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Disney (and Fox)
Disney is notorious for treating its film library with reverence and God-like status...and not giving its animated shows much attentions. While their films are given new re-releases every few years or so, their shows in contrast are hastily dumped to the market once, and then abandoned. What makes this a particularly frustrating trend with this company is that they take down episodes of their old shows on YouTube, even if said episodes haven't seen the light of day on television in years, let alone gained a proper home media release. There's also the fact that Disney has put some old shows on iTunes at the very least, but not all of them. Combined with its buyout of 20th Century Fox, Disney will launch the Disney+ streaming service in November 2019, which has some people hoping this will change, but for now...
Disney released the vast majority of episodes for Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and Goof Troop — as well as a couple of sets for Darkwing Duck and a single DVD for Adventures of the Gummi Bears — but have (or had) yet to offer the complete run of the shows on DVD by releasing further sets for these shows (infuriating fans of all the titles mentioned, which are all one box set away from being completely on DVD). Additionally, Quack Pack didn't even have any sort of proper DVD release at all — it got a three-episode 'best-of' DVDnote . And that's not even getting into The Disney Afternoon shows that haven't yet made it to DVD in any way, shape or form. For all that the Disney Afternoon did for the company in the 1990s, they sure don't seem eager to return the love.
Manyoftheseshowsalso had origin stories that came in two versions: broken up into multiple episodes as part of the respective show's package, and two-hour (or one-hour in Darkwing Duck's case) TV movies (or direct-to-video in Gargoyles' case). note The first versions for each show are the only ones available.
Season 1 and the first half of Season 2 of Gargoyles were initially released on DVD. The other half of Season 2? Disney initially decided not to release it, allegedly due to 'low sales'; it would take eight years before they finally reneged and brought it to DVD. Season 3 (aka 'The Goliath Chronicles') has still yet to see a release, though few are complaining, given its dismal reception and even being considered non-canon by Greg Weisman. (Weisman has also been pretty vocal that he has also no plans to push fora DVD release). That season is on iTunes, however. And none at all was released outside North America.
While having a few episodes on VHS (no longer sold and are extremely hard to find), not only has Bonkers been out of reruns for years with no plans to re-air it or put it out for DVD, but pulled two episodes centering on Mad Bombers out of sensitivity after the 1995 Oklahoma bombing. (It doesn't help that pulling one of those left a huge plot hole in the series because it's the same one where Miranda replaces Lucky as Bonkers' partner.)
Marsupilami was last seen on Toon Disney in 2009 (When it became Disney XD), and hasn't been broadcast since. Despite having a few episodes on (rare) VHS / Betamax releases, there are no signs of the official DVD releases on the way yet.
On the subject of Marsupilami, the show that gave birth to both it and Bonkers, Raw Toonage, hasn't been seen since the Toon Disney run in 2000, and there are absolutely no VHS or DVD releases available. Only the VHS and Betamax tape recordings of the series during its original CBS broadcasts or Toon Disney reruns confirm its existence.
Other than a VHS and DVD release of Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse and Mickey's House of Villains, as well as the show's pilot episode as a DVD bonus of the former, there is actually no release of House of Mouse anywhere. Many of the show's episodes and shorts have been uploaded onto several sites, so at least there's that.
Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go! had a few Season 1 episodes released on DVDs that came with the short-lived toy line, but these are now impossible to find since the only ones you could possibly get would be second/third/fourth/etc.
Fillmore!: There were a good number of episodes on YouTube, but they were all removed except a few episodes subbed from German and the like. The episodes are still easily found on other sites, however. On April 19 2018, Disney XD decided to rerun a few episodes before taking it off the air. Unlike the otheroldershows, Disney XD didn't promote it.
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command went to the same leper colony as all the other Disney TV shows. After years of reruns it was last seen on American television on Toon Disney in 2008, and so far there is no way to see it in the U.S. The only home video releases it got were the Pilot Movie and an extremely rare VHS containing the episode 'Planet of the Lost' (supposedly included with a Buzz Lightyear toy in 2003), which is so far the only episode to be released on home video at all. Making matters worse, several episodes ('Super Nova,' 'Inside Job,' and 'Conspiracy') have been banned from circulation in the US, making those episodes even harder to come across (though all three have continued to air in international markets). The episodes can be found very easily on YouTube.
Nightmare Ned got one season due to budget problems. There's currently little on YouTube and it was apparently only ever reran in Canada on Family. Because of the show's hardly-known existence, most people remember it as the computer game from Disney Interactive rather than a Disney show.
Pepper Ann doesn't have any VHS/DVD releases and last appeared on American television when Toon Disney aired a two-hour block of episodes in 2007. Episodes existed on YouTube, but in a barely-watchable form. After much searching by many dedicated people, the whole series was finally found in 2016.
The Replacements used to be on YouTube, but is now yet to be released on DVD. As of now, the entire series is on iTunes.
Recess has a few DVD releases: Recess: School's Out, the direct-to-DVD movies (which also include episodes of the series as bonus features), and a Christmas DVD that's an episode compilation. As for actual episodes, there are none (unless you live in Germany, where the entire series is available on iTunes). Which is strange, considering how popular it was during its run.
The entire series got posted on YouTube in 2011...until Disney began taking almost every episode down for copyright. This even includes the international dubs. Fans were not happy.
Disney's Doug had 4 2-episode VHS releases in the 1990s, while for a long time The Movie was available only on VHS (it is available for streaming on-demand on various sites; it was made available on DVD via Disney Movie Club). There were various VideoCD releases of the movie in other countries, but they've all gone out of print. Sure, it wasn't as beloved as the Nick series (Doug and Roger's original voice actor Billy West did not care for it to say the least), but it was still popular nonetheless, so you'd think Disney would've given it better treatment. However, most of the episodes of Disney's Doug can be found on YouTube very easily.
101 Dalmatians: The Series had one VHS release (101 Dalmatians Christmas, which also contained the episode 'Coup DeVil') and one VideoCD release that has severe sound issues (Dalmatian Vacation) (and on video outside the US) back in the 1990s. That was it. The entire series has been uploaded to YouTube, but don't be surprised if Disney starts taking down episodes for copyright. The series is now available to purchase on iTunes, however it's missing 'Alive 'N Chicken/Prima Doggy' (which was banned after the 9/11 attacks for some Too Soon content).
Teamo Supremo is probably one of the most under-rated and hardest to find Disney cartoons EVER! The only episodes available were 2 low-quality VHS recordings, until 11 episodes from the first season, plus two of the holiday special episodes, were made officially available by Blim, a Mexican streaming service owned by Televisa. After that, 2 more VHS recordings of previously unavailable episodes have turned up.
The Buzz on Maggie hasn't aired on Disney Channel since 2008 and had no home media releases, however all of the episodes are on YouTube
While it only was aired on Disney in America, Toad Patrol has never been fully released on DVD. Some episodes of Season 1 were made available, but that's it.
Donald and the Wheel is the lesser-known follow-up to Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land and has thus far been on a single limited-edition and rare Donald Duck DVD collection that has since gone out of print (The Chronological Donald, Volume 4 if you were wondering). This collection makes no indication on the case that it has Donald and the Wheel, so unless you found out from an outside source and were deliberately looking for it, or you're a total Donald Duck fan and bought every DVD set, chances are you don't have it.
With certainexceptions, Disney currently holds the rights to a majority of Saban Entertainment and in-house Fox Kids cartoons, like Eek! The Cat, NASCAR Racers, Mad Jack the Pirate, etc. and won't release them...unless enough fans badger Disney with letters, emails, mail bombs, and videotaped suicides over them, or Disney becomes so broke and desperate that they have to make money off them (or they give the rights to a company that will put it out on DVD or streaming). All they've been using that library for was for filling airtime on their foreign Fox Kids/Jetix nets until they became Disney XD. The reasoning for all this? Disney never wanted the shows in the first place.note The only Saban cartoons Disney actually cared about were the Marvel Comics cartoons, in part thanks to their popularity in film (Disney would coincidentally acquire Marvel in 2009). There is hope that they might return to television though, since Disney announced that it would acquire Fox's entertainment assets, including their international channels, in December 2017.
Good luck finding anything about Monster Farm. This incredibly obscure cartoon used to air on Fox Family, but all that remains of the English version is an episode taped by one of the voice actors. You can find half the series in Russian, though. What makes it even more infuriating to try and find anything about this show is the fact that it shares its name with Monster Rancher (in Japanese). It's as if it never even existed, seriously.
The SIP Animation shows aren't any better, as only a few got DVD releases or any form of re-release.
Early DiC Entertainment shows like Cro et Bronto, Archibald le Magi-chien and Beubeul Ermite haven't aired since the 80's and 90's due to Saban owning the worldwide rights to them, and as of 2019 only a handful of episodes of these shows have been uploaded to YouTube.
Kidd Video would be possible if released in its Superstation WGN form, with no original music or music videos. But it wouldn't be the same. Disney currently owns the rights due to Saban owning the rights, even though it was originally a coproduction between DiC and Saban; A few episodes from VHS rips can be found on YouTube
The series Camp Candy, starring Canadian comedian John Candy, has no official DVD releases and hasn't aired since the late 90s. A majority of episodes, however, can be found online.
There's no known releases of 'Kid 'N Play', starring the hip-hop duo of the same name.
The Twins of Destiny, a French animesque cartoon about two kids who had special powers bestowed upon them, has never been released on VHS or DVD, as far as internet searching can tell.
The Franco-American series Space Strikers: The only evidence of its existence is the intro, and its page on IMDB. There hasn't even been any official release from the distributors. Seems it has been forgotten by all except for those few who got to watch it.
The BOTS Master only had 6 official VHS releases, each containing 1 episode of the series, and all of which are out of print. You can find episodes on YouTube, but the chances of the entire series seeing the light of day in DVD form are very low.
As far as we know, only a few of the 55 episodes of 'The Power Team' (also known as 'Acclaim Masters') exist on YouTube. The rest might as well be stuck in limbo until someone uploads the show/releases it legally. This is largely due to the show rights being split between Disney and 41 Entertainment.
The original featurette versions of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh from 1966-1974 have not yet received their own DVD release. They had several frequent VHS releases in the 1990s, and were last put out in 2000. When The Many Adventures had further releases, these versions nearly ceased to exist. As of now, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day has received only one DVD release as a bonus feature of Pooh's Grand Adventure in 2006. This and Tigger Too have also re-aired (letterboxed and with restored footage) on Disney Junior at least once in 2015. Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree is the rarest of the three shorts, as it had Bruce Reitherman as Christopher Robin replaced with Jon Walmsley (who originally performed him in the 'Blustery Day' and 'We Say Goodbye' segments) in the 1977 Many Adventures compilation film. (It also ended with a short vocal reprise of the Winnie the Pooh theme song, unlike Blustery Day and Tigger Too which ended with an instrumental arrangement, which, again, was later used for Many Adventures.)
Lilo & Stitch: The Series has had three episodes released on DVD; two ('Mr. Stenchy' and 'Clip') were released on a DVD Game named Lilo & Stitch's Island of Adventures, and one ('Link') as an extra on the Leroy & Stitch DVD a month before it debuted asthe show's last broadcast episode. Two other episodes ('Slushy' and 'Poxy') were released on Game Boy Advance Video cartridges bundled with episodes of Kim Possible and (in the case of the latter episode) Brandy & Mr. Whiskers. The rest of The Series has not seen any home video or permanent digital release in North America, though a DVD box set was released only in Japan. It was re-released for streaming on DisneyNow in the U.S. during summer 2018—only to be delisted months later. This is especially notable considering all four Lilo & Stitch films can be legally downloaded, and Disney has also released 12 of the 13 episodes of Chinese animated spin-off Stitch & Ai on DisneyNow for completely freenote digital streaming.
iTunes France and iTunes Germany both have the first season of Lilo & Stitch: The Series on their services, but they each come with their own caveats. iTunes France has the show in High Definition, but it only has the French dub. iTunes Germany has both the German dub and the English original, but only in 4:3 standard definition.
Dave the Barbarian was pretty popular when it aired on Toon Disney in 2004, but none of the episodes have ever been legally released for home video or digital download/streaming. The French dub is a bad offender, as no one in France seems to remember anything about the series.
Both seasons of Yin Yang Yo! are available on iTunes and most episodes of the series are pretty easy to find online (barring the fact they're international prints with pitched-up audio and cropping). Outside of that, the show's never gained any other sort of release.
Season 3 of The Tick has still not seen a Region 1 release; with no indication from Disney when it might be available. On top of that, Seasons 1-2 are missing one episode each, and have been consistently criticized for their dismal production quality. There is a full, three-season box set available in the United Kingdom (Region 2 PAL), which includes all of the episodes for all three seasons, and a higher production quality than the U.S. release. However, there is still a comparatively minor flaw with this release as well, since it uses a considerably shortened version of the opening credit sequence and its frenetic jazz theme music.
Muppet Babies, with its use of actual TV and movie clips from various sources, would be near impossible to re-release without major butchering for copyright reasons. There were several VHS releases in The '90s (three were part of a line of tapes designed for the 'Video Buddy' interactive handset system; some of the others were a part of the 'Yes, I Can!' series of Jim Henson videos, which had puppet filler segments in between the episodes), but that only provided 16 episodes out of 107. Worse, the syndicated reruns ended with episode 96 — though at least four of the final 11 episodes made it to VHS.
Spider-Man: The Animated Series only had about 24 of its 65 episodes available on DVD, and completely out-of-order (they were mostly collections of mini-arcs, such as the Venom Saga and the Daredevil cross-over). The complete series eventually made its way to iTunes, while at least the first season reached Xbox Live; this, while the United Kingdom got all five seasons on DVD. All of the episodes are now available on the official Marvel website, along with X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man (Japan), Spider-Man (1967), and others. Also, the Spidey series is so popular that it's never off of television for long, even during the runs of other Spider-Man series. Of course, as Power Rangers fans learned, don't take that for granted.
'Adventures In Nutrition with Captain Carlos', a series of Playhouse Disney shorts, hardly saw daylight since it was removed from the air and little footage exists. It never even got a DVD release.
Fish Hooks. The full series was available on Disney XD on Demand, but was soon removed, so there's no way to own the series legally.
While you can find 'The Coyote's Lament', an episode of Walt Disney's Wonderful World Of Color, pretty easily, the same can't be said ironically with its 1991 TV movie remake 'Coyote Tales', which hasn't been seen since 1996. It can be found on Xfinity, that is unless you don't have Comcast though.
The majority of Disney Sing-Along Songs videos from the '80s and '90s remain out of print. Disney's efforts to re-release them on DVD only went so far as 10 volumesnote , with the first two (Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah and Heigh-Ho) somehow failing to reach the format.note One of the Sing-Along videos reissued on DVD, Circle of Life, experienced such alterations as Title Sequence Replacement, the addition of some more songs, and the removal of Jiminy Cricket's interstitals. Some other DVDs contain excerpts of Sing-Along videos as extras, though DVD/Blu-Ray re-releases of several of those movies replaced those excerpts with sing-alongs sourced from the features' latest remasters.
Combo Niños has never had a single DVD release, and the show is very hard to find in English as it was one of the few Jetix originals not to air in the United States. All the episodes are available in Spanish though through YouTube uploads of Latin American Disney XD airings of the shows. It doesn't help that the show is more popular in Latin America than it was everywhere else. However in October 2018, 12 English episodes were uploaded to Kimcartoon, and were later uploaded onto YouTube. Alongside one already uploaded episode, 13 episodes are still missing in English.
Pucca, another Jetix Europe co-produced series, has the first season spread out in five individual DVD volumes, but the fifth volume only contains two second season episodes, leaving the rest in limbo. Not helping matters is that this is the only way you can watch the series nowadays since Disney XD stopped airing the show not long after its launch, meaning that the original high-definition versions were only ever aired on TV.
The Pixar short 'Blowin' In The Wind' has not seen the light of day as of now, since the short featured an unauthorized use of the titular song from Bob Dylan. It was supposed to be released on the first volume of the Pixar Short Films Collection series, but was left off at the last moment when Disney couldn't get clearance for the song.
The Simpsons:
Of all 48 of the original The Simpsons shorts from The Tracey Ullman Show, only the first short 'Good Night' has ever been given an official home release, being included as a special feature on the first season DVD set. Apart from snippets from various clip show episodes in later seasons, no other short has received official releases in their entirety. This may be due to disputes between Ullman and the show's producers, though there was attempts by FOX to obtain the rights to them to be included in the Simpsons World app, though this hasn't happened. However, all the shorts are readily available for viewing pleasure on online outlets such as YouTube.
The original pilot episode of the show in its entirety, which is in itself an early version of the first season episode 'Some Enchanted Evening.' The pilot, which was remade and later aired as the final episode of the first season even though it was designed as the first in production of the show, featured slightly cruder animation even by first season standards, so much so that James Brooks himself called the original pilot 'shit'. Although the entirety of the shows original pilot is still lost, at least five minutes worth of footage has surfaced online, having been included as a special feature on the first season DVD set.
Allen Gregory never got any home release of any kind whatsoever. Then again, considering its reputation, who would want to? In fact, Fox didn't just cancel the series, they went out of their way to completely remove the series from various sites offering it for sale. The whole series is more or less impossible to watch online unless you can find an upload on YouTube or similar... assuming Fox doesn't get to it first.
Rhino planned on releasing the entire Crusader Rabbit series under license from Metromedia, who owned the rights to the property during the period. After the first two volumes were released (on VHS, this was pre-DVD), Metromedia was bought out by News Corporation and absorbed into News Corp. subsidary 20th Century Fox, who quickly canceled Rhino's license. Rhino was able to sell the copies they had already made but could not make any more under Fox's cease-and-desist order. The rights to the character and series are now with Disney, who has zero plans for any home video or digital release at this time.
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Viacom (Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV)
Many Nickelodeon shows were temporarily available to stream on Netflix for people subscribed to the site. However Netflix let their contract with Viacom expire in June 2013, leaving fans of certain shows to search for other methods of viewing, unless they had an Amazon Prime subscription, which allows the streaming of Nick shows through the Amazon Video service (but even then, not all episodes or Nick movies are accessible for streaming). As of 2018, several Nicktoons have been streaming on Hulu for a few years.
