Chris Bieniek wants to know about a cartoon show from my youth…
I have a simple question: Why can't I purchase a complete, unedited collection of the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes TV show on DVD or Blu-Ray? I know you think it's awful, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who would be interested, and I've never seen any kind of informed discussion about why it hasn't happened yet. If you don't know, would you be kind enough to hazard a guess?
Well, I don't think it's exactly awful. Most of the stories and drawings were taken from the comic books — without, of course, paying an extra nickel to the guys who did that work for low comic book rates. A lot of the material was so strong that even the cheapest-possible animation and voice work couldn't render it unentertaining…and I kinda like some of the theme songs.
Why isn't it out for home video? Well, this is somewhere between a guess and a real answer: At least twice, folks who were attempting to assemble an actual, non-bootleg release contacted me to ask if I had any idea where they could find negatives or better copies than they had…because they simply didn't have good enough source material, especially of the opening titles and closing credits. I dunno if the masters were lost or destroyed or what — but at that point, they just didn't have prints that didn't look like they'd been taped off Channel 9 onto Betamax cassettes. I was of no use to them.
Has anyone since found good copies of everything? If they haven't, that's probably your reason. If they have, there's probably no one at Disney who thinks the material would generate enough interest. Generally speaking, when something is not out on home video, one or more of five reasons apply…
- There's a rights dispute over who owns the material or controls the home video rights. That's what held up the Adam West Batman show for some time. Twentieth-Century Fox (which produced the series) said if anyone was going to put those out on DVD, said it would be them. Time-Warner (which owns the characters) said it would be them. It took a while to negotiate an arrangement.
- There's music in the shows or films that would be very expensive to clear and so the material might not be cost-effective to release. This is the case with some of the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Once in a while also, someone else had a contract, written before anyone envisioned a home video market, that causes complications. Companies got worried about that after Disney put out Lady and the Tramp on VHS and singer Peggy Lee, who worked on the film in several capacities, pointed out that her old contract from 1955 didn't allow for that. A jury awarded her a few million bucks that the studio wasn't cheerful about paying.
- They would release it but they can't find copies of all the material…or copies that measure up to the necessary video standard. A lot of old shows simply do not exist or exist in such bad condition that expensive restoration work would be necessary and that reconstruction might not be cost effective. At one point, I believe it looked like I'm Dickens, He's Fenster would never be out of DVD for that reason but someone finally took the chance.
- Someone in a position of power just doesn't think there would be enough customers for the material in question to justify the investment. I believe the Walt Disney Treasures DVDs came to an end because the sales caused some at the company to believe there just plain wasn't an audience for certain of the less well-known Disney films and shows.
- They just haven't gotten around to it yet. This is less and less a reason as time goes by but years ago, there were a lot of angry animation fans who couldn't understand why all their favorite Hanna-Barbera or Warner Brothers cartoons couldn't all come out on home video at once. The company had determined, rightly or wrongly, that the market could only handle X number of releases at a time and so they wanted to space them out.
In some cases, more than one of these reasons can apply and at times, changes in management (or desperation for new product) has prompted the issuance of something on DVD that previously seemed like it would never be released that way. Also of course, it happens that rights problems get cleared up or someone in the warehouse stumbles across old negatives or tapes they didn't know they had.
In the case of the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons, it's probably Reason #4 but it might also be Reason #3 as well. Maybe someday, neither will apply.
