdy and Steven Spielberg, where his creations included "Tiny Toon Adventures" (along with Sherri Stoner and Paul Dini), "Animaniacs", "Pinky and the Brain", "Histeria!", "", "Freakazoid!" (for which he brought in Paul Rugg and John P. McCann as writers/producers), and "Road Rovers".

Ruegger has received fourteen Emmy Awards for his work in animation.

In 2004, Ruegger started Tom Ruegger Production, a full-service animation studio. In 2006, Ruegger began developing, story-editing and serving as Executive Producer on the 40-episode animated series "Animalia" (2007), based on the picture book by Graeme Base. Along with Nicholas Hollander, he developed and story-edited another animated series entitled "Sushi Pack" (2007).

Ruegger is married, and lives in the wilds near Los Angeles, California. His wife is a successful marathon runner, and he has three sons: Nathan Ruegger (the voice of the baby version of Plucky Duck on "Tiny Toon Adventures", Skippy Squirrel on "Animaniacs" and Froggo on "Histeria!"), Luke Ruegger (the voice of the Flame on "Animaniacs" and Big Fat Baby on "Histeria!") and Cody Ruegger (the voice of Little Blue Bird on "Animaniacs" and Loud Kiddington on "Histeria!", the latter of whom he also served as the inspiration for). Collectively, the Ruegger boys also inspired the main characters of Animaniacs!—for the not-very species-specific Yakko, Wakko and Dot, who purportedly live in the water tower above the Warner Brothers main lot in Burbank, California. Ruegger himself also made occasional cameos on the shows in caricature form, most notably as the recurring character of director Cooper DaVille in "Tiny Toons".

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*imdb name|id=0749161|name=Tom Ruegger