Although The Fairly Oddparents got several home video releases throughout the 2000s, all season sets (besides Season 6, which got a retail release) got DVD-R releases exclusive to Amazon.com. The same goes for Nickelodeon's Doug (while Hulu is streaming the Nickelodeon seasons, we bet that Disney will still be sitting on their episodes, as noted above).
The short-lived series Catscratch. Besides getting the shaft during its original run, only two episodes have been put on DVD ('Nick Picks', Volumes 3 and 5) and two on VideoNow. It's possible to find them on the internet, but it's no picnic. Only the German dub has been officially released by Nickelodeon. A few episodes have aired on The Splat for the 25th Nicktoon Anniversary Celebration in 2016.
Only 13 of the 26 Edgar & Ellen episodes saw a DVD release in 2008 and only two of the six holiday specials were released on a Target exclusive DVD in 2007 among 3 of the 13 shorts. The rest of the episodes, shorts and specials remain unreleased to this day.
Only a selection of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron episodes and specials have been released on DVD. There was also a brief, magical time where the whole series could be seen on Netflix. Such heady days are past. On the bright side, the whole series has been released on Hulu
On May 19th 2007, Nickelodeon premiered a TV special called Genius, Sheenius, or Inbetweenius. This special was the movie within character commentary done by the silhouettes of Jimmy, Carl, and Sheen, not unlike Mystery Science Theater 3000. It aired with quite a bit of promotional advertising and fanfare, but was never shown again, and for a long time couldn't even be found online. Fortunately this piece of Forbidden Fruitcan now be watched in its entirety.
Butt-Ugly Martians is very hard to find unless you come across one of its three VHS releases. It had frequent DVD and VHS releases in the UK however, and the entire series was on there.
The X's, which is much-maligned amongst Nick fans, has vanished from all of Nick's networks and websites, there are only two places you can watch it: 2 episodes on 2 'Nick Pick' DVDs and only a few episodes have been uploaded on YouTube. A few episodes have aired on The Splat for the 25th Nicktoon Anniversary Celebration in 2016.
The Mighty B! has only ever seen two compilation DVD releases, and even then they don't even comprise the whole series. Both seasons of the show are available on Amazon and iTunes, but perhaps thanks to it dividing viewers when it first aired (it had the misfortune of premiering while Nickelodeon was going through some hard times) it hasn't ever seen a full DVD release.
Nicktoons TV (or Nicktoons Network as it was known until 2009, when the channel changed its name to Nicktoons) once had a slew of original cartoon programming that all seemed produced at a portion of the budget of a regular Nicktoon, and they are all unavailable from DVD releases in their entirety. Kappa Mikey and Corneil and Bernie ('Watch My Chops' in regions outside North America) had a few episodes released, but both series have never had complete releases (as in, all episodes).
And even them despite the two seasons being available on iTunes (and on DVD in Australia), only three episodes of Kappa Mikey were ever released on DVD in North America. The show was originally a Nicktoons Network original, but did have a short run on the regular Nickelodeon channel, but was restricted to early Sunday mornings, and most viewers weren't interested in it. And now that Nicktoons Network has now replaced it with newer shows, good luck finding it elsewhere. Maybe things might perk up because the original creator has brought the rights back from Nickelodeon.
While on the subject of Nicktoons cartoons, there's 'Leader Dog', a 13 episode series (3 minutes per episode) about a dog encountering aliens, being mistaken for Earth's leader by them, and attempting to teach them the wonders of being of dog. Of the short run of the series, only 7 exist, with the rest in limbo.
As Told by Ginger has only had two DVD releases, each with one three-part episode and two regular episodes (one episode and the unaired pilot on the first DVD). The first 13 episodes were released on iTunes in 2008 but were removed after a few months. They resurfaced five years later along with the rest of the series, including the several episodes from the second half of Season 3 that have not aired in the United States. However, a couple of episodes had blatant transfer errors at some parts, and the series was removed in early 2015, making it unavailable once again aside from the two DVD's and bootleg sets. Thankfully, one torrentor bought the entire series from iTunes when it was available and created a torrent out of it. Until then, the complete series circulated in the form of various TV recordings from different countries, and many episodes can be found easily on YouTube.
KaBlam!never got a VHS or DVD release, and hasn't aired in the US since 2005 (not counting instances in 2006 and 2008 where it was brought out only for Nicktoon-related marathons, or when a few of the shorts like Prometheus and Bob and Life With Loopy aired alone on Nicktoons during breaks until 2007). According to one of Nick's official YouTube channels Nick Animation: 'We love KaBlam (just like all of our shows). However because it was an anthology show, the legal rights are complicated and prevent us from re-airing it or releasing it on DVD.'. The main reasons for these legal issues being the one-shot shorts and the music videos from the third and fourth seasons. Almost all of the one-shot shorts were rejected Nicktoon pilots, and the rights to them eventually reverted back to the creators as shows based off of said pilots never came to be. As for the music videos, Nickelodeon no longer have the music rights to the songs. While Nickelodeon still owns the 'regular' segments (Action League Now!, Sniz & Fondue, Life With Loopy, etc.) as they were created specifically for the show, it still leaves an airing on The Splat slim- as it would leave the show with a very limited amount of episodes to air (possibly more limited than the Nicktoons airings in the mid-2000s, which left out half of the episodes) as editing the shorts with legal trouble out of the episodes would lose too much time in the episode to run for the entire timeslot. And even if the show did get a DVD release, expect one to be heavily edited to remove any content Nick no longer owns (the only other way would be to release separate DVD collections of the show's regular shorts on their own). Fortunately for the fans, Mark Marek (who did the Henry and June wraparounds) has uploaded almost every episode on his website (with the exceptions of 'A Nut In Every Bite!', which he's still looking for the master to, and The Off-Beats' Valentines, as he had no involvement with it- both are on YouTube with the rest of the series), including several long lost episodes and specials. By December 2015, the entire series finally became available online. As of 2019, the series is apart of the rotating catalog of NickSplat on VRV
One of the biggest examples is The Henry and June Show, a TV special that aired in March 1999 in hopes of getting Henry and June their own TV series. It didn't work, and the special was never aired again. And not only was the special not released on VHS, but it never aired outside the US. It was deemed lost forever until someone uploaded it to YouTube in 2015.
Although the series didn't have a widespread VHS release, a mail-in promotion by Tombstone Pizza had a 3D VHS of one episode. Said VHS surfaced on eBay in 2015 for $500.
The English-language Nickelodeon dub of Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea has yet to get an official DVD release, which is strange considering how well received it was.
All of the TV movies on Nickelodeon, including the Sunday Movie Toons in 2002 like The Amazing Zorro and Dinosaur Island, and The Electric Piper in 2003. The films haven't been re-aired since, which is a shame as they were actually very good.
Luckily regarding at least one of them, the director of The Electric Piper contacted a fan and mentioned that while he couldn't release it on DVD for legal reasons, he did hope to release it online. The film finally surfaced on the Internet in its entirety on August 9, 2016.
Nickelodeon's programs based off DreamWorks Animation films, The Penguins of Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and Monsters vs. Aliens, have never seen a complete run on DVD. A major culprit is clearly rights issues: while Nickelodeon retains the rights to all three shows, the characters and related intellectual property are owned by DreamWorks (and also Universal since 2016), and DreamWorks/Universal owns the home video and digital rights to the series. You might still catch any of these three shows on either Netflix, Hulu, or iTunes, however, if your country allows for it.
Downward Doghouse, a predecessor to Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, aired on Nick Jr. in the mid-2000s, with only one of the three episodes ('Dragon Dance') existing. The other two ('Where's Hoho?' and 'Follow That Slipper') have yet to resurface.
MTV is pretty terrible about this when it comes to its animated shows:
The Brothers Grunt has no DVD or VHS releases in sight and is unlikely to get one because it's an Old Shame for the MTV and what little people remember it hate it almost as much as MTV does. The Brothers Grunt got criticism and scorn when it aired as a replacement show for Beavis And Butthead, which had to be put on temporary hiatus due to complaints of kids imitating the dangerous stunts on the show (most notably, the kid who accidentally burned down his trailer home and killed his younger sister, and another kid who dropped a bowling ball off a bridge and the ball hit a baby in a carriage and killed him). The only person who doesn't feel this way is creator Danny Antonucci, who could always make a deal to buy back the rights to the show.
Another example of this trope is Downtown, which is odd, as that show actually had original music, not music from other artists used for a soundtrack (it could be a 'not enough commercial appeal' thing). However, Chris Prynoski is currently offering a DVD of the series. All episodes are currently on YouTube, all for free, and it's official. It's unknown if the DVDs are still available, but they probably are. If the YouTube links ever go down and Chris Prynoski stops selling the DVDs, well, you won't find Downtown anywhere else.
Only a handful of the music video segments from Beavis And Butthead are on the show's 'official' DVD releases. Also, Mike Judgehates about a third of the episodes, and has refused to license them to DVD. Given the nature of all those record labels (most of which had since then been bought up by some giant conglomerate, assuming they hadn't gone out of existence altogether) it's a miracle they managed a handful to begin with.
In the early episodes of said series, all references to Beavis being a pyromaniac ('Fire! Fire! Fire!') were edited out of the episodes following an incident where a young boy burned down his home and killed his little sisternote The references to Beavis' pyromania were never put back into the episodes (not even for the DVD releases, as according to creator Mike Judge, the master tapes were permanently altered), so the only way you'll see them is if you recorded the episodes on VHS when they first aired.
The 'official' DVDs actually don't present any of the episodes in their original airing format. Besides the unavailability of many of the 'video reviews', those that are available are only viewable as separate clips, cutting them out of the episodes that they originally aired with in an 'act one/music video/act two/music video/etc.' format.
Apart from 2 'Best of' DVDs and a few bootleg releases, there are no copies of Celebrity Deathmatch to be found. It has shown up on YouTube, but only as individual clips versus a whole episode. That said, the revival show on MTV 2 has the full run available on iTunes.
Liquid Television and Cartoon Sushi have had a few shorts on various VHSs and DVDs, but most of them have not, and it's doubtful full episodes of either show will be released anytime soon (the revival Liquid TV episodes on iTunes notwithstanding).
3 South, a short-lived animated series airing 11 out of its 13 episodes during its original run. The series never even reran on MTV Classic. The full series is on YouTube, including the 2 unaired episodes.
While you can technically get almost of all of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) series on DVD in the United States—assuming you're willing to buy multiple sets with a handful of out-of-order episodes for seasons 3 and 4—the last season of the series, Back to the Sewer, was never released in that manner. Similarly, getting a legal version of the complete Turtles Forever is currently impossible without importing from abroad. In 2017, Nicktoons aired marathons of the series and Turtles Forever, but it has since been taken off of the air.
As of 2019, the series now airs on Nick's channel on Pluto TV every other day.
Spy Groove never had a home media release, and it never aired on MTV Classic. Almost all of the episodes can be found on YouTube from VHS rips.
Many of Comedy Central's non South Park animated series, with Drawn Together being the sole exception.
WarnerMedia has a huge catalogue of animated series, through Cartoon Network, [adult swim], Hanna-Barbera, Ruby-Spears, and Warner Bros..
Many of these shows have never been released on home entertainment, except the titles that the Warner Archive has released on DVD. However, a lot of Cartoon Network's original programming is available for purchase and/or streaming on places like Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, and even Cartoon Network's own website and Boomerang's streaming service; however, some have also found easier distribution on DVD in other regions. Also note that while some series are right now only available on the Boomerang streaming app or itunes Warner Archive's work on them is probably done, dvds will probably follow after the exclusivity window to those other mediums ends. Then they should be counted as rescued:
The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: Only the first five episodes have ever been released on DVD, a few episodes could be found on YouTube, and no telling how long they'll stay. However, the entire series is available on iTunes and Hulu Plus.
The Life and Times of Juniper Lee: There was said to be a Season 1 DVD at the start of 2009...that never showed. And good luck trying to find any trace of episodes. CN Video, which was where the final episodes played? Nope. YouTube? Unless you like Abridged Series and some promos, nope. Boomerang's subscription streaming service? You're in luck - they have every episode available to stream!
Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?: All 13 episodes were available on Cartoon Network Video back in 2008, but have since disappeared and will probably never return again...unless the channel feels generous and puts it on Boomerang subscription video within the next few years. So now the question is, 'Whatever happened to Whatever Happened to… Robot Jones?'
Better yet, the original airings of the Season 1 episodes. In the original airings, Robot Jones was voiced through an Apple text-to-speech program, but all further episodes had him voiced by a child (Bobby Block) instead and altered to sound robotic. To make matters worse, the season one episodes had Robot Jones' voice redubbed with the new voice and digitally removed the 'Ass' on a banner that read 'Kick-Ass' on the episode 'Growth Spurts'.
The video website DailyMotion has most (if not all of the episodes) available, but the season one episodes are the redubbed ones. The only episode with Robot Jones' original voice available on the site is 'P.U. to P.E.' (which also has the redubbed version of that episode).
Sheep in the Big City. Season 1 was on iTunes for a time, but it was removed for reasons unknown. The show never got a home video release except for one episode as a 'sneak preview' on a Powerpuff Girls VHS/DVD and a three episode DVD in the UK. A clip of the show appears in the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez film Gigli, and that's it.
Mike, Lu & Og's only DVD release is of the first three episodes, and only in the UK. It aired on Boomerang occasionally... prior to the 2015 rebrand. Fortunately, the whole series is on YouTube, and was available through Cartoon Network on Demand, until late 2018.
Only the first two seasons of Ed, Edd n Eddy are available on DVD, the latter of which came out way back in 2007. More infuriating is that while the season 2 DVD is still cheaply available, seasons 1 has now gone out of print (much like the Billy and Mandy season 1 DVD) and now costs way more than any average fan would be willing to pay for. The only way to watch the other 4 seasons of the series legally is through iTunes or unofficially online (there are some region 4 releases of the later seasons, but good luck getting them cheap, even if you have the DVD hardware to run them).
The final regular episodes of the sixth season completed before Danny Antonucci decided to scrap the remainder of it for the series finale movie Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, 'May I Have This Ed? / Look Before You Ed' aren't available on iTunes or any other digital service.
In addition, 'Ed, Edd n Eddy's Hanky Panky Hullabaloo' seems to be absent from any home media option, as is Johnny Bravo's Valentines episode. While both these shows have season/volume releases on iTunes, such standalone episodes like specials aren't always included in them, instead appearing in holiday-themed releases. But since there's no Valentines-themed release, it and the Season 6 episode (which doesn't have much of a season to be released with) are the only episodes not available for legal purchase.
As of now, only the first two seasons of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends have been released on DVD. Season 3 has since been released through Warner Archive, but season 2 is now out of print and is hard to find, and there is still no word about seasons 4, 5, and, 6. However, all seasons have been released on iTunes, Hulu, the PlayStation Network, and Google Play in the US. It is also on Boomerang, if you are willing to stay up late.
In addition, the fifth and sixth seasons are the 4:3 versions (on iTunes, at least), as opposed to the widescreen versions they were made in.
Anything by Maxwell Atoms. Well, there are Billy and Mandy movies and the out-of-print Season 1 set of the show; but not the rest of the series. Evil Con Carne, however, is less fortunate, with only a small handful of episodes available on the aforementioned Billy and Mandy Season 1 set. Nothing's been said about Underfist yet, outside of an iTunes release only available in the UK. Until around late 2017 where both series have been added to on Demand.
Time Squad. YouTube is one of the few places to view the entire series, but it is unreliable, because the videos, while being uploaded at a seemingly high rate, are repeatedly (and almost relentlessly) pulled down every time. One could try to view the episodes by simply Google video searching, where you'll get video sites that haven't taken them down. Cartoon Network as only put the episodes for viewing on their site twice; once in 2007 with multiple episodes from both seasons, and again in 2012 (as part of the channel's 20th anniversary special) but this time only short clips. There was a three episode DVD release in the UK, however.
Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. YouTube is, once again, your only bet with this one. There were two home video releases in the mid-2000s, but that was it. Back then, the show had received hefty criticism, due to the big Animation Age Ghetto blowups that plagued that time, but as years passed, the hate has softened significantly. The only official release is a DVD release from Thailand that comes with a English audio track, and even then it only covers the first 2 seasons.
Class of 3000, a short-lived series made around the time that Cartoon Networkwas going downhill due to its harebrained shift to live-action fare, centered on Andre 3000 (of OutKast) as a former pop music star who takes a job as an Atlanta school teacher with a failing music program. The only release this show got was on iTunes and a soundtrack, though there was a DVD release of the first season in Australia.
Unlike most 21st-century Cartoon Network originals, The Problem Solverz has yet to see a DVD release. Given its near-universal hatred and Sensory Abuse...
Season 2 is a worse example; the show was available to watch on Netfix in 2013, where it had an exclusive second season containing about 8 11-minute episodes. On March 30, 2015, the whole series was taken off Netflix, but a Dailymotion user named LifesWhatYOUMakeIt uploaded the entire second season of the show on said website in April 2015, so at least you can find it somewhere.
Following Sym-Bionic Titan's end, the show was out of reruns and had no DVD, and likely will never have one due to Cartoon Network writing off the show on their taxes. The only legal way to get it is through iTunes and an Australian DVD. It was reran on Toonami a couple of times before the write-off.
Camp Lazlo: A very, very rare press kit has a DVD of the first two episodes of season 1 has been released on DVD but only for Region 4 and it's region locked, two episodes have appeared on the Cartoon Fridays DVD and a Christmas compilation. It was on Boomerang, but it stopped playing on the channel shortly after, only to resurface on Boomerang's subscription video service a couple years later. My Gym Partner's a Monkey and Squirrel Boy have similar issues, though seasons one and two of the former have also been made available to stream on Boomerang.
The first 15 episodes of Moral Orel were released on DVD, but the rest haven't, due to weak sales of the first set. Shame, as the third season is the show's best — and most depressing, which is why [adult swim] canceled it, yet they specifically asked the show creator to ramp up the content. The 2012 TV special Beforel Orel also has no physical release, but is available on Hulu, episode director Duke Johnson's Vimeo account, and on various digital download services.
