My 90's and 2000's Experience: Early TV Show DVDs

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was nice and quiet. Today I'm going to be talking about early DVD releases of TV shows. While these are all TV shows that I've seen and enjoyed watching during my childhood, I didn't own most of these particular DVD releases for these shows. They're still worth talking about though. I've chosen to talk about fourteen shows and their early DVD releases that aren't complete season or series sets. These sets are akin to how TV shows were released on VHS in the 80s and 90s. So, let's get into it.

The first show I'm going to talk about is Star Trek: The Original Series, which originally aired on NBC (in the U.S.) and CTV (in Canada) from 1966 to 1969. The series had Laserdisc and VHS releases throughout the 80s and 90s, but from 1999 to 2001 Paramount Home Video released forty volumes of TOS on DVD. These were single disc releases that contained only two episodes per disc. Generally, these early DVD releases didn't have imaginative DVD menus the way a lot of season DVD box sets released in the 2000s would have. Like the VHS releases, which only contained one episode per tape, unless it was Columbia House's Star Trek releases, buying all 40 volumes was probably cost prohibitive, not to mention space prohibitive, so chances are pretty good that some people only got a handful of these early TOS DVD releases. I'm sure most people waited until the complete season box sets came out in 2004 to get the series on DVD.

Next is Medabots, which was released from 2002 to 2003 by ADV Films, the company that would release another Anime series I'm going to be talking about today. Twelve volumes were released, with about five episodes per volume. I loved watching Medabots when the English dub, produced by Canadian animation studio, Nelvana, aired on YTV from 2001 to 2002. I haven't seen the show since then though, because I didn't own any of the DVD releases until a month ago, when I got the first volume, Transport Metabee!, for Christmas from one of my friends. This volume contains the first five episodes of the series. I'm planning on watching it very very soon though.

Next up is the 2002-2003 ADV Films DVD releases of the original English dub of Sailor Moon, produced by DIC Entertainment. These releases contained six episodes per volume, and for all 89 episodes, ADV released fourteen volumes. As I mentioned in my Sailor Moon blog post that I did about a year ago, these releases did have corresponding VHS releases, but those tapes held only four episodes per tape, stretching the first two seasons across twenty volumes that were released between 2000 and 2002, wrapping up only a month before the first two DVD volumes were released.

Next is Inspector Gadget, which I did an entire blog post on almost a year ago. Its first DVD release was by Sterling Entertainment, which released a single volume titled The Gadget Files, which contained the show's pilot episode and then the first three episodes of the show. And this was the only release the show had until 2006 when Shout! Factory got the license. The series wouldn't get a complete series box set or even season releases until 2013.

The first DVD release that Power Rangers ever had was a single disc release, which contained episodes from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers In Space, Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, and Power Rangers Wild Force. The Best of the Power Rangers: The Ultimate Rangers was released by Buena Vista Home Entertainment in 2003 to celebrate the franchise's 10th Anniversary. However, this would be the only time any of the pre-Disney era seasons of Power Rangers would see any sort of DVD release until Shout! Factory began releasing the complete season and series box sets in 2013.

Beginning in 2003 and going until 2009, Buena Vista Entertainment would release two to five volumes per season for all of the Disney era seasons (Ninja Storm to RPM). Because of the inconsistency of where the show aired from season to season, these DVDs were the only way some kids who grew up watching this era of the franchise had to watch these seasons, and none of these releases contained every episode of each season either. There was probably about 25 episodes per season released for the seasons that had five volumes released, 20 for the one season that had four volumes released, and ten episodes for the two seasons that had only two volumes released. I actually had two volumes of the SPD releases and one volume of the Mystic Force releases in the early to mid 2010s as a friend of mine gave them to me, but I ended up getting rid of them when I finally got the complete season sets for both seasons. Also, Ninja Storm, Dino Thunder, and the first three volumes of SPD had corresponding VHS releases.

Pokemon is interesting when it comes to its home media releases because it's the earliest show on this list to have DVD releases coming out at the exact same time as its VHS releases while the show is brand new. From 1998 to 2001, Viz Media released twenty-six DVD and VHS volumes containing three episodes each (four episodes for Volume 17, Picture Perfect). The DVDs are exactly the same as their VHS counterparts. Same cover designs (just bigger to fit the DVD format), same designs for the spines, and same number of episodes on each disc as there are on each tape. 

