One of the many appealing things about the way Animaniacs was approached was the adherence to the Warner Brothers tradition of cartoon music. The music for Animaniacs was played by a 40-piece orchestra, coloring the cartoons in the old style, with many specific references for those who know the old stuff; it was even recorded in the same old soundstage, with the same piano.
Carl Stalling wrote most of the old Warner Brothers music, but of course a lot of it was borrowed from other sources, famous and otherwise; it's well known among aficionados that one of the best sources was the once obscure but now less so music of Raymond Scott. In particular, "Powerhouse" propelled many frenetic scenes.
But I don't think any of the old cartoons used "Powerhouse" for a whole cartoon. In volume two of the complete Animaniacs, at the very end of episode 50 (the second Christmas episode) there's a piece called "The Toy Terror" that is deliberately animated in the 1930s style, consisting almost entirely of a manic chase & destruction of a toy store by the Warners. The music throughout, with the exception of a few bars at a time of other musical references, is "Powerhouse": the whole song, in order, the first theme followed by the second theme (both of them would be familiar to old cartoon watchers whether they know Scott or not) and back to the first theme. (Here's a brief clip of both themes.) I thought it was terrific, but then I'm delighted just to see (and hear) it done at all.
Parenthetically, if you have a good recording of either "Powerhouse" or Danny Elfman's "Breakfast Machine" that you can play in your car, they're great to listen to while you're in a drive-through car wash.
even though it's old news by now, I always feel the need to recommend the Carl Stalling Project CD, whenever Stalling's name comes up. great stuff.
Anonymous
You seem to imply above that "Powerhouse" (& the dozen or so other Raymond Scott tunes used by Stalling) were obscure at the time, but they weren't. They were big hits in their day.
Scraps
Yes, I can see how what I wrote can be read that way. I meant that Scott's music lapsed into a long period of obscurity.