In 2012, Moral Orel - Complete Lessons Collection, a 4-disc DVD set containing all three seasons with commentaries from the cast and crew to boot was released on DVD... in Region 4 only. Hey, it's a start.
Codename: Kids Next Door has no home video releases besides a DVD with the first few episodes made very early in the show's run (which is now out of print) and some episodes on compilation DVDs released over the years. Made odd by the fact that it was a borderline Cash Cow Franchise for Cartoon Network during its run and is so continuity-driven in later seasons that a DVD release is necessary to enjoy the show.
Made especially painful by the fact that this show almost never gets rerun on CN, and only a handful of episodes air when it does. Boomerang currently re-airs the show during their overnight hours. As of 2019,the entire series has been added on iTunes.
Robotomy has never gotten a DVD release at all. The same show was also cancelled after 10 episodes—all of which were fifteen minutes. However, it is available on iTunes, accessible via torrents, and a couple of episodes ('Bling Thing'note and 'Playdate'note ) have aired on Cartoon Network's revived installment show Cartoon Planet.
Stōked: For the longest time after Cartoon Network took the show off their schedule in late July 2010 due to low ratings, the best way to see the remaining 4 episodes of Season 1 as well as the entirety of Season 2 was on YouTube thanks to Australian fans of the show who would DVR the episodes on ABC 3. From 2014-16, the entire series is on Hulu. Eventually, the series is now available on Netflix, although the first season only.
While on the subject of Fresh TV shows aired on Cartoon Network, the same thing also happened to 6teen after they aired the series finale in late June of 2010. While they still aired reruns every so often for awhile afterwards it was not to extent of how it was prior to the series finale and was quietly taken off the schedule for good in early 2011. Nowadays the only place where you can see the show is on YouTube through recordings by fans in the mid 2000s when the show was airing in its origin country of Canada. As of 2019, Nelvana posted the entire series on their Retro Rerun Channel on YouTube.
Dexter's Laboratory has no home video releases beyond the first season. This may be somewhat justified as the second season is twice as long than the first, and the third and fourth ones are considered one of the most noticeable dork ages in Cartoon Network history. The complete series did get released on DVD in Australia, though. There's also no sign of a release in any modern format for the stand-alone movie Ego Trip, produced between seasons 2 and 3 and the last hurrah for the series' original style (though it was released on VHS). Hulu used to have the entire series available to stream, but not anymore.
Robotboy: only the first season is on DVD, in two volumes, and only in French. Fortunately, the show is one of the couple Cartoon Network European Co-Productions that has a perpetual, permanent position on Cartoon Network UK's overnight timeslots. Every episode is also available through YouTube as well. As of 2019, the US rights are currently owned by Starz. The whole series is now on Starz's website, and on StarzEncore Family.
Small World was an anthology series that used to air on Cartoon Network in the US and Latin America. Unfortunately, this block will never be legally released on home video because the shorts are all owned by different parties. Pingu (read below for more information) was on the US block. From the Latin American block, Franklin and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat are pretty easy to find.
Cartoon Network's first live-action show, Big Bag, was co-produced by Turner and the Children's Television Workhop, and ran from 1996 to 1998. It was produced in a manner similar to CTW's most famous series, Sesame Street, featuring a main story with human and Muppet characters broken into separate parts, separated by cartoon shorts from different parts of the world (along with a couple of domestically-produced titles, such as Troubles the Cat and Ace and Avery, the latter coming from John R. Dilworth), without commercial interruptions (unusual for a Cartoon Network show.) There were only a few episodes released on VHS during the show's run, all of them now out of print, but those episodes that were released on VHS have since been uploaded on YouTube. The rest of the show is mostly considered lost.
While technically not a show but rather a showcase that had a lot of original footage to it, The Moxy Show definitively deserves mention. Despite being the first Cartoon Network series ever, running for many years and having the voice talent of Penn Jillette, Bobcat Goldthwait and Chris Rock, it hasn't been seen since the day all classic cartoons migrated to Boomerang from Cartoon Network except this one, and clips of it online are very scarce. Perhaps Cartoon Network saw it as more of a programming block time capsule of the 1990's rather than a real show? But if Cartoon Network is having trouble releasing the many shows people DO remember on home media, then how likely is it that they're going to release something that practically no one remembers and is only kind of a show with other cartoon shorts in it? Not to mention that Moxy wasn't mentioned at all during Cartoon Network's 20th anniversary.
The Flintstones: On the Rocks has never seen any sort of home video release since the made-for-TV film first aired back in 2001. This may have something to do with the uncharacteristically adult nature of the story: it deals with marital strife developing between Fred and Wilma to the point where they get into a physical altercation, start flirting with other people, and nearly consider getting divorced. According to people from WB's home video department, there are certain rights issues that are in the way of it being re-released.
Similarly, The Scooby-Doo Project has been MIA since it originally aired in late 1999. A series of live-action/animation bumpers (later compiled and aired as a singular short) that had the Mystery Machine gang in an Affectionate Parody of found footage horror films (specifically —as one could ascertain from the title— The Blair Witch Project, which had started airing in theaters around this time); it was originally run during two Scooby-Doo marathons aired near the end of the year, and has not been re-aired or released on home video since then. Uploads by fans to online sites are your best bet to see this relatively novel serialized take with the characters.
In both cases of their absence, they are remnants of an era of when the network appealed to adult audiences by presenting their large roster of classic characters in certain scenariosthat would usually fly over the heads of younger audiences (some of which, like The Scooby Doo Project, also doubled as pop-culture references)—a direction that has long since been left behind by the network since the Turn of the Millennium.
In 2005, as part of its Tickle-U block, Cartoon Network aired Peppa Pig with a new dub featuring American voice actors (a few episodes from the original British dub were shown, however). After the block's cancellation, the American dub is no longer available online, as Nick Jr. only shows the original UK version. Not much is known about the US dub except for Elaine Torres (as Emily and Rebecca) and Chloe Dolandis (as Suzy).
Superjail! has its first three seasons available on DVD. Its final fourth season however is not. Considering how short the season was, as well as the long time gap since the cancellation of the series, it is very unlikely it will receive any home release at this point.
The final six episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast have never received any form of home media availability. To top that off, the last three seasons (8-10) have not received DVD releases unlike the rest of the series (this includes the Game Tap exclusive episodes).
Total Drama: While Australia has the first six seasons released on DVD (Total Drama: The Ridonculous Race has yet to be released on DVD in Australia), Total Drama Island is the only season to be released on DVD in North America, although the series is available on Netflix (though World Tour and Revenge of the Island are missing).
The short-lived Kids WB cartoons Waynehead and Detention (the latter of which didn't even see any cable reruns.) Waynehead did air reruns on Cartoon Network in the very late 90s, but not for very long.
The real emphasis is on Waynehead, seeing as how the show is now considered Lost Media. The fact that Warner Archive does not plan on releasing the show any time soon doesn't help matters at all, but rather rubs salt on the wounds.
In August 2018, the complete series of Detention was made available on iTunes.
While the entirety of Tiny Toon Adventures is available on DVD, nothing has been said about the two double-length specials, 'Spring Break Special' and 'Night Ghoulery', the latter having been previously released on VHS. At least both specials are streaming on Hulu.
On television, the Spring Break Special did air on Discovery Family (back when it was called The Hub Network) on Easter of 2014note , as well as Night Ghoulery appearing on Vortexx twice.
Animaniacs seemed to have Swedish and Norwegian dubs, but no episodes are available in the former, and only the intro (on 'Freakazoid!) is on Y Ou Tube for the latter.
Three compilations of Skunk Fu! exist, but they don't comprise the entire series.
While most of the Scooby-Doo shows were released on DVD, there are a couple of omissions on the complete release side. One should note episodes of these series are very much still being released in random sets and online.
Until 2019, nine of the 24 episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies aren't available either, due to having to get clearance by the guest celebrities or their estates if they died. With a new DVD and a Blu-ray set announced, only one episode (specifically the one guest starring The Addams Family) is MIA.
The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show and The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries have yet to be released complete on DVD, but they are on the Boomerang streaming service.
Warner Home Video entertained the idea of releasing the entire series of Hanna-Barbera's first program for TV, The Ruff & Reddy Show, but they put the kibosh on it after seeing the then numbers on other sets like Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear. Now that the Warner Archive has eliminated that problem such worries have been diminished, but quality of the masters still move Ruff and Reddy further down the list.
From The New Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Series, good luck finding good quality episodes of Touche Turtle And Dum Dum or Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, except for the rare couple episodes on DVD. Averted with Wally Gator, which was digitally remastered for iTunes and is going to dvd in June 2019.
Goldie Gold and Action Jack, which is on Warner Archive's eventual docket.
Good luck finding good quality episodes of Ruby-Spears' Fangface, as Boomerang hasn't aired reruns since the 2000's. The whole series used to be available on YouTube, but the uploader's account was terminated for copyright infringement.
Saturday Supercade will probably never see the light of day due to the rights to Mario and Donkey Kong being nearly impossible to secure, not to mention all the other video game properties used on the show.
The Q*bert segments are now on YouTube, but in chopped-up, edited form.
Warner Archive does plan to release the show in some format. They still report that they are 'researching' the product. Which pretty much means looking at what they do own, what they could license back and what is pretty much gone. The fact a highly chopped up set has not been churned out, holds out hope they have plans to try and make it as complete as they can.
Jana of the Jungle hasn't been shown on Cartoon Network or Boomerang in the United States. One episode, 'The Cordillera Volcano', was on Warner Bros.' Saturday Morning Forever site.
Warner Archive also has plans, so why Cartoon Network never aired it is a matter of whatever reason Cartoon Network has as to why they won't release it. Other shows never aired by them are also available now and others, such as Jana and the Puppy specials, will follow.
The Banana Splits Adventure Hour is an unfortunate case of this. While the episodes were originally an hour long package of live action and animated segments, the episodes were trimmed to a half hour when syndicated to stations and retitled The Banana Splits and Friends. Only a handful of VHS releases exist, most of them released outside the USA and extremely difficult to find, and the only DVD release available is a first-season boxset, and just to twist the knife further, don't expect to see the DVD in the United States or Canada. And to twist the knife even further, the episodes featured on the DVD and the VHS releases are the trimmed down, syndicated versions. Warner Archive plans to restore the hour versions for the US release, but so far, no luck.
The Fantastic Four (1967), produced by Hanna-Barbera, has yet to be released on DVD. Warner Bros. owns the series, but the Fantastic Four characters are owned by Marvel Comics, a division of Disney.
Don Coyote And Sancho Panda was never officially released on any format and seems to have been largely forgotten by the public. All the episodes are currently available on YouTube for the time being.
Once again Warner Archive has plans.
Fish Police. Only three of its six episodes aired in the US, but all six aired in certain European markets. There are copies of varying quality on YouTube and other sites, however.
Warner Archive has plans once clearance issues are met.
There are still a boatload of Looney Tunes cartoons that still haven't been released to DVD, most of which, like the Censored Eleven and some of the more brutal World War II cartoons ('Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips' and 'Tokio Jokio'), probably won't be released unless Warner Bros. implements a DVD-by-request program or releases it as a special historical collection with Content Warnings out the wazoo about the Values Dissonance.
According to various sources, this is all on a 'party' in the legal team, that does not want those or those two 'evil' Tom and Jerry cartoons released. As a result, none of those sets are coming until the legal team stands aside, and that could be even more years.
Taz-Mania also counts, at least until Warner Bros. finally announced the first season on DVD. In 2018, the entire series was added on the Boomerang streaming service.
Invasion America has had only bootleg VHS tapes to its name and, eventually, some relatively poor-quality downloads based off said VHS recordings. No DVD release has ever even been rumored.
Krypto the Superdog has only ever gotten 2 DVD releases containing 5 episodes each out of 39 episodes; however, Boomerang frequently reran the series prior to the rebrand.
Toon Heads, an anthology series, is never aired on Boomerang and has only appeared on DVD twice; both times being specials on a Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD (one about lost, rare, and forgotten animated pieces and one about World War II cartoons).
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries only had the first season released on DVD in 2008. However, reruns are on Boomerang. Averted as of 2019, since the whole series was adding on the Boomerang streaming service.
The infamous Yo Yogi! series. Not a single full episode can be found online, but will more than likely eventually surface from the Archive, but it is pretty far down the list. Amazon Prime Germany used to offer the series, but it's since been removed. A few episodes can be found on YouTube from VHS rips. Averted as of 2019, since it will arrive on the Boomerang streaming service in May 2019 with mostoftheotherYogi shows and specials.
While there is decent controversy over the Tom and Jerry shorts 'Mouse Cleaning' and 'Casnova Cat' being missing from most releases (due to racial scenes impossible to edit properly), the short 'The Mansion Cat' has not been included on any Tom and Jerry releases either for some strange reason.
Suffice to say, the very short-lived series Jokebook, a compilation series displaying a number of animated shorts from around the world, will probably not see the light of day anytime soon, as not only have 3 of the 7 episodes aired in the original run, but uploads of the show online were deleted and no reruns of it were reported.
The Huckleberry Hound Show only has the first season released on DVD. After that, Warner Bros. opted against releasing further seasons due to poor sales. This puts Yogi Bear fans in a conundrum, as all but thirteen of his segments (part of Huckleberry Hound's second season) are available on DVD, with those thirteen segments only being available on video-sharing sites via old Boomerang airings. Averted as of 2019, because the whole series was released on the Boomerang streaming service.
On the subject of Yogi Bear, the '80s revival The New Yogi Bear Show got one VHS release as a six-episode compilation...in Australia. It was last seen in the US on Boomerang years ago, so you better start digging. As of 2019, the entire franchise (1960s series and 1988 revival) were added on the Boomerang streaming service.
Rose Petal Place's specials were only on TV and VHS in the 80s.
Lucky Luke's English dub from Hanna-Barbera hasn't been released on DVD, and the VHS tapes are out of print.
Pound Puppies (1980s) never had a DVD release and the VHS releases from the 80's are long out of print.
Ruby Spears' version of Heathcliff hasn't been released on DVD in its entirety, since Warner Archive only released the first season, Heathcliff and Dingbat. Heathcliff and Marmaduke is still MIA, and not that easy to find online.
Nelvana has a vast library of award-winning animated series and movies, but are rather reluctant to even release many of them on video. Some series can be streamed on Tubi, Treehouse TV's YouTube channel, as well as their Retro Rerun YouTube channel and some series have aired on the Qubo channel. Nelvana's current deal with Cinedigm does hope that more series will have eventual releases, but for now:
The Beetlejuice animated series is available complete on DVD, but Shout! Factory only bothered to release three out of the four seasons individually, with season four only being available through the complete series box set, which goes for rather large prices nowadays. The series rights are tied between Warner Bros. and Nelvana.
Donkey Kong Country had a VHS release of the pilot and two other episodes courtesy of Paramount, but the rest of the series never made it to VHS or DVD in the U.S. Both seasons were released on DVD in Australia. The first season eventually made its way to DVD in 2015, but that still leaves the second season unavailable on DVD, and can be viewed in its entirety on iTunes and on Nelvana's Retro Rerun YouTube channel.
Stickin' Around had some VHS releases in both the U.S. and Canada courtesy of Cinepix Film Properties, but it only saw a DVD release in Australia, with the VHS releases going out of print when CFP became Lionsgate. Nelvana later uploaded the series (sans the final episode) to the YTV Direct YouTube channel, but later removed it when YTV Direct rebranded to Keep it Weird while archival content went to the Retro Rerun channel.
Ned's Newt saw some VHS releases in the late 90s, and that's it. In America, the series was last seen on Qubo in 2018. The entire series can be viewed on Amazon Prime, and a handful of episodes of the German and Swedish dubs, along with the first two seasons of the Polish dub, are on YouTube
Maggie and the Ferocious Beast saw some DVD releases circa 2007 by Shout! Factory, which included a handful of segments. It is airing on Qubo as of May 2018, and streaming for free on Tubi and the Dove Channel.
Blaster's Universe was last seen on KidsCo through its Australian and British until they closed, and there are no home media releases. In Canada, the series has resurfaced on Bell Media's streaming service, but the series itself hasn't been seen in the U.S. since it ended in 2000.
Wayside only had its first season and the pilot movie released on DVD. YTV would later upload the series (sans the pilot movie) to their YouTube channel.
There's no DVD release for Spliced, not even in Canada.
While you can find all of the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective animated series online, the series sole DVD release with three episodes as a bonus in a DVD for the first movie is out of print. The rights to the series are tied between Corus and Revolution Studios (who owns the Morgan Creek library).
Funimation released the first season of Braceface and then stopped because it didn't sell well. All three seasons have been uploaded to YouTube, and the first season is on iTunes.
Seven Little Monsters hasn't aired in the US since the early 2000's on PBS, and hasn't received any home media releases.
Nelvana's adaptation of Corduroy last aired in the US during the early 2000's on PBS, and its DVDs from Scholastic and Treehouse are out of print.
Before Nelvana's adaptation, there was an adaptation by Viacom titled The Adventures of Corduroy. Four direct-to-video episodes were released, and two of them ('The Puppy', 'The Dinosaur Egg') are nowhere to be found online.
WildC.A.T.s had its entire run released on an out-of print DVD released by Funimation in 2005, and it hasn't been released since then. WarnerMedia currently owns the series via DC Comics, who acquired producer WildStorm Entertainment in 1999.
NBCUniversal has many TV series in its library, most of which came from DreamWorks Classics.
While you can find plenty of copies of all those sequels to The Land Before Time they made, the rest of the libraries of Universal's animation units seem to have fallen into this, in part due to Universal's historical post-Walter Lantz indifference to the medium (though with Despicable Me's unprecedented success and DreamWorks Animation's vast catalog (consisting of both their IPs and the Classic Media library) becoming part of the Universal family in August 2016, there may be hope):
It seems it'll be a long time before we get beyond the first two volumes of the Woody Woodpecker collections, since we still have over 100 cartoons left to cover (particularly 107). Never mind that we still haven't seen a U.S. release of The (New) Woody Woodpecker Show (though on the plus side, Universal has begun uploading select segments of the series to YouTube).
The rarest are usually the ones made from the 60s and the 70s. Because the majority of them are so hard to find they've become obscured, to the point of even losing the original english audio track to them. While one might do at least one of his shorts online in it's original language, the rest can't be said for the remaining shorts.
Exo Squad ran for two seasons, of which only the first one (one-third the length of the second) was officially released on VHS and DVD. IMDb has cover arts of 'second season VHS', but these are merely bootlegs. So it's either them...or BitTorrent. Both seasons were available legally for streaming on Hulu for a year or two, but a fresh dispute over the rights soon resulted in it being off Hulu and back to bootlegs.
Fievel's American Tails had its episodes released on VHS and LaserDisc in the early-to-mid 1990's, but no DVD releases in America. To make matters worse, only eight episodes of the 13 episode series were released in the US; PAL regions got every episode on VHS though, which is the only reason the 'missing' episodes have surfaced on the internet in recent years with their original English dub. However, there have been DVD releases in Europe since An American Tail is popular enough there to warrant a release in Germany and Italy, and the remaining episodes can be found in its German and Italian dubs.
Bionic Six (Universal only handled distribution on this one, it was before they founded their own animation studio) was considered one of the best animated series of the eighties, notably due to Osamu Dezaki as animation director (he of Lupin III and Golgo 13 fame), but it has never seen a VHS release, let alone a DVD one. The tapes keep circulating from the old Syfy airings of them.
A lot of the shows they aired as part of the USA Network's Cartoon Express, or shows they based off Universal movies- this includes adaptations of Beethoven, The Savage Dragon, Problem Child, Wing Commander Academy, The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, Monster Force, and The Mummy: The Animated Series- have yet to see releases on home media. Monster Force did have a DVD release of the first seven episodes, but the final six are still not available.
Sitting Ducks is an odd case. In the United States, you have the option of buying a complete set of the series' first season on DVD, or VHS volumes of the episodes of said season. In the United Kingdom, however, you can get the volumes on both VHS and DVD, but no DVD set of the entire first season, which is very unusual given how popular the series was in Europe. As for the second season, don't bother trying to look for that. The entire series was legally streamed on Hulu for a number of years, then was pulled after the streaming rights lapsed.
Vor-Tech: Undercover Conversion Squad has never been released on home media or reran since its cancellation in 1997, and the quantity of footage of it online amounts to a whooping 2 minutes as of 2017.
The Land Before Time TV series only had 24 out of the 26 episodes released on DVD. One of the final 2 was included as a special feature with one of the movies, but that's it. The series is airing in reruns on Universal Kids as of March 2017.
A number of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts still owned by Universal (excluding the Walt Disney-produced shorts, which Universal sold to The Walt Disney Company along with the character in 2006) are still not available on home video, partly due to the original negatives being difficult to locate, if not just Universal having lost all interest in Oswald after Woody Woodpecker became the studio's Golden Age mascot.
The Felix the Cat series, already suffering from the fact that most of the silent cartoons are lost, suffers this on all fronts, and is part of why the character suffers from Mainstream Obscurity these days—making matters worse is that Don Oriolo sold the rights of the series to DreamWorks in 2014 (which were then acquired by NBC/Universal when they bought out Dreamworks), who seem to be content with sitting on the character and not rereleasing anything related to him;
One of the best releases of the silent cartoons, Felix: The Otto Messmer Classics, released by the now-defunct Bosko Video, has been out of print for many years, and it is not easy to find it for cheap online. To date, there have been no other pristine DVD releases of the original silent cartoons.
Only the first 31 episodes of Joe Oriolo's made-for-TV Felix the Cat cartoons have made it onto DVD, with the others remaining in limbo. And the DVD set containing the episodes is out of print and fetches fairly high prices on amazon. While many VHS tapes exist with episodes not on the DVD set, they've been out of print for decades and aren't easy to find. Said episodes also used to be on iTunes for a while after the DVD was discontinued....until NBCUniversal purchased DreamWorks and took down Classic Media's entire catalog on the service (sans the pre-1974 Rankin/Bass specials and Veggietales) with it.
The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, a 1990s show about Felixparticipating in various bizarre adventures or situations, is remarkably hard to find - a few episodes were released on VHS by BMG Video way back when, and only a handful of them have ever even existed on the internet. It's true that they did put out a few DVD releases for some episodes as well, but only one of them was ever released in the United Statesnote while the others were released in Hong Kong. However, the entire series was eventually released. The bad news? It's in a DVD box set in Germany, so unless you have a region-free player, you're probably unlucky. To make matters worse, the rights to the show are tied between Lionsgate (which owns the Film Roman back catalogue through Starz) and DreamWorks. On top of that, the short lived second season (where the show was completely retooled after the first season underperformed in ratings, only to flop even harder after the shake up) is not held in high regard by either fans or even the original showrunners, making optimism for a rerelease all the more unlikely.
Want to read the many, many Felix the cat newspaper comics and comic books which date all the way back to 1921, with some of them running the way up to the 1960's (with a crossover newspaper comic with Betty Boop in the 80's, and a brief comic book revival in the 90's)? Well, unless you have cash to burn and a lot of time on your hands, good luck with that. Only a small fraction of both the newspaper and magazine comics have been reprinted, and all but one of those book collections (Yoe Books 'Felix: The Great Comic Tails') is out of print. So the only way to read the comics is to track down the originals, which becomes very difficult the further back you go, especially if you're looking for the newspaper comics.
The DVD of Felix the Cat: The Movie has fallen out of print, and has not gotten a Blu-Ray or newer DVD release either.
Baby Felix & Friends, which was mainly made for Japanese audiences, only saw a very limited DVD release for toddlers (with a few episodes per DVD) in the US.
Theodore Tugboat got a number of VHS releases in the mid-late 90's, in both its home country of Canada and the U.S. (the latter courtesy of PBS and Warner Home Video). Once Classic Media (now part of DreamWorks Animation and Universal) bought the rights to the property after the series was canceled, the releases stopped, leaving tons of other episodes in limbo. So far, Universal doesn't seem to have the enthusiasm to release the series on DVD or digital outlets, and the last time the series was shown was on the low-rated and defunct PBJ network.
The television special Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies was a crossover between the Looney Tunes and the short-lived latter series on CBS, and is noted for being the only time Warner Bros. ever loaned out the Looney Tunes to another studio that didn't have Warner Bros. Cartoons alumni, in this case Filmation (whose archives are now owned by NBCUniversal through DreamWorks Animation). The special aired only once on ABC in 1972, then was never seen again after that, for obvious reasons. The only official home video release was in the United Kingdom in the 1980's, and it's nigh-impossible to find. The only way anyone can find a trace of this special is through kinescope prints, either online or through physical means. Since Hallmark destroyed most of Filmation's original archives when they remastered the library, it's unknown whether or not the original masters of the special even exist anymore.
Another Filmation program, The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty, can only be found on home video via extremely rare VHS releases from the 1980's, and has never been released in any form on DVD. It's presumed that the same reasons that caused the show to be canceled in the first place (the James Thurber estate suing Filmation over the title of the series, which was inspired by 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty') are preventing a DVD release from ever materializing.
Outside of a VHS showing the best episodes of season one (that is now out of print), Toonsylvania hasn't had its entire series released on DVD. 2014 saw the entire series (both seasons one and two) released on Netflix...on a Latin American feed available in Mexico and Brazil, complete with Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and English audio. What's worse is that before the start of 2015, the show was removed from Netflix streaming, so unless you had access to see Netflix feeds from other countries and saw/recorded every episode, you're boned.
Good luck finding good quality recordings of Rankin-Bass' The Reluctant Dragon and Mr. Toad Show. Only a few black and white episodes are available online, and so is the opening (in color).
Many of the golden-ageColumbia Cartoons shorts (i.e. The Fox and the Crow) were off the air for decades until 1999, when they were included in the Totally Tooned In series - and even then the series was only aired in Latin America. U.S. television audiences finally got to see them in 2011 on Antenna TV. A DVD release for these cartoons is not yet in the works (although the final three UPA-produced shorts are on the TCM Jolly Frolics set, and the first cartoon is an extra on the Hellboy DVD) either because of the prohibitive costs of restoring the entire cartoon library, or that Sonynote just doesn't think the public is that interested in Columbia Cartoons outside the UPA librarynote .
The main stumbling block for the DVD released is the absence of a color print for the cartoon 'Mysto-Fox' (only black-and-white prints currently exist).
Kissyfur, a Saturday morning cartoon that was one of NBC's headliners of the block's 1980's era, only has a handful of VHS tapes from the 80's, and chances are you won't find them easily. No DVDs, digital streaming, reruns, nothing. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that the show was available on Netflix in Latin America, where it was quite popular... distributed by MGM (who has an agreement with NBCUniversal to syndicate NBC's library for international markets).
Remember Gravedale High, a 1990 Hanna-Barbera Saturday Morning Cartoon starring Rick Moranis? Unless you live in the United Kingdom (despite this show being made in America), good luck finding it outside YouTube because NBC Universal, who originally broadcasted the show and somehow still owns the license, seems to forget that it even existed. However, all 13 episodes got a DVD release, but the release is not official (it was ripped off VHS recordings).
The majority of the episodes of the animated Punky Brewster show appear on the DVDs of the main series. But due to the laziness of Shout! Factory, one of the shorts was skipped over music rights. More than likely to never be rectified. Unless when Universal licenses Gravedale High they include it as a special feature?
Here's an example of an entire series unavailable in any form. The Beagles, produced by Total Television (the studio that created King Leonardo and His Short Subjects and Underdog), has not been seen since its original run on CBS five decades ago. According to producer Joe Harris, the series was thought to have been completely lost as the editing material and the master negatives were accidentally thrown out by the widow of one of the show's editors. However, around 1998, the original broadcast negatives and audio tracks of all the episodes were discovered in a warehouse that was owned by the show's syndicator. NBCUniversal currently holds the series rights and negatives as of August 2016 along the rest of Total Television's material, but due to legal issues (probably because of the songs used in the series), there is no sign of any DVD release coming, meaning that the only other remnant of the show's existence so far is a soundtrack album released during the show's original broadcast.
Postman Pat had a number of VHS releases in the United States during the 90's, but a multitude of episodes never saw the light of day there, and only one DVD release, the 2014 CGI movie, materialized. American-based NBCUniversal (through DreamWorks Animation) controls the intellectual property and masters as of 2016, but there still doesn't seem to be any motivation for a U.S. DVD release yet. This doesn't apply in the show's home country, the United Kingdom, for very obvious reasons, but unless you live there or have a region-free DVD player, don't even bother getting those releases.
As of light, the British-American Hanna-Barbera series Midnight Patrol: Adventures In The Dream Zone has yet to be released on DVD in the U.S., and what's worse is that the VHS release (distributed a year after the show ended its short run) is out of print. Hanna-Barbera later gave up its rights to the series to co-producer Sleepy Kids Co., whose assets are now controlled by Universal (via DreamWorks Animation), so any DVD release of the series will be up to them (and given their track record above, there's not much room for hope).
DHX Media has a massive library that is spread throughout a variety of companies. However, only a small chunk of their series get consistent re-releases.
Arthur hasn't gotten a full-season release in the US in quite a while. Only seasons 10 & 11 were released in boxset format here (along with season 7, under the name 'Sleepovers, Sports and More'). In the UK, they only got seasons 1, 2 and 3. Various seasons have been released on assorted streaming services over the years, which is still of no help to those that prefer physical copies, and the rightsholders periodically yank certain seasons off the services and replace them with other ones anyway. This section on the official PBS website for Arthur aimed at adults lists what episodes are available on the old Random House/Sony Wonder DVDs/videocassettes, for what it's worth. Thankfully, the series is still rerunning on PBS Kids.
Any of the Nintendo-based DiC shows from their original run with the well-known songs intact. Especially The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3's Milli Vanilli episode, due to their 1989 scandal, as there's also a 'Funny Aneurysm' Moment on top of the music rights.
Speaking of Nintendo and DiC: King Koopa's Kool Kartoons, a show related to The Super Mario Bros Super Show! that occasionally aired (but only in southern California!), and featuring Pat Pinney in his first TV role before taking on SpongeBob SquarePants' live-action segments. Of course, considering the show barely seems to have existed as it is...
There's also the Club Mario segments of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which replaced the live-action Mario Bros. segments following the show's original run; all of the episodes were wiped at DiC's orders, except one ('The Unzappables') that was somehow used for digital releases. Most fans, as well as DIC themselves would argue, however, that it should stay this way.
Of the 2013 series Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures, the only U.S. releases have been compilation sets of Story Arc episodes. The compilations don't extend to the entire series though and searches on the Internet reveal there have been complete season releases, but only for Asian countries. Thankfully, the series is still shown on Discovery Family early in the morning so you can watch it then.
Sabrina: The Animated Series, a 65-episode series, currently only has the first 32 episodes on DVD. The show's Made-for-TV movieSabrina: Friends Forever had a limited DVD release after its airing in 2002 and is very hard to find. The entire series is available on Netflix.
The 26-episode spin-off, Sabrina's Secret Life, is only available on English DVD in Australia, and only the first 18 episodes were released. One episode ('Lather, Rinse, Repent') is available as a bonus feature on the complete series DVD set of Archie's Weird Mysteries. All 26 episodes can be downloaded through torrents (and are actually very good quality aside from the Cartoon Network bug present throughout), and they were also available on Netflix.
As of May 2019, the series has been removed from Netflix and the DVDs from Shout Factory and Mill Creek are out of print. Though the series is on Tubi and StarzEncore Family.
The British/Canadian cartoon The Baskervilles. Possibly because of the Hell-like setting, which is much more obvious than Miseryville. The only surviving footage online is the opening and four episodes, which can be found on YouTube.
Two Lady Lovelylocks episodes are missing from the US and British VHS releases of the series, and a complete DVD release was in the UK and Australia only.
Urban Vermin, another Canadian toon. The only channel that ever aired it in America was the short-lived Animania HD network. The YouTube channel dhxkidstv has them, but you have to pay $2.99 an episode.
What About Mimi?, another Canadian cartoon, only has 10 out of 39 episodes available on two hard-to-find DVD sets, however, since August 2015 the complete series is also on YouTube.
Hammerman, the ABC Celebrity Toon starring MC Hammer, has only a handful of its 13 episodes available on YouTube, with the rest apparently lost. The current rights holders for the series refuse to release the series on DVD for the time being. Not that they'd want to.
There's no known release for the Australian series 'Deadly'. Only the opening sequence exists online. There was footage uploaded to YouTube, but it got taken down after the channel who uploaded it got terminated.
Twelve episodes of The All-New Dennis the Menace were released on DVD in Australia (the thirteenth and final was not on it). The DVD is now out of print.
The short-lived Chip and Pepper's Cartoon Madness only had one episode available on Vimeo (courtesy of senior editor Jonathan Moser) with the others apparently missing and with no VHS/DVD releases in sight. As of April 2019, the video has since been removed from Vimeo.
The French-Canadian-German series Robinson Sucroe is very unlikely to get a DVD release due to it being discovered that Cinar (now Cookie Jar Entertainment), France Animation S.A., and Ravensburger Film + TV GmbH had plagiarized it from The Adventures of Robinson Curiosity, a pilot for a proposed series that Cinar had rejected multiple times. Every episode is up on YouTube, though... but not in English, so you'd better be able to understand French if you want to watch the whole series.
Stunt Dawgs doesn't have an official DVD release, and the only copies that exist are low quality television/VHS rips. Since the rights are shared between DHX and Waterman Entertainment.
The Where's Wally?/Where's Waldo? cartoon. Five VHS tapes were released in the United Kingdom and that was it.
The Swamp Thing cartoon only had episode on VHS released in the early 90's. The series later got a complete series DVD from Sterling in 2004, but that is since out of print and Sterling became defunct in 2006.
The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil only aired 5 of out 8 episodes due to creative differences between DIC, ABC, and John K. The series never received any home video releases, and only 5 episodes can be found online.
Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling never received a DVD release, and it's VHS tapes are long out of print. In 2015, it was on the WWE Network streaming service, but it was taken off due to Hogan's racist comments. Though, some of the episodes are on YouTube.
The short-lived C.L.Y.D.E. cartoon from Cinar and MoonScoop (then known as France Animation) last aired in the US on Cookie Jar TV block from 2009-2010. The show also never received any home media releases, not even in Canada.
Papa Beaver's Storytime hasn't aired since 1999 on Playhouse Disney, it had some VHS releases during it's run on Nick Junior but they are since out of print. The series never had a DVD release either.
The Little Lulu Show hasn't aired since the mid-2000's on HBO. The series never received a DVD release, and it's VHS tapes are long out of print. This is mostly due to the show's rights being shared between DHX and NBCUniversal, and those legal issues won't be resolved anytime soon.
Mumble Bumble hasn't aired in Canada since the early 2000's. The show never received a home media release outside of a Christmas episode in a DVD of assorted Christmas episodes from other shows Cookie Jar had in its library.
The DVD release of DiC's 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures' is missing only 5 episodes, cutting the episode number down from 21 to 16. There are chances you can see those five online, though.
The Magi-Nation animated series. Only two DVDs, containing four episodes each, have been released out of the 26-episode run.
As of May 2019, the series has been removed from Netflix and no other service has picked it up.
Weird-Ohs' VHS and DVD releases are long out of print, and were exclusive to Canada. Though, the entire series is on YouTube.
The 1999 adaptation of Watership Down from Decode Entertainment had some home media releases from GoodTimes Entertainment and Reader's Digest Video, but those are now out of print. Some episodes are on YouTube.
The New Kids on the Block cartoon Not Quite Starring the group of the same name only had 4 long out of print VHS tapes released in the early 90's, and last aired in the US in the mid-90's on Disney Channel.
Dinosaucers had 4 VHS releases from the mid-90's, but they are now out of print. The rights to series are currently owned by Sony, and they have no plans to re-release the series onto DVD. Though, the first 21 episodes are on iTunes, but in the UK.
Ring Raiders hasn't aired in the US since 1989, and it only had one long out of print VHS tape. DIC nor DHX hasn't released anything for the series since its cancellation in 1989. The series ultimately failed due to the lackluster sales of the toy-line.