Then we have Batman: The Animated Series, which had four DVD releases with volume 1 containing five episodes, and the remaining three volumes containing four episodes for a total of 17 episodes being released on DVD. These DVDs came out between 2002 and 2004. Like the Pokemon DVDs, these DVD releases had corresponding VHS releases, but only the first three volumes had them, with all three volumes being released in 2003.

Batman Beyond's early DVD releases are weird. The first volume, which contain the first two episodes along with four other episodes from the first season, came out in 1999, not too long after the show's debut. Two more volumes, which were just four of the corresponding VHS releases combined into two volumes, were released in 2004, a whole five years after the first volume, Batman Beyond: The Movie. The complete first season DVD box set didn't come out until 2006.

Now this DVD release is actually really weird. It's a release for the first season of Digimon, but there's no volume title or volume number, and unless you look at the back cover there's no indication what episodes are on it. I can't even find anything about it on Wikipedia or the Digimon Wiki or anything. Luckily Soundout12, a YouTuber I'm subscribed to did a video chronicling the entire history of Digimon on DVD a year and a half ago, and he showed off the covers of the release. So this DVD contains the first thirteen episodes of the first season, which had a total of 54 episodes.

In 2004 Star Wars: Droids - The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO got a single DVD release. This release contains a single two-sided disc and each side contains four episodes of the show's 13 episode run, edited together into movie length features. Side one contains episodes 5-8 and side two contains episodes 10-13. 

In 2001 Lions Gate Home Entertainment released Sabrina: The Animated Series on DVD. This release contains five episodes of the series. According to the Wiki for the show, the episodes on this disc are episodes 2, 4, 63, and 42. While more episodes would get released on DVD over the course of time, there are no complete season sets or a complete series set for this show.

 

In 2002, Lions Gate Home Entertainment released a single volume of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! on DVD. This was actually a combination of two VHS releases that Lions Gate released at the same time, Action Adventures and Mario's Monster Madness. The DVD contained eight episodes as each VHS release that it covers contained four episodes. Many DVD releases for the show would come out over the next decade, but this was the earliest one. Two of the episodes on this release were from The Legend of Zelda series that aired on Fridays instead of the Super Mario Bros. episodes.

While The Legend of Zelda had two episodes included on the The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! DVD I just talked about, the show would have its own DVD release from Sterling Entertainment in 2003. It only contained the first three episodes of the series, as did its corresponding VHS release. Shout! Factory released a complete series DVD set in 2005, which would get re-released by NCircle Entertainment in 2012, but this release was the only one put out by Sterling Entertainment, and the only volume release of the series to come out in the early 2000s. 

I focused a lot on animated shows and kids shows because that's mostly what was coming out in the late 90s and early 2000s. Although complete season sets for older shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation and newer shows like Star Trek: Enterprise, Smallville, The O.C., and One Tree Hill started coming out in 2002, it would take most of the 2000s and well into the 2010s for other older shows to start getting season sets.

The reason I wanted to do this post is because these DVDs were the easiest way for kids to be introduced to these shows outside of reruns airing on broadcast television, in the same way I was introduced to certain shows through VHS releases in the late 80s and early 90s. Especially because complete season box sets were just starting to become a thing in the early 2000s, and they'd cost anywhere between $70 and $100 per season well into the late 2000s. And, like with the VHS releases of the 80s and 90s, there was no way people could buy and own every DVD release that came out for these shows. Like I said earlier in this post, Star Trek: The Original Series had a total of 40 DVD volumes to complete the entire series, so there probably weren't that many people who actually owned all 40 volumes as they were coming out. Especially because DVD players were still pretty expensive when the early TOS DVDs were coming out between 1999 and 2001. So all they could watch was whatever volumes they owned. 

There are dozens of shows I could've talked about in this post, but, these fourteen shows are ones I watched throughout the 90s and 2000s that had DVD releases between 1998 and 2004. I might do a part two at some point to talk about the shows I didn't include in this one for whatever reason. We'll see though.

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more posts. I think later this week I'm gonna do a post on the paperback reprints from the 90s of the original Star Wars novels that Del Rey originally published in the late 70s and early 80s. I might wait to do that next week though. We'll see what I feel like doing as the week progresses. Until then, have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.