Wolf Rock TV was DIC's first flop in 1984, and it hasn't aired since 1989 or received a home media release. The show mostly had music videos along with animated segments, and due to obvious music rights they can't be re-released onto home video. While, the animated segments are completely lost with only the animation cels intact.
Popples never received a complete release on DVD, and said DVD is now out of print.
Extreme Dinosaurs never received a DVD release in the US, and it's 4 VHS releases are out of print. The series has been released on DVD in Germany (with English audio) and Australia.
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All of the black and white Fleischer and Famous Popeye cartoons (and the three Fleischer color specials) are on DVD, but the color Famous Studios shorts have yet to see an official home video release, and are otherwise only available in old public domain copies or bootlegs. Likewise, some of the 60's made for TV Popeye cartoons are on DVD, but not all of them.
As of May 2019, most of the color Famous Studios cartoons are on the Boomerang streaming service. There's currently no word about the 1960 TV series.
With the exception of those in the Public Domain, the pre-October 1950 Noveltoons (from Paramount's Famous Studios), which feature Casper the Friendly Ghost, Little Audrey and Herman and Katnip among others, have not seen any sort of official home video release. A major culprit for this is legal issues regarding the characters who appear in them - the characters are owned by Universal Studios, a dilemma that was largely Paramount's own doingnote . Since releasing the shorts would require Paramount to get permission from Universal in regards to the characters, despite Paramount having been involved in the creation of those characters in the first place, it will be hard for an official video release to materialize without Universal butting in. There's also the matter of having to track down the original film negatives and restoring them in a timely matter without resorting to Digital Destruction. Most of the post-October 1950 Noveltoons (owned by Universal) were partly rescued by official VHS and DVD releases, but they're all sourced from late-90's television broadcasts rather than the original theatrical prints, and some offensive scenes in a number of cartoons are still missing. Whether or not Universal will release uncut and restored versions of the cartoons remains in question.
There has been no Region 1 DVD release of Felidae in the United States, but in 2013, was legally released on YouTube for free viewing.
While all of the Disney Silly Symphonies have been re-released on DVD, very few of its competitors have had such a benefit, especially the MGM Happy Harmonies cartoons, which have yet to see any kind of DVD release (save making it as a bonus feature on some vintage movie DVDs) and the only major release of many of them is an old, long out of print laserdisc yet. Many of them still air on Boomerang early in the morning, but some shorts, such as the redesigned Boskos, may never see the light of day again.
Two Betty Boop cartoons, 'Honest Love and True' and 'Buzzy Boop At The Concert', are currently lost and it's unknown if anyone has a legitimate copy wandering in their archive.
Channel Umptee-3, a late 90's cartoon co-created by Norman Lear and aired on Kids' WB! for 13 episodes before being taken off abruptly. Because of no VHS releases, no DVD releases, no digital releases and no syndicated reruns, it is literally impossible to get a hold of the series without resorting to your old Kids' WB recordings. Even then, you would have to be extremely lucky to have all 13 episodes in hand. International markets, on the other hand, are much luckier since the show has aired occasionally on a number of channels following its original run.
Chris Colorado aired on Toonami for a while, before it was taken down and forgotten. It only ran for a single season and ended in a cliffhanger, and was released to DVD. Practically no copies remain, and the only way you can view it these days is to download it from the single torrent on the whole Internet that contains it.
Shining Time Station, the show that helped launch Thomas the Tank Engine to stardom in the United States, hasn't received a DVD release yet. It did have a few episodes released on VHS, and episodes can be found within five seconds on YouTube.
The first two seasons of Thomas the Tank Engine had two different American dubs: one narrated by Ringo Starr, the other by George Carlin. This was due to Carlin replacing Ringo as Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station, resulting in him re-narrating the episodes. However, because the Ringo Starr version came first, it was (and continues to be) more widely distributed, making a number of the George Carlin narrations nearly impossible to obtain legally.
Almost all of the works of the seminal Czech animator Karel Zeman are unavailable in America, outside of the semi-butchered American version of 'Journey to the Beginning of Time' and a terrible dub of 'Baron Prasil' on an ancient and long out-of-print VHS tape. For the curious, a number of his works are available on YouTube, e.g., [1].
'Baron Prasil' is on Viddler; it's only about half-animated, but it was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam to make The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Action Man (2000)...or at least, the cartoon made by Mainframe Entertainment. The series hasn't aired at all since its original Fox Kids run ended in 2002, and the few DVD releases it got are long out of print.
TUGS, the sister series to the Thomas the Tank Engine television series made in 1986. The only place you can watch it is on video tapes which are gradually wearing thin and illegally over the internet. It does not help that the rights for the program are tied up with at least two different companies.
Fox's Peter Pan & the Pirates. Despite it being one of the (if not the) most faithful adaptions of the original play/story, not to mention being a show Tim Curry won an award for, there is no box set yet — because it probably was just not considered financially viable. But you can preorder it from Amazon UK. Which will be selling it in January 2020. You'll just have to wait. There is also the slight matter of Disney having bought the show after buying out Fox Kids and selling the series to TMS Entertainment.
Almost anything made by Marathon. Totally Spies! also fell into this for a long time, but Flatiron/New Video released the first three seasons in 2013 and 2014, which was a much better fate than what it previously got: Ten episodes from season 1, and the season 2 two-parter 'A Spy is Born'. Most likely, it was just hard to clear up the rights to 'Here We Go' by Moonbaby. Also, The Movie and the final season were aired on Cartoon Network in May 2010. As of 2019, there is an official Totally Spies YouTube that features seasons 1-5 and the movie.
The Amazing Spiez, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have a legit release.
Hanna-Barbera's animated version of The Little Rascals wasn't even shown on the USA Cartoon Express. Presumably this is due not only to the fragmented ownership of the Our Gang propertiesnote , but also to a lawsuit in which Eugene 'Porky' Lee accused Hanna-Barbera of unauthorized use of his likeness. It has, however, been shown on many international networks, including Cartoon Network UK and Ireland, Australia's Seven Network and Singapore's Mediacorp Channel 5. There are also a few episodes on DailyMotion, and the Pac-Preview Party special, which includes 'Beauty Queen for a Day', is on YouTube.
What A Cartoon! Show, Random! Cartoons, and other animation compilation shows, such as MTV's Cartoon Sushi. This is because, after a number of years, the rights to the short revert to the creator if it wasn't picked up for a series. So even if a network did want to make a DVD, getting all the creators to agree to it would be more trouble than it's worth. You're better off waiting for the original creators to release their shorts either online or through a DVD on demand business.
Mighty Max came out in the precious early 1990s, before DVDs but after VHS. The series was made only to push the toy line, so they probably didn't consider a cult following that demanded the show's re-release.
Many of the Rankin/Bass animated shows and specials are not available on DVD, but only as grainy, fading VHS tapes made years ago. They will be lost forever when the tapes inevitably wear out and VCRs break — most notably, Wind In The Willows (the one with the theme song sung by Judy Collins). This feature-length production from The '80s has quite a few grateful comments over on YouTube where some amazing person has uploaded a marginal-quality copy in several parts, for those whose VCRs have already broken. (The good news is that, along with feature-length films like Mad Monster Party, The Daydreamer, and The Flight of Dragons, most of the company's famous Christmas specials are on DVD as stand-alone releases or in collections, as are their three Easter specials from The '70s.)
Wonderous Myths And Legends is very hard to find online, though there were a few VHS and DVD releases in the early 2000's, but they are long out of print. Though, the home media releases can be found dirt cheap.
Max Steel (the Kids' WB and Cartoon Network versions, not the Disney XD version) has almost completely disappeared, thanks to Sony no longer having the license from Mattel to produce Max Steel media. There is only one fansite with any episodes available for download, and most of them are low-quality, aim-the-videocamera-at-the-TV clips where the dialogue is nearly incomprehensible. One episode in particular, the Season 2 premiere, has vanished completely without even a transcript to mark its passing. Oddly, Sony continued to produce movies that are very loosely based on the original show in Latin America, but there were no English dubs or subs, and they stopped once Sony completely lost the license and the new series was announced.
The Season 1 DVD set had been released in the United Kingdom, both in two volumes and later a box set, but all three are no longer in print.
Series 1–3 were available to watch on Hulu.com until at least 2013, when hosting stopped for it, likely to avoid conflicts with the Disney XD series.
Crackle, Sony's digital streaming service, also streamed some episodes on YouTube in 2009, but later took them down as well.
The 1993 version of Biker Mice from Mars has Season 1 on DVD, but good luck trying to find Seasons 2 and 3 anywhere. Even worse, Season 1 is out of print.
The remake has some DVD releases in Bulgaria, Australia and other countries, but good luck finding any DVD releases in the US. Thankfully, every episode is on YouTube.
The Real Ghostbusters was hit with this for quite some time. Columbia-Tristar/Magic Window had released some episodes through the 80s and 90s, but a complete run didn't see the light of day until Time-Life released the complete series and season sets in 2009-2010 and Sony released the full run in ten 'budget' volumes in 2016.
Extreme Ghostbusters was released on some VHS tapes, but, to date, has no DVD release. It is on Hulu, though.
To this day, Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders is lost to the murky mists of some lost archive, frustratingly getting only the briefest of DVD releases that vanished almost as soon as it was announced (luckily, it's region-free).
Robert Mandell has a lot of luck with this trope. See Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers under the 'recent releases' section.
Of the six original Strawberry Shortcake animated specials from The '80s, only the first two (The World of... and ...in Big Apple City) are available on DVD, leaving only the mid-1980s VHS releases of all six as official sources.
The animated movie Animalympics. Though it has had a few VHS releases, most of those were a while ago, and its only DVD release was in Germany. While the German version had the original English language track attached, good luck hunting it down!
For that matter, this trope covers any instance in western animation that could be considered remotely racist, as a lot of cartoons from The Golden Age of Animation loved their blackface gags. Native Americans are still Acceptable Targets, apparently.
Captain Star, a quirky English cartoon parody of Star Trek, ran for only 13 episodes. Rumor has it that the first three episodes were released on VHS, but nothing more.
The Legends of Treasure Island. VHS tapes of Season 1 exist, as does a movie VHS comprising of Episodes 1-3 of Season 1 and the final two episodes of Season 2, though they will be all but impossible to find (one VHS was reported to be found in a Salvation Army shop).
Mutant League, a 40-episode series which is based on the video games 'Mutant League Football' & 'Mutant League Hockey', has never been released on DVD. The only release of it was a VHS, which was merely a 69-minute mish-mash of segments of episodes edited together. It is also impossible to find online, not even poor quality copies.
Pingu: Out of the 157 episodes of the two incarnations, only 40 of them have been released on DVD in the United States as of 2011, mostly because of licensing issues, offensive material ('Pingu at the Doctors', despite being shown on PBS Kids Sprout with little to no controversy, is one of the episodes left out from DVD, as it depicts blood), or because there isn't much popularity of Pingu in the United States as opposed to Europe. No VHS releases of the program ever materialized in the U.S., while the United Kingdom got such treatment.
And to make things more unsettling, only the remastered versions of the episodes HIT Entertainment issued in 2002 were featured on the DVD releases. Only the VHS releases used the episodes from the original broadcasts. Although the last two seasons had their original soundtracks preserved in their restorations, the soundtracks for nearly both of the first two seasons had greatly worn out to the point of having to be almost completely redone. While the original soundtracks occasionally continue to be used whenever Pingu is broadcast on the BBC in the United Kingdom, whether or not they will ever be released on home media outside VHS is anyone's guess.
Seasons 3 and 4, which were never released on DVD in the US, were put on Amazon Video in 2016 along with the first two seasons (once again in their 'remastered' form). The first season of the revived series was also put on Amazon Video simultaneously, but the final season is not available.
Phantom 2040 has yet to see a release of the complete series. A few episodes were made available on VHS in the late 90s, and a Compilation Movie of the first four episodes was released on DVD in 2004. However, torrents and streams of the full series occasionally pop up, as do bootleg DVD sets.
The Kids From Room 402. It has never received any English-language home video releases (though two DVD sets with a few episodes were released circa 2005 in Europe), and the series has not been aired on U.S. television for over a decade.
The Raccoons. Some scattered box sets here and there, but nothing close to a full release. Luckily, almost all of the series is available through YouTube and torrents, thanks in part to repeats on Teletoon Retro.
Calvin and the Colonel, a 1960s prime-time cartoon, will likely never get a legit DVD release. About one-third of the episodes (most in black and white despite being made in color) are in collectors' hands, some of which ended up in public domain cartoon compilations even though the show is still copyrighted.
The special 'Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert' was only shown twice after its original airing and never again did it air. It never even got an official VHS/DVD. Bad quality footage does exist on YouTube, but good luck trying to find the full thing!
The Cosgrove Hall stop-motion adaptation of Truckers was released on VHS by Thames Television back in the early 1990s, but ITV Plc. (the current owners of Cosgrove-Hall and successors to Thames Television) has never released it on DVD. This is presumably due to the same issues that caused the adaptions of the two other books to be shelved.
Rankin/Bass's The King Kong Show, one of the earliest works from co-producer Toei Animation, has eight episodes as well as the two-part pilot episode on two Region 1 DVD volumes which were released to capitalize on the 2005 King Kong remake at the time, but the remaining sixteen are still locked away, yet to be released. Some footage of the missing episodes exist on YouTube via old kinescope prints, but not in full. Oh, and the DVD releases are now out of print, though they do go for reasonable prices on eBay.
The Bluffers had VHS releases that went out in the late 1980s and at least one Betamax release. The only trace of it on YouTube, at least for the English dub, is a single episode lifted from said Betamax tape by someone who just managed to catch it somehow.
Star Street: The Adventures of the Star Kids saw a limited VHS release in the US in 1989 and 1991 with only 12 episodes released plus an additional tape with the music segments from the series. Some episodes that did not see the light of day in North American releases are available in the UK and Netherlands and the show's official page on the Telescreen website has a complete list of episodes. Good luck finding them on the Internet though. At one point, a couple episodes showed up on YouTube in Dutch, but they were quickly deleted. Amazon UK also had some tapes for sale, but they are all sold out.
Up until recently, most of De Patie Freleng Enterprises's theatrical and television shorts were affected by this, as only the original 1960s-1970s The Pink Panther shorts was given a dedicated release via the multi-disc The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection. Certain companion shorts (Roland and Rattfink, The Inspector, and The Ant and the Aardvark) were included alongside the Pink Panther collection, while other companion shorts (The Texas/Tijuana Toads, Hoot Kloot, Misterjaw, etc.) weren't as lucky. Thankfully however, they are now all getting individual DVD/Blu-Ray releases through Kino Lorber.
Of the 1993-1996 Pink Panther series, only Series 1 (1993-1994) exists on DVD, and even then, episodes like '7 Manly Men' (which has slight Ho Yay), 'Voodoo Man' and 'Hamm-N-Eggz' missing off the DVD; basically, no full 1993–96 series exists on DVD. You can get them all, but as torrents, and even then, the quality is variable.
The Legend of Calamity Jane, a 13-episode series, has no official VHS or DVD release, but somebody uploaded most of the episodes into YouTube, except episodes 10 and 11.
The MLP shorts from My Little Pony and Friends have been released and are at least available via Netflix; however, the same can't be said for the Potato Head Kids, Glo Friends and Moon Dreamers shorts that accompanied them on the show's original run.
Many of the Time Warp Trio episodes are unavailable on DVD, and those that are go for an exorbitant price. Most of the episodes have been uploaded on YouTube taken from Discovery Education prints, so that's that.
The Australian series Arthur! and the Square Knights of the Round Table has only had one DVD release, not in Australia but the United Kingdom, and that contains only eight episodes (with the API logo - but not its music - replaced by 'A Five Arrows Film Production.').
Late in its life, mall owners Mills Corporation created a kids' club called Muggsy's Meadow, which provided activities for kids and parents to do while at the mall. They also commissioned Flying Rhino Junior High creator Ray Nelson and his studio to create a Too Smart for Strangers animated short called Get Muggsy!, which included the club's four mascots. Since the club itself was only around for three years, and closed when Simon Property Group bought out Mills, the DVD is extremely hard to find. Nevertheless, it is on YouTube.
Odd Job Jack, a Turn of the Millennium Canadian animated sitcom, has an entire missing season. While the second season had a DVD release (available wherever not-so-fine DVDs are liquidated) and seasons 3 and 4 are viewable on Hulu (ironically, not viewable in Canada), Season 1 does not seem to exist in viewable format outside a single Google Video copy of Season 1 ep 13.
The Beatles' eponymous animated series is currently owned by Apple Corps, the group's corporate entity, having acquired them from King Features (Hearst Corporation entity). There was talk as early as 2004 of putting the cartoons out on DVD but no effort had been made since. Apple Records and Universal Music now owns the Beatles' movies (except for A Hard Day's Night) and they have re-released Yellow Submarine on DVD, so this may still happen somewhere down the line. In the meantine, bootleg DVD's recorded off local TV stations in the 1980s turn up online and at comic book conventions.
Episodes were available on YouTube until October 2015 when Universal Music Group, which had recently bought the band's recorded output from EMI, filed DMCA claims to YouTube.
While on the subject of the group, a series that took inspiration from them called 'The Beagles' is remarkably obscure despite how popular it was, and only half of 'The Man on the Moon', half of 'Foreign Legion Flops', and the entirety of 'I Feel Like Humpty Dumpty' being the only footage existing.
Many Peanuts specials from The '80s and The '90s are still missing on DVD since Warner Bros. stopped bringing out complete collections by decade. Some made it through the Happiness is...Peanuts Collection, the Peanuts Emmy-Honored Collection, and/or a bundle with another cartoon, but the ones below currently remain MIA.
It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown (1983 double-length anthology special)
Snoopy!!! The Musical (1988 double-length special)
It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown (1988 double-length, Roger Rabbit Effect special focusing on Spike the dog)
You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown (1994; licensing issues with the NFL affect this one. It got one VHS release, and those copies were only sold as promotional items in Shell gas stations)
It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown (1997; ironically, it was a Direct-to-Video release)
It's The Pied Piper, Charlie Brown (2000), the final Peanuts special made under the supervision of Charles M. Schultz, is now out of print, with copies of the DVD, both used and new, selling for very high prices on shopping sites.
None of the specials celebrating the anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas and/or the first Peanuts comic have received a DVD release, and only one, 1990's You Don't Look 40, Charlie Brown, has even reached VHS. It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown! (2015) became the first Peanuts special to win an Emmy in 25 years, but the only thing available from it is the Cake Wars episode where contestants made cakes for it.
The direct-to-video series Jingaroo. None of the full 9 episodes (three stories on each of the three tapes) exist except on VHS, and the only footage still around is a musical number, a CD, the opening and closing credits, and a preview.
Several Garfield and Friends quickies that played during the hour-long version of the show are missing from both the international prints of the show, which were used for the DVDs and some episodes of the Boomerang release. This list details which ones are missing.
The Swiss-German series 'Bill Body' only had one German VHS release, which is out of print. The only known footage existing nowadays are two Portuguese dubbed episodes and four clips of the same dub from an anthology.
The Australian series 'J-Squad' hasn't been heard of since its now out of print 'best of' release and is now very hard to find.
Fates of some of the Hanna-Barbera (and by proxy the Ruby-Spears ones) shows not owned by Warner Bros. aren't so far grand.
Toho licensed The Godzilla Power Hour first season to Classic Media. But took forever to get them the last episodes. And then the license ended. So all three volumes are now out of print and there are a lot fewer copies of volume 3 in circulation than volumes 1 & 2. And the second season? Toho doesn't seem to have done anything with it since getting it back from WB.
Add the remaining Ruby Spears Q*Bert segments to that list as well. Sony put out a dvd but skipped two segments, over what again appears to be music rights. Two segments we may never see legally circulated.
Foofur has apparently been in the hands of the creator domestically. Hence why it's been missing from TV reruns since the 1980s in the States.
The original The Harlem Globetrotters cartoon has been retained by CBS with little interest shown in putting out along with the odd special where they met Snow White.
There are several specials from the ABC special years sitting over at Disney. Maybe Disney would trade them to WB in exchange for the Fantastic Four and Thing cartoons Hanna-Barbera made that WB still own?
Hanna-Barbera's Star Fairies and Ruby Spears' Sectaurs are pilots that are in limbo.
Good luck hunting down video releases of the series Capitol Critters anywhere. Every episode, though in non-restored format, can be found online however. The series holds a unique distinction of being a Hanna Barbera show to air on Cartoon Network but not be owned by Time Warner, it is legally with Fox/Disney.
It's Itsy Bitsy Time, a preschool-aimed anthology Fox Family/Treehouse TV series that also had some imported series on there, barely seems to exist anywhere, legally (considering the rights issues) or illegally.
My Life Me, which only had a very short run back in Canada (though France and Germany had a longer run of the show).
Nothing has been said about the last 13 episodes of the Spanish series The Fruitties, which is weird, since the other 78 episodes got home media releases at the time (complete with optional English audio tracks in the case of the DVD releases, no less). Even worse is that you shouldn't expect to find the released episodes that easily anyway, as the tapes and DVDs are nearly out of print. A good chunk of the show's English dub used to be available on YouTube courtesy of a user named Simion Craciun, but D'Ocon Films (the company that made the show) blocked all but six of these episodes on copyright grounds.
The Belgian series Gibus le Magicien lasted 26 six minute episodes in 1965, and of them, only two seem to be available through YouTube. The worst part is that it never had a home media release, not even unofficial releases!
CJ the DJ is virtually unknown and unavailable outside of its native Australia, except for a couple of clips, and one episode in English on YouTube and a couple more episodes in Portuguese, but that's about it.
Victor & Hugo: Bunglers in Crime, despite being a Cosgrove-Hall show (usually pretty good with show releases), had only one VHS tape release during its TV run. One of the episodes ('Panda-Monium') was subsequently re-released on DVD (ironically called 'Most Wanted') but that's it. Thankfully, there are a lot of episodes on YouTube, some taken from Australian re-broadcasts. You can also see the show via an app called KidsCast if you have an iOS or Android device.
A lot of HBO Family shows are MIA. While almost all of their programs have been airing in reruns for years, others...haven't.
Like Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child? Well, you better have HBO Family because it's impossible to find online and only a select few stories made it to VHS and DVD. However, the entire series can be found on On Demand (both Fios and Comcast). This also goes for Crashbox.
A Little Curious is still airing on HBO and can also be found on On Demand (both Fios and Comcast), but is EXTREMELY hard to find online. It also has yet to be released on DVD, let alone digitally.
The HBO Family TV series Animated Tales of the World hasn't been released on DVD; only a few episodes have been shown on YouTube.
Yet another HBO example is Braingames. Although most episodes are readily available on YouTube and the Internet Archive, episode 6 cannot be found, and not helping matters is the show sharing an identical name to a later National Geographic Channel show. While it did see some video releases from what was then Thorn-EMI/HBO Video, said tapes are extremely hard to find and are usually snatched up the time they appear for expensive prices on eBay and Amazon.
The Canadian series Katie and Orbie once had four of its six seasons (not in order) available on DVD from an online retailer that sold the discs on demand, but that online retailer no longer exists. The other two seasons were unavailable for unknown reasons and aside from a few episodes (including some in Spanish, as the series was seen in the Latin American version of CBeebies from 2008-2010) and several videos of the series' theme song, the series was practically impossible to find. In fact, if it weren't for the reruns on the Latin American CBeebies, barely any information about the series would be available (the Wikipedia article was a stub with little data before then). The TV series was adapted from a children book series published in the early 1990s, which is also very obscure (not even one image from the books can be found online). On top of that, reruns in Canada from 2007 to 2012 only included the last two seasons, and currently it is not aired anywhere on the world.
However, in July 2015, the (almost) complete series was uploaded to YouTube (except for three episodes that were mistakenly uploaded twice and mislabeled).
The 1959 series 'Bucky and Pepito', known as one of the worst cartoons of all time, was not well preserved, leaving only a handful of episodes existing on home media and online. The rest may as well be lost until someone finds them and uploads them to YouTube.
Kid Paddle has been released on YouTube, but was dubbed in French, and so finding English dubs are impossible.
Pig City has onlythreeepisodes dubbed in English; all other episodes are dubbed in Russian.
The poorly received Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm hasn't been seen on television for more than a decade, and only a handful of episodes made it to VHS domestically. The only DVD releases came in both the United Kingdom and Australia, and the UK releases are missing one episode. You can ask any U.S. fan about the series and he/she may tell you that the series doesn't deserve a DVD release(or that it actually does).
The American Darkstalkers cartoon, not as widely remembered as the Street Fighter cartoon but considered equally So Bad, It's Good by those who do remember it, was released on DVD by ADV Films and subsequently went into limbo when the company went under. While it currently has yet to be license-rescued, Discotek Media rescuing the Street Fighter cartoon and the Night Warriors: Darkstalker's Revenge OVA has aroused hope that they'll eventually give this show the same treatment.
Only the first season of Dan Vs. has ever been released on DVD. The second and third seasons allegedly won't be released due to its low sales. As of 2019, the entire series can be found on iTunes and on Tubi TV, but there's still no sign of an official release.
Budgie the Little Helicopter. The complete series was released on VHS in America, but was never on DVD, except for two releases in the UK.
Despite its cult following, the British series 'Empire Square' only has one of the twelve episodes on YouTube as of now, with no plans to officially release it.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: While the original 1964 stop-motion film has been released and re-released several times over the years, the 1998 Good Times Entertainment animated film has only ever had a single VHS release, shortly after its theatrical premiere, much to the dismay of those who prefer it over the original.
The United States English dub of The Smurfs and the Magic Flute from 1983 has never gotten an official release on DVD as of now. (The Shout Factory DVD release uses the United Kingdom version instead, which has also been released on DVD by Fabulous Films in the UK.) This version was released on VHS by Vestron Video during its original release and then again by Goodtimes Entertainment during the 1990s. The film was originally planned to be released on DVD by Morningstar Entertainment in 2008, but ended up getting cancelled, though Televista ended up a limited unofficial DVD release during the same year. This edition is currently out of print.
There have also been a few different versions of the U.S. dub with Johan sometimes being called 'John' and two different voice actors for Papa Smurf. A TV version of this film has also moved the Smurfs' party scene to the beginning of the film with narration added.
The first animated series starring The Smurfs was in 1961 called 'Les Schtroumpfs' which was produced by TVA Dupuis and aired on RTB (Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française) in Belgium. The series never gained an official VHS or DVD release anywhere else. In 1965, the animated series became an animated film called 'Les Aventures des Schtroumpfs' (The Adventures of The Smurfs), where a few episodes from the series were selected and became part of the film. Currently, the only place people can see the original animated episodes is at a Smurfs display at The Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels, Belgium.
The same producer made another project starring The Smurfs called 'La Schtroumpfette', which was a 1969 TV special which was also Smurfette's first animated appearance. Unlike the 1961 animated series, there are no existing screenshots or footage of the TV special.
The 1977 animated Christmas SpecialWhy The Bears Dance On Christmas Eve only aired once and was never seen again on any channel because of Author Existence Failure: the head of the company that made it (Tele-Tactics) suddenly died and the company went bust shortly afterwards. Unlike Christmas Dreams, it did make its way to YouTube because someone who remembered it got a copy from someone who worked on it.
The Mexican series 'Cantinflas y Sus Amigos'('Amigo and Friends' in the English dub) only has one DVD release with only some segments on it with others completely missing. On top of that, the English version is nowhere to be found online or on home media!
Phantom Investigators aired for a month in June 2002 on Kids' WB, and was cancelled after thirteen episodes (the show was doing fine in the ratings; what happened was Kids WB was number one with the 6-11 male demographic, the show was doing better with female audiences, and WB was afraid of losing their number-one spot). It was never released on VHS and DVD, was never put into reruns in the United States, and due to the obscurity of the series, will most likely never get a home media release for the time being. A few episodes were available on YouTube, until Sony pulled them for copyright. Two of its episodes are available on (W)Holesome Products, Inc.'s (the show's studio) Vimeo account, and eventually in October 2016 the entire series was made available on various sites, (with a subsequent upload from another YouTube channel, though who knows how long it'll be before Sony copyright strikes them), but an official home media release remains unlikely.
Generation O!, another Sony production for Kids WB which only lasted one season, had a VHS release of two episodes and nothing else. All 13 episodes can be found on YouTube, however.
The Lionhearts never received any home video releases, has not aired since its only season ended in 1999, and the only place where it could be seen again was Hulu, but was removed in 2014.
Yet another Australian cartoon entitled Jellabies, involving a group of jelly people doing various tasks. Of the 95 episodes, none have resurfaced in English, as the YouTube uploads were removed and there's no sign of a DVD. A few episodes of the British dub (renamed Jellikins; this dub also changed the characters to be bears instead of humans) and Dutch dub exist, however.
Only the first 13 episodes of the Claymation series 'Astro Farm' exist today, with the others apparently in limbo.
The Mask had a small number of VHS releases in the 90s, and the pilot episode saw a very limited DVD release when Son of the Mask was released. Beyond that, it seems unlikely this will ever get a proper DVD set due to Son effectively killing the franchise.
Due to licensing disputes between Dark Horse Comics and Sony, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot has no plans to see any official release on DVD or streaming any time soon. That hasn't stopped people from posting episodes on YouTube, but Sony is quick to take them down.
Season 1 of the cult BBC dark comedy series Monkey Dust has a DVD release, but Seasons 2 and 3 will possibly never see the light of day. The issue is the music; as a BBC show, Monkey Dust was able to take advantage of the BBC's blanket music license, with turn of the millenium pop music blaring from tinny radios being an integral part of its dystopian urban hellscape. The show creator put an extraordinary amount of effort into replacing these songs with soundalikes in season 1, but he has since died, and no one seems to think the other two seasons are worth it.
Izzy's Quest For Olympic Gold, a TNT animated special that aired in 1995 as part of the hype surrounding the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. It only aired a few times that year, has no signs of a home release, and no one has come forward with a recording as of this writing. Considering Izzy's polarizing status even among fans of the Games, this may or may not be a good thing.
Jack and the Beanstalk, a special featuring character Cap'n O.G. Readmore that aired on ABC in 1985, saw a number of VHS releases in the 90s and a DVD release in Korea. No footage exists online, and the tapes keep circulating from those VHS releases.
There's never been a complete compilation tape/DVD or box set containing all the episodes of The Alvin Show. There exists only the Sing Along tapes (which just have some of the musical segments), a DVD called 'The Very First Alvin Show' (which only contains one of the first episodes, along with the specials A Chipmunk Reunion and Rockin' Through the Decades), a self-titled Blu-ray/DVD combo pack (containing the first three episodes, plus clips of the Chipmunks performing 'Witch Doctor' and 'The Chipmunk Song'), and segments included as bonus features for newer cartoons' DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. Apparently, the reason for this is because of rights issues—the rights to the Chipmunks franchise is split up between the children of Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. Ross Bagdasarian Jr. owns the newer chipmunks outright, but not the rights to the original Alvin Show. On top of that, restoring the entire show would be very expensive and there would be so little money in return to split between all the siblings, that they feel it isn't even worth the effort.
Sammy, an extremely short-lived animated sitcom that starred David Spade as both a young adult actor as well as his loser father trying to reenter his life and cash in on his success ran from the 8th to the 15th of August 2000. Only the first 2 of the 13 planned episodes had ever aired. The obscurity of the cartoon practically qualifies it as lost media, as no episodes have ever surfaced on YouTube, with only a Wikipedia article and a few production photos of the series ever surfacing online. Ironically, the series premiered around the same time the Baby Blues animated series did, which had also suffered a short run as well as a lack of any home media release.
Only the first season of the short-lived but popular G4TV series Code Monkeys has received a DVD release, in Region 1 only no less. The whole series used to be available to stream on G4's website, but ever since the service was ceased the only place to check out the second season is unofficial YouTube reuplouds.
The Canadian children's series 'Tipi Tales' is without home media and was last seen on television in 2008 when syndicated reruns ended. With no plans to release it, good luck finding it.
The poorly received series Family Dog only had a couple of VHS releases and a complete series LaserDisc. With those out of print and with no plans to give it a DVD release, good luck finding it.
Stressed Eric has yet to get a U.S. release, while the UK has the complete series on DVD since May 2011.
As of now, the cartoon Itsy Bitsy Spider is virtually unknown by the public except for those who grew up in the 90's, and home media releases are not certain.
Interested in watching any of the Golden Age Mighty Mouse or Heckle and Jeckle shorts? There's one apiece floating around in the public domain. Rights-holder CBS seems to have little to no interest in any of their Terrytoons properties.
The Adventures Of Hyperman only has two segments of the full thirteen existing today (not helping is the fact that those halves are in Spanish), with every other one (and the English version of the existing segments) remaining lost.
British adult claymation series Crapston Villas had every episode released on VHS, but not DVD, at least in the UK. The US got it on DVD, but only as a 'best of' set released by Troma Entertainment.
'Poor sales' killed all plans to release the remainder of the ALF animated series on DVD after the first nine episodes. The entire series was available through Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime but was pulled from both sites by 2012.F
Peppermint Rose's only special was released on VHS in limited quantities, and its general obscurity makes it hard to find.
The pilot episode for the cancelled GoGo's Crazy Bones TV series was only ever uploaded to YouTube before it got removed from the site. This was due to backlash concerning how the show's productions companies made new characters for the show when the toy series it's based off of has a ton of characters they could've used instead, and also due to the show itself being terrible. The one remnant of the pilot available online is its theme song, which was uploaded to Vimeo.
Out There, a coming of age Dramedy about growing up in high-school from a former animator of South Park, Ryan Quincy note . had all of its episodes delisted about a year after it was cancelled. No mention of the show is even listed on IFC's website either, despite airing as recent as 2013.
The Frog Show. No VHS or DVD releases of any kind? Check. Not every episode has been uploaded to YouTube? Check. Only three of the episodes uploaded are in English (and even then, they're Norwegian prints with Norwegian subtitles on them)? Check. Yeah, it's pretty hard to find this show, alright.
When FamilyNet got the rights to air JOT, they shortened the episodes to be two minutes long instead of the original four minutes long. This wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that only two episodes on YouTube are the original four-minute-long versions. Good luck trying to find the original four-minute-long versions of the other episodes.
Bimble's Bucket got only a single VHS of a handful of episodes. Monster Entertainment bought the rights to the show, though nothing has even been announced for a release.
The Bing Crosby special Goldilocks, which is loosely based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, hasn't been aired on television since the 80's and had one VHS release in 1986, it's very difficult to find online with only one segment a song called 'The Human Race' uploaded on YouTube.
A modern example: Ready Jet Go!. Out of the 40 episodes in season 1, only 39 are available on Amazon Video, Google Play, and iTunesnote , as well as the Made-for-TV MovieBack to Bortron 7, the first 5 aired season 2 episodesnote , the last two episodes of the July 2018 premieresnote , and all of the June 2018 premieres except 'Asteroid Belt Space Race / Sydney 2' The second Halloween Episode is also available. The remaining episodesnote are nowhere to be found. 'Diggin' Earth' and 'Mindy's Mystery' from season 1 are only available on DVD, and it doesn't help that the episodes are nowhere to be found on YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc due to copyright. However, the episodes still air regularly on PBS.
The 1996 direct-to-video animated adaptation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer called Rudolph's Lesson for Life is now out of print. The videos were exclusively sold at Montgomery Ward department stores during the Christmas season, from 1996 to the company's closure. Montgomery Ward is also where Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer originated from, marking the first and last time Montgomery Ward was able to do an animated adaptation of the beloved Christmas tale.
Spaced Out. This show had three DVD releases in Italy, each comprising three episodes (and together comprising the first nine episodes) and with optional English and French audio tracks. An error was made with one of the DVDs, however; the third episode has the exact same English and French audio tracks as episode 4, so episode 3's English and French dubs are still in limbo. The rest of the series is completely MIA.
Before the 2000 Animated Adaptation, Clifford the Big Red Dog had a series of six half-hour videos from the late '80s. These have not been re-released in any form and remain out of print (This may be due to rights issues, as it was a co-production between Nelvana and Scholastic). The same goes with 'Clifford's Sing Along Adventure', an animation/live-action intermixed special from the early '90s, although the fan base doesn't seem to mind.
The 2000 French animated series Argai: The Prophecy. Only the first 6 episodes (out of 26) were released on DVD, although a few more episodes have been uploaded on YouTube.
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue hasn't been rebroadcast much since its initial simulcast and has only been released on home video as a free VHS rental for families. This is due to the agreement between the various copyright holders specifying limited airings (and not, as falsely rumored, because Jim Davis never gave permission to use Garfield in the special and threatened litigation if it ever aired again). The special is readily available online via fan uploads, though.
The Wacky Adventures Of Ronald Mc Donald has never been released on any format outside of VHS, and Klasky-Csupo's website only had limited quantities of the tapes. The sixth and final episode, 'The Legend of McDonaldland Loch', is so hard to find as a physical copy that it was considered lost media until 2015, when someone uploaded the whole thing to YouTube.
If you liked the show Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa and wanted to see it again, good luck. It got a couple of VHS releases that are long since out of print. The series did air reruns on Toon Disney (sister network to ABC, who originally produced the series with King World) for several years, but hasn't rerun again since.
RoboCop: The Animated Series. Aside from three VHS volumes (all out of print and hard to find), the show has never been re-released in Region 1. You can get it on DVD, but only in the UK. It doesn't help that the rights to the show are split between Disney (owner of Marvel Productions' library) and MGM (owner of the RoboCop IP).
Its followup, RoboCop: Alpha Commando, hasn't fared much better on home video. It only got one VHS release, consisting of the three-part pilot episode edited together into a feature-length movie, and said VHS release was also released only in the UK. The show has re-aired in Region 1 on KidsClick, but only for a couple months. It also was streamed on Hulu for some time before being dropped.
The Spaghetti Family, an Italian cartoon created by Bruno Bozzetto, is difficult to find entirely in its native Italian dub in addition to the English dub. Both dubs are found in four hard-to-find DVD volumes released by Mondo Home Entertainment, although there is at least one episode officially on YouTube from The Animation Band. Other dubs in languages such as Persian, Greek and Russian are much easier to view on (non-legit) streaming, as well as finding DVDs in Russian.
There hasn't been a single DVD of the UK or U.S. versions of The Magic Roundabout. The last release was a 'best of' on VHS in 1993. This might have to do with the fact that the English narration is technically a Gag Dub of the more moralistic French original. The 1988 revival from AB Productions only aired in France, and didn't receive any home media releases.
The American dub last aired on Pinwheel in the late 80's and the segments of this dub that are available online, don't have any U.K. or French variants.
For the U.K. dubs, the Planer version is more widely available than the Thompson version that aired on BBC.
The 2007 version has also never seen a Complete DVD Release. Reruns of that version aired on Cinemoi, but they no longer air the series. Luckily, there's a official YouTube channel run by Mediatoon (who currently owns the rights) that has episodes from the show.
Supernews, along with the rest of the defunct Current TV network's library. That series along with the library is currently owned by Al Jazeera, who has zero interest in revisiting Current TV's archives.
King of the Hill had its first six seasons released by Fox, but stopped when Fox realized that the sales weren't up to Simpsons or Family Guy levels. In 2014, Olive Films, under license from Fox, released the rest of the series from then on. In late 2018, the entire series was released on Hulu.
The infamous Colombian animated film Bolívar, el Héroe was lost for a long time, to the point that it was thought that the existence of the film was a hoax to ridicule Colombia. However, YouTube user A. Ariza uploaded the film in December 2015.
Concerning Universal Animation series:
The Earthworm Jim two-season cartoon series had originally seen only a partial VHS release of eight (out of 13) season 1 episodes, presented in random order. Word of God was that it will never would be released on DVD, due to the creator considering it an Old Shame they were coerced into creating to support the games. It finally got a U.S. release in its entirety.
And their first production, Back to the Future, was released on DVD on October 20, 2015- one day behind the date Marty traveled to in the second film.
Several of the later 1960s Looney Tunes shorts have yet to see the light of day; 'Injun Trouble' (the 1969 Cool Cat cartoon, not the 1938 Porky Pig cartoon, also the final Warner Bros. cartoon during the golden era) is an infamous example. However, as of 2008, some of these have seen release on DVD (including 'Norman Normal' and 'The Door', two of the rarest WB cartoons).
The Animals of Farthing Wood was once only available in poor-quality online bootlegs, but as of February 2012, the entire series has been released on DVD in Germany, with both German and English audio available on the discs. The UK had to wait until 2016 when the show finally came on DVD with the UK DVD release distributed by Network Distributing.
Daria was not commercially available from its finale in 2002 until the summer of 2010. Fans wanting the show either had to hunt down the Real Player versions of the series (which were taken from the original airings of the episodes/movies on MTV) or more mainstream AVI/MPEG video captures that were (unfortunately) taken from the show's run on Noggin, who butchered the episodes mercilessly, both for content and to make room for commercials. Now the show is finally on DVD and on TV (LOGO has the rights to it), though with the trade-off of having all of the music yanked and replaced with generic replacement tunes or no music at all. Even more annoying: While all 65 episodes of the series itself are uncut (new masters were made à la 'The State' with the replacement music), 'Is It College Yet?' is the same old butchered version that aired on MTV after its initial commercial-free airing, which was used for the original DVD release of said film.
With the release of its 4th and final season on DVD in September 2016, Courage the Cowardly Dog can now join the ranks of the few Cartoon Network shows to have their entire series available on DVD. Considering Johnny Bravo and Dexter's Laboratory have yet to have anything past their 1st seasons released on DVD through Warner Home Video's 'Cartoon Network Hall of Fame' DVD collection, only time will tell if they will follow in Courage's footsteps. It should also be noted that these shows have had their complete series, sans Courage's debut on the What A Cartoon Show, Dexter's movie Ego Trip, and a banned Dial M For Monkey short, added to the iTunes store.
In addition, the Warner Archive Collection has resulted in a number of older Hanna-Barbera/Ruby-Spears cartoons finally being distributed. These include SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron, The Pirates of Dark Water, Jabberjaw, Thundarr the Barbarian, Inch High, Private Eye, Centurions, Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos, the animated series of Pac-Man and Dragon's Lair and all the Superstars 10 movies that weren't Scooby-Doo themed (since those were already openly released).
Even more have followed, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, The Halloween Tree, The Hair Bear Bunch, The Roman Holidays, Shirt Tales and still more.
Feel Free to mention more that followed in Galtar and the Golden Lance, The Super Globetrotters, Clue Club, The Atom Ant Show, Secret Squirrel, The Last Of The Curlews and still more.
And still more with Dink, the Little Dinosaur, The Biskitts, and Monchhichis.
Season 1 of 2 Stupid Dogs finally came out in August 2018.
The complete series of Paw Paw Bears finally came out in April 2019.
Twice Upon a Time was a George Lucas-backed animated production in The '80s made by the risk-taking Alan Ladd Studios (Body Heat, Blade Runner, etc.). It popularized improvisation and adult themes in comedy voice-acting, launched the career of Henry Selick (who would go on to make The Nightmare Before Christmas), and fostered or influenced a number of Pixar people. It has all the traits of a classic of monumental cultural impact (and in an indirect way, it has), yet got a minor VHS and laserdisc release in the early 1990s and then aired twice on Cartoon Network in 1999. Due to disputes between its writers, it seemed unlikely it would ever get a public showing again (and the naughtier Bill Couterie cut only had a one-time showing on HBO before the aforementioned disputes occurred)...until February 2015, when Turner Classic Movies aired it as part of its TCM Underground block. The Warner Archive, after some delays, finally gave it a DVD release in September of that year.
While still no signs of the DVD, Megas XLR has had official releases for iTunes and Xbox Live Arcade.
Xiaolin Showdown, who had only released its first season on DVD, had both seasons two and three released on the format as of April 19, 2017.
Seasons 1-3 of X-Men: Evolution have had DVD releases, but the fourth hasn't. iTunes has somewhat rectified this, as well as the Marvel YouTube channel having EVERY episode available to watch.
Bump in the Night, which got yanked when Disney took over ABC, got a DVD collection in July 2010.
Sonic Sat AM was caught in this state for over a decade until, finally, a worthy DVD set was released. Same goes for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Underground—the latter most likely due to its usage in YouTube Poop. In the case of Adventures, the show had individual DVD compilations prior to the DVD sets, and even those compilations didn't include 'Mass Transit Trouble,' which had been banned after the September 11th attacks for its terrorism-related story line. Thus, prior to the release of the second box set, one had to go online just to catch it, and even worse, most copies that showed up online were the pre-9/11 Toon Disney broadcasts, which were Bowdlerized for questionable content.
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was caught in this trap, but then the entire series came out on DVD in 2010, with the picture digitally remastered from the original film negatives and bonus features. Quite a big treatment for a show that hadn't aired in years.
The 1990s X-Men cartoon subverted this: after years of having to wait for a DVD release, and feeling all hope was lost, the first 32 episodes were released on DVD (in two 16-episode sets) for the first time in 2009 (presumably to cash in on X-Men Origins: Wolverine), with three more sets later released completing the series.
Every episode is freely available to stream on Marvel.com as well.
Interestingly, Disney seems a little more willing to sell comprehensive DVDs of Marvel cartoons than for cartoons they made themselves. The 1967 Animated Adaptation of Spider-Man had a complete series DVD in 2004 (which went out of print a few years later) to cash in on Spider-Man 2, and The Marvel Action Hour also has DVD boxsets. (The Fantastic Four segments became available shortly after the release of the 2005 movie, while Iron Man came around the same time as Iron Man 2.)
Warner apparently releases seasons of Superfriends at random, and it seemed unlikely that the 'lost' 1980s shorts and the fan UN-favorite Wendy & Marvin season would ever come to DVD. That is, until one set of the 'lost' shorts made its way to DVD in August 2009, and the Wendy and Marvin episodes the following year.
It took near 22 years, three distribution companies, and a very dogged fanbase to get Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers on DVD in the United States. Cue massiveSquee! when Koch finally released a two-part set.
The 1992 telefilm Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation was placed into this for almost a decade after Warner Bros.' 75th anniversary reprint of the 1996 re-release in 1998 went out of print several years later. By that time, the only way to watch that film was through either airings on Nicktoons Network (until 2005 to be exact), finding a used copy, or possibly bootlegs. These practices continued until a DVD release was announced in May 2012 and was officially taken off this in August of that year.
In North America, the only place you can view Kappa Mikey's two full seasons, besides on its practically non-existent presence on TV, is on iTunes. For some reason, Australia is the only country that legally distributes a full season DVD.
Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures, which ran for a total of 52 episodes in two seasons during 1996-1997, had a few single-episode VHS tapes and Laserdisc releases during its run, but was all but forgotten after that, especially after the Time Warner merger. Most of the episodes can be found online, though, thanks to the shows' faithful fanbase. Finally in 2009, Warner released a DVD set of the first 13 episodes of season 1. The rest of Season 1 followed a few years later. Season 2 came in 2015.
Kim Possible had a couple of episode DVDs, but for years, Disney didn't seem to see the value in season box sets. DVD sets of the first two seasons finally became available in October 2010, but only through the Disney Movie Club. Now, fortunately, they have put up the entire series for streaming.
Shout! Factory has started to release Madeline on DVD, in random compilations. All the episodes (though none of the specials or the direct-to-video movie) can be found on Hulu, which doesn't help much to those living outside the United States or Germany... Fortunately, they were eventually released on DVD.
Code Lyoko only got Season 1 and five episodes of Season 2 to DVD before Funimation quietly dropped the title. It was thought that the rest of the series would never see an official release unless one lived in its home country of France until Taffy Entertainment began distributing the seasons on iTunes in November 2010, with XANA Awakens available free, and the first six episodes available free on their YouTube account. As of January 2011, all four seasons have been released.
Tales of the Gold Monkey was released in mid-2010.
Rover Dangerfield was released December 2010.
The Phantom Tollbooth was set for a 2008 DVD release, but got delayed. It is now available to order off the Warner Bros. website.
Most of the Nicktoons, again. For the longest time, the only Nickelodeon originals with full DVD sets were SpongeBob SquarePantsnote , The Ren & Stimpy Shownote , Invader Zimnote , and Avatar: The Last Airbendernote . In 2010, the floodgates finally opened, thanks to a licensing deal the company made with Shout! Factory. Releases from Shout! Factory include Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Hey Arnold!, Rocko's Modern Life, The Angry Beavers, CatDog, The Wild Thornberrys and Danny Phantom. On the other hand, Doug and ChalkZonenote have been released exclusively by CreateSpace.
In 2018, Paramount replaced the Arnold and Rocko sets with their own, which are more or less identical to the Shout! releases with a few differences and additional features. (Paramount's Hey Arnold! set includes the theatrical movie and The Jungle Movie, both of which they had separately released.)
Likewise, the live-action shows. Kenan & Kel became available on iTunes in 2011, and Hey Dude! got DVD sets starting in 2011.
Yakkity Yak had no home media release and, for a long time, was super hard to find aside from the occasional Nicktoons reruns, VHS recordings, and uploads on YouTube. However, every episode can be found in good quality on various sites.
Gargoyles so far only has season 1 and half of season 2 released on DVD, but the complete series is now available for streaming on Disney's website - the only Disney Afternoon series to get this so far. In 2013, the second half of season 2 was released as a Disney Movie Club exclusive.
Quack Pack has had a few individual episodes released on DVD, but never the entire series.
The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police hardly saw daylight after its initial 13-episode run. It wasn't until the popularity of Telltale Games' Sam and Max games that it was able to get a release through Shout! and many new fans were able to experience the show for the first time.
Several Marvel Comicscartoons that never received comprehensive DVD releases will become available to stream on Netflix, such as Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Man: The Animated Series, and The Marvel Super Heroes.
And of course, as mentioned before, Marvel themselves do have a online video section on their site where one can catch most episodes of the older Marvel cartoon and TV series (including the Japanese Spider-Man), with no region-blocking whatsoever in place note . Although as of 2013, sadly, this is not the case.
While we're on the subject of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, as of August 2014, all five seasons have finally been released on iTunes.
Heavy Metal was theatrically released in 1981, but only got to VHS after 15 years - with a DVD one year later - due to copyright issues (the film has much, much licensed music). The Agony Boothrecap even says the movie got much of its Cult Classic status for its rarity than for actual quality.
Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? had some Compilation Movies released by Lion's Gate and the first season released by Shout! Factory, then five years passed without any other releases. Thanks to Mill Creek Entertainment, a DVD of the complete series came in February 2012.
Jem — Rhino Video released seasons 1-2 and part of 3 on DVD. The rest? Left in limbo. To make matters worse, the first two sets of DVDs went out of print and cost a pretty penny to buy a secondhand copy. Shout! Factory has decided to release a complete series DVD boxset, including the long-unavailable season 3 episodes—mostly due to the release of the live-action movie.
One of the most egregious examples of this trope was The '80s incarnation of Alvin and the Chipmunks, considering that musical numbers were their entire shtick. But, with the success of the movies, several compilations of the show and associated specials have been released.
ReBoot. ADV Films never released Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD, only four episodes from Season 1 ever came out on VHS. Seasons 3 and 4 came out on DVD, but went out of print. Fortunately, Shout! Factory eventually released DVDs of the complete series. Season 3 also airs on Teletoon Retro...IN CANADA! (Well, it was made in Canada...)
The 1980 animated feature adaptation of Gnomes languished in copyright limbo after the production company wound up. However, CCV of Norway announced that a DVD release would come in December 2011.
In late January 2012, Warner Archive released the first season of Pac-Man as a manufacture-on-demand (MOD for short) DVD title. The second season was released in September in a package that includes the Pac-ManChristmas Special.
The Jetsons was among the first Hanna-Barbera series to receive a DVD boxset, but it contained only the original episodes, broadcast from 1962 to 1963. These also became the only episodes to air on Boomerang. The 1980s revival did not come to DVD, or air on Boomerang, until 2009. Even then, only half of Season 2 became available on DVD, as well as the theatrical 1990 movie. Now, fans can buy the second half of the season, the two concurrently produced TV movies, and the third season through Warner Archive.
For a while, Jetsons: The Movie was only available on VHS and pay-TV airings due to split ownership issues (the film was distributed by Universal, who outright owned the movie while the Jetsons IP remained with Hanna-Barbera). It eventually got a DVD release in 2009.
The 2003–2007 Strawberry Shortcake series appeared to be in limbo when the series was dropped off Kewlopolis before the 2007 Season 4 episodes could air, and rights for the series went from Playmates to Hasbro (and animation rights went from DiC to Moonscoop). DVD releases of the series became slow and erratic, and many fans initially believed in 2009 that the releases would grind to a halt and the last eight episodes would not see the light of day upon hearing the news back then. However, stopping of releases is one thing that did not happen, and the last DVD of the series came out in March 2012.
Recess is now available on iTunes in Germany. (An iTunes release in the U.S. has yet to be announced, but Recess: School's Out and Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade are available.)
The Swan Princess and The Swan Princess III: The Mystery of the Enchanted Treasure came to DVD in 2004, but The Swan Princess: Escape from Castle Mountain did not. People wanting to complete the set had to wait five years for that film, which was retitled The Swan Princess: The Secret of the Castle.
The third season of Transformers Animated was only released on DVD in Japan (with it being the Japanese dub, obviously), Hasbro has stated they have no plans to release it, and Cartoon Network dropped reruns of the show from their lineup fairly soon after it ended. However, in 2012, The Hub picked up the rights to show reruns, saving it at least temporarily. This also had the side effect of increasing the quality of the circulated tapes, as the show was made in HD but only shown in cropped standard definition before then. Unfortunately, the show vanished from TV yet again after the Hub became Discovery Family, but Shout! Factory has announced that it will be releasing a DVD set of the unreleased third season and a complete series set.
The For Better or for Worse animated specials from the 1980s and 1990s became available since Lynn Johnston acquired the rights in 2008; they're sold exclusively through the FBorFW website.
Dog City - The series was made only a couple of years after Jim Henson's death, so the Jim Henson Company never really took much notice of it, despite earning a following. Only seven episodes were released on three extremely rare tapes, and the JHC refused to let the rest be uploaded to YouTube (save for one episode in German). There was a brief Hope Spot when they were all made available on Amazon Instant Video, but only in the United States. A petition started on the website Rostam Entertainment for a full DVD release and a crossover film with All Dogs Go to Heaven, but before they could get halfway (about 10 signatures out of 29), Rostam Entertainment was taken down and later rebooted as Cartoon Reviewer, and the petition became stuck in Development Hell. Finally, a YouTube user known as 'Alexmantv' has uploaded all the episodes (presumably from Amazon).
Any Garfield and Friends episode past Show 73 was this once CBS ended the series. It got a full release when the live-action/CGI Garfield movie and its sequel came out. On said DVD release, the original 'U.S. Acres' title cards were replaced by the 'Orson's Farm' title card, because they were based on the international masters. The 4K restoration made for Boomerang restores these title cards. However, at least two of the quickies that were restored were taken from international prints, and thus use 'Orson's Farm Quickie'-style screens with the American name.
After years of waiting, the fourth and final volume of Animaniacs was released in February 2013. The show also started airing on The Hub around that time, but similar to Transformers Animated was removed once the channel became Discovery Family.
Eight years after finishing, and with only one episode ('The Green Loontern') released in the interim, Duck Dodgers got its first season released in full in February 2013.
For a few years, a majority of the episodes of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin were missing for what seemed like forever because Hi-Tops and YES! Entertainment only decided to release a certain number of episodes, the most notable missing ones being story-building episodes like the finale. Enter Mill Creek Entertainment, who released the complete series circa 2005. Once those went out of print, the series was released in a box set with all 65 episodes by Image Entertainment in June 2012.
Doug's 1st Movie was released on video in 1999, but not on DVD despite the fact that Disney moved into that market that year (ironically, it was originally intended as a Direct-to-Video title). Other countries released it on VideoCD, but those copies are long out of print. It was finally released on DVD in 2012, albeit as a Disney Movie Club exclusive.
Disney's The Weekenders was given a full DVD release as a Disney Movie Club Exclusive in February 2013, making it the very first show from One Saturday Morning to get a full DVD release.
Poppetstown: Luckily now, Amazon now has the entire series after one episode survived in the hands of Neptuno Films.
Warner Home Video finally released a complete DVD set of The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan in June 2012. Notable the series won a poll held by the Warner Archive, easily beating nine other shows in terms of demand.
As of October 2013, the Beverly Hills Teens series are now available from Mill Creek Entertainment.
For awhile, Street Sharks had a couple of VHS releases of the first few episodes, meaning that the later episodes were all but lost after the re-runs ended. Netflix aired the episodes out of order for some time, but the show also finally got a DVD release of all 40 episodes.
The ADV Films release of the Mega Man cartoon has gone out of print. However, Discotek Media licensed the show for a DVD release.
As of 2013, Goof Troop, previously only with three episodes available on DVD, now has 54 episodes available. Still not the full (79-episode) series, but much closer than it was. As of 2017, the entire series has been released in its entirety on iTunes and in HD.
The same year, Disney finally released the last third of TaleSpin.
Airing irregularly in Canada and France for years, Cybersix never got released on DVD after its only season was finished. Fortunately, Discotek Media recently announced that they have picked the show up and have made plans for a 2014 DVD release.
After the first season DVD set from Shout! Factory fell flat due to low sales, and the compilation DVDs became rarities, Inspector Gadget finally got a complete series release in both volumes and a complete series boxset courtesy of New Video Group.
After many years off the air and episodes becoming hard to find, the complete series of Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain got a DVD release in January 2014. Whether or not this is a good thing is up for debate.
Once upon a time, The Magic Adventures of Mumfie had only a very small amount of episodes, plus the Christmas special and movie, on VHS. That changed in 2012 when Britt Allcroft herself released Mumfie's Quest on DVD. In 2013, she then released the Christmas special Mumfie's White Christmas on DVD. On New Year's Day 2014, the series became available on Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video, (minus four episodes and the unedited Mumfie's Quest episodes). The latter, however of Mumfie's Quest will be released in the future as well as new merchandise. There's no news for the four missing episodes, though.
The World of David the Gnome was this but got DVD releases in the United Kingdom in 2006, in Spain and Italy by 2011, and in the United States by Oasis DVD in 2012. Most episodes are also available on DVD in Germany and the Netherlands.
Godzilla: The Series was released on DVD before, but said releases only contained a few episodes, and have gone out of print by now. Fortunately, Mill Creek Entertainment is planning a DVD release of the full series (which will include two episodes that were never aired on television) to coincide with Godzilla (2014), similar to the Garfield example above.
Challenge Of The Gobots: The cartoon was made by Hanna-Barbera, so it's now owned by Warner Bros. The toys were made by Bandai, who still owns the designs (and thus the look of the characters). The character names were devised by Tonka, which was bought by Hasbro, who therefore own the names. Getting rival international toy companies to agree to cooperate was a significant hurdle—until April 2014, when Warner Archive announced a DVD release of the complete series. The Five-Episode Pilot was released in 2011.
After what has been over a decade later, the Grand Finale to Animaniacs, Wakko's Wish, was finally released on DVD in October 2014.
My Little Pony Tales was only able to be found on DVDs released in Europe and Australia. The entire series later came to Kidoodle TV, which seemed like one step closer to a DVD release. Shout! Factory finally released a North American DVD set of the complete series in April 2015.
After being off the air for years and only having a few episodes released on Nickelodeon compilation VHS and DVDs, ChalkZone has finally been released on Amazon as a complete series DVD set (however, the set is missing 'The Smooch' due to music rights).
Several episodes from The Smurfs were released on YouTube on a special branded channel, courtesy of IMPS, ODMedia, and Expoza. Also, the entire series has been released on DVD in Australia.
However, it doesn't help that the new YouTube channel crops the episodes into a widescreen format and that some of the international remastered versions of certain episodes use the chopped-up edited versions from the syndicated 'Smurfs Adventures' series. The international release of the show also uses a re-modified version of the 1st season intro and credits for seasons 1-8, along with two different alternate foreign theme songs, instead of using the updated intro sequences for later seasons.
In the U.S., the only episodes released on DVD as of now are the complete season 1, selected episodes from season 2, and the Christmas specials. Most of the series is also available on iTunes. (Luckily, these editions include the original respective intro sequences for each season as well).
Road Rovers didn't receive a DVD set until February 10, 2015, through the Warner Archive.
Warner, in April 2015, released the first season of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo on DVD.
Nine years after A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Come Home were released on DVD, Paramount finally released Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown on February 10, 2015, and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown was released on DVD on October 6 of that year, both in anticipation of The Peanuts Movie.
Even though Beware the Batman was affected by the same write-off as Sym-Bionic Titan, as mentioned above, it was able to get a release through the Warner Archive on both DVD and Blu-ray in the fall of 2014. Toonami was also able to air all of the episodes just before their license went up in flames.
The infamous Street Fighter cartoon, initially released by ADV Films on DVD, was sort of rescued when it was included on a single Blu-Ray disc as part of the Street Fighter 25th Anniversary set. It was then definitely rescued when Discotek Media announced that they licensed the show for a DVD rerelease.
Disney sold the rights to Bobby's World to series creator and star Howie Mandel in 2004, several years after Disney acquired the rights as part of the Saban Entertainment package. As a result, there were a couple of individual DVD compilations before Mandel licensed the series to Moonscoop, who promptly got to work on making an Amazon Exclusive DVD release of the whole series that finally commenced in 2012. Surprising treatment for a Fox Kids program that isn't Power Rangers.
Another Fox Kids series that somewhat escaped the clutch of Disney was Pigs Next Door. Despite a very short run of 13 episodes (and starring John Goodman and Jamie Lee Curtis as the parent pigs), the series was totally forgotten between 2000 and 2015… when the series appeared on Studio 100's YouTube channel, as well as on Amazon and Tubi in the USA, even though they own the distribution rights in Europe, China, Australia, New Zealand and Quebec. It's still up to Disney for a legal home video release, though, as they still own part of the show's copyrights.
Timothy Goes to School was first seen on PBS Kids' block 'Bookworm Bunch' in 2000 then disappeared after the block ended. It later returned to television in 2006 on Discovery Kids and TLC's weekday morning block 'Ready Set Learn', but only for about a year. The show's most recent appearance was on the Qubo network for a spell. There is no doubt that DVD's are hard to find - good thing there's YouTube (although not all episodes are viewable worldwide; the whole series is only available on Treehouse TV's official channel, and it is blocked outside North America). And although Treehouse TV is slowly opening the channel to worldwide access, a number of countries still doesn't have access to the channel due to licensing disputes, and even in the countries that do have access some episodes are unavailable. The French, Spanish, Hungarian, and Malaysian dubs are even more harder to come across. While the French dub has only gotten a few DVD releases◊ the same cannot be said for the Spanish, Hungarian and Malaysian dubs, especially in Malaysia since the show only aired for a season on a paid channel and later vanished when it aired in the early 2000's and hasn't been aired over there ever since. The Spanish dub likewise has not aired since 2008.
Clone High nearly qualifies, with a full series collection that was released in incredibly limited numbers…and only in Canada. The series is now available for Digital download on iTunes, YouTube/Google Play, and the Microsoft Store, courtesy of MTV. Nelvana also posted the entire series as a livestream on their Retro Rerun Channel on YouTube.
Mummies Alive! only had one VHS release, and its few DVD releases, for both Regions 1 and 2, contain only some episodes. There exists a complete series set, but its legality is debatable.
Dragon Tales will have a hard time getting a season-wise DVD or Blu-ray release instead of individual DVD compilations. The major culprit for this, aside from music licensing issues, is that the show is jointly owned by the non-profit organization Sesame Workshop (which also produces Sesame Street) and the media giant Sony, and the two are more than likely to argue about where the money for such releases will go. Give Netflix a round of applause for streaming the entire series, unless you live somewhere where Netflix isn't available. Even then, just because you live in an area that has Netflix doesn't mean they will let you have a crack at it. Not helping matters is that the Netflix releases have all the songs and PBS funding credits edited out from the episodes, again due to licensing issues. You know something is wrong with Sony when they choose not to license their own TV shows' music to their own sister music corporation.
Dungeons & Dragons was on-and-off with this. Thanks to complicated legal juggling (the series is owned by Disney, while the Dungeons & Dragons franchise is owned by Hasbro through Wizards of the Coast), VHS releases became obscure and a DVD release did not commence until 2005 in the UK, and 2006 in the US with the complete series released in the latter region. Even then, the US DVD release had a lot of the original music cut from episodes for licensing reasons, which made fans flip their lids, though the radio play for the unproduced final episode was included in the set. It was out of print in just two years thanks to BCI Eclipse (distributor of the DVD on behalf of Disney) shutting down. A deal was eventually struck between Disney and Mill Creek Entertainment to have the entire series released, and to much rejoicing, all of the original music was left intact (though the 'Requiem' radio play was removed along with special features of the previous set, but not a huge loss).
The uncensored version of the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids episode Busted where the gang is subject to a Scared Straight type experience in prison. This is the infamous episode where the very scary inmates utter several mild profanities such as 'hell', 'damn', and 'bastard'. This version was only shown once and in many areas, not at all. If you didn't tape it off of TV in 1984-85, you probably won't get it. No online streaming site shows it, only the censored version. Strangely enough, Bill Cosby's intro to the episode still retains his special Content Warning, nonetheless. It may still be warranted, as despite the removal of the profanity, the prisoners' very creepy and disgusting perverted lusting towards the kids remain intact. Because Filmation has been defunct since 1987, and because Hallmark destroyed the original 35mm film elements of the Filmation archives, it's not known whether the master tapes for the original uncensored episode even still exist.
Due to the scandal centering around Cosby himself in The New '10s, there is a very serious possibility that the entire Fat Albert library will also become unavailable for years to come.
The same situation regarding Cosby may also cause Little Bill to be barred indefinitely from re-airing, although the whole series is still available on Amazon for the time being.
The 1978 English dub for the Italian Animated Adaptation of Pinocchio from 1972 called Un Burattino Di Nome Pinocchio is currently out of print. The English dub has been uploaded on YouTube a few times in the past. It also never gotten a DVD or VHS release.
The Brady Kids only got a few episodes as part of the Brady Bunch Complete Series pack, but did not get a full release until 2016.
Histeria!, after years without any home media release of any kind, finally received a complete series DVD set in July 2016 through Warner Archive Collection.
Disney has started streaming some of The Disney Afternoon to iTunes and Amazon Video. This makes it the first time certainshows have had all their episodes available, albeit with some censorship and missing episodes.
The Get Along Gang. Though a DVD release was announced in 2007, American Greetings (owner of the franchise), pulled the plug on it for no known reason, though it could be due to the (later shelved) revival of the characters going on at the time. The original pilot and a few episodes were released on VHS and can be found online. However, a small 'best-of' DVD release was announced by Mill Creek Entertainment and released in April 2011; it includes 20 out of the 26 individual episodes (or 10 of 13 half-hour episodes). The following year, the remaining six episodes were released as bonus material of other Mill Creek DVD releases, taking the series officially outside this trope. However, the original pilot is unlikely to be released on DVD due to royalty issues with Nelvana and John Sebastian's singing on the episode.
The series did receive a DVD release in Brazil
Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats had limited VHS and DVD releases of its episodes, all of which are now out of print. Shout! Factory released 24 episodes from the first season but lost the rights to the series due to poor sales. The entire first season was released by Mill Creek Entertainment, one half in 2012 and the other in 2013. In August 2016, Mill Creek released the entire series on DVD.
A Bunch of Munsch was once upon a time very hard to find on home video, having only been released on extremely rare VHS tapes by Golden Book Video and Sony Wonder. All 13 episodes were eventually released on DVD by Mill Creek in August 2015.
'Toxic Crusaders' is still pretty easy to find considering every episode and movie exists online through its 2008 complete series set.
While it may have only gotten VHS releases, the series 'The Adventures Of T-Rex', a Japanese-American co-pro, has all 52 episodes available online thanks to torrents.
'The Poochie Special' is a half-hour one-off cartoon based on Mattel's then popular mutt Poochie. It went direct-to-video in 1984, and was thought to have never seen the light of day again after all copies disappeared, but someone took the time to upload the whole cartoon in 2015 (though it was previously posted in 3 parts as well).
Dennis the Menace had very few episodes, often broken down into individual segments, released on VHS and DVD with every release now out of print. In 2014, the entire first season from 1986 had a DVD release courtesy of Mill Creek Entertainment. With the second season having been released in September 2016, the entire series is now available.
PB&J Otter saw no home video releases, and reruns had stopped airing in 2005, with only a few episodes being available online. In 2012, Disney Junior began airing reruns at an early morning time, but were relegated to death slots in late 2013 and removed completely in July 2014. In August 2016, every episode of the show was made available on the Watch Disney Junior App in the U.S., until Fall of 2016, although an occasional episode would appear monthly.
The 2003 run of The Berenstain Bears is available in its entirety on YouTube, courtesy of Treehouse TV. The 1980s version of The Berenstain Bears only had limited VHS and DVD releases and 21 episodes were not released at all. Episodes have popped up every now and then on YouTube but the series has never had a complete release until mid-2017 as Mike Berenstain and his team went above and beyond in getting the rights to the animated series back, and then going through the trouble of recovering any copy of the episodes they could get their hands on, and finally hiring companies to digitize the media (some of them only available in extremely obscure formats) and put them on YouTube. Say what you will about the man taking his dad's series in a religious direction, at least he still knows what older fans want.
Similarly, Treehouse Direct also released Seven Little Monsters and George and Marthain their entirety on YouTube, but the episodes can only be viewed in Canada (with the exception of the former, in which a majority of episodes were uploaded before the Treehouse release). Also, the entire series of the latter is available on iTunes.
Both the French and English dubs of 'T'choupi et Doudou' ('Charley and Mimmo') are available online for free streaming as of now.
The Brothers Flub (not to be confused with The Brothers Grunt) got 2 4-episode VHS releases and that was it. Thanks to TV critics generally hating it and the theme 'song' being considered annoying, the show got low ratings, and became so obscure that a Wikipedia article wasn't written for it until 2008; its IMDb listing is also almost entirely blank except for three credits, only one of which is right. For the longest time, the only trace of it online was a low-quality rip of the intro from RetroJunk. The entire show was also on a video website called Kidobi, which subsequently removed the episodes. The first eight episodes came to iTunes in 2014, and the whole series was uploaded to YouTube two years later.
The PJs was in limbo for nearly a decade due to ownership spats (both Disney and Warner Bros. claimed ownership, the latter of which due to The WBun-canceling the series after a two-season run at FOX). Warner Bros. eventually agreed to sell its portion of the series to Disney, giving them full ownership of the PJs property, setting the stage for a DVD release in 2011.
Only one copy of the special Up on the Housetop was known to circulate, courtesy of Peter Paltridge. It was eventually released by GoodTimes.
Frosty the Snowman originally had June Foray voicing Karen (and all the other children) when it aired in 1969. However, for some unknown reason, in 1970 all of Foray's lines (except for her singing parts, bizarrely) were dubbed over by an unknown child actress, and after that the Foray version was quietly pushed under the rug. A reconstruction of the entire Foray version of the special has been uploaded to YouTube in December 2016, using Rhino's audio CD as a source.
At one time, full episodes of Wapos Bay: The Series and its movie, Long Goodbyes were hard to find, despite the movie winning a Kidscreen award and beating the Heart Catch Pretty Cure movie and Zhu Zhu Pets: Quest for Zhu. The entire series can be found on Ameba TV.
My Life as a Teenage Robot, after years without any form of DVD release since its cancellation finally received just that for all three seasons exclusively through Amazon in 2011.
The underrated and little-known Teacher's Pet. Aside from The Movie and the first episode appearing as a bonus feature on the movie's DVD, the series has never gotten a home video release. Ever. Coincidentally, most people only remember it as a movie rather than a TV series. As of January 2017, 37 out of 39 episodes can be found online, although some episodes suffer from poor quality. More info about this can found on its trivia page. As of June 15th, 2017, all the episodes have been recorded and uploaded online.
On the Lost Media Wiki, there was a long search for a short cartoon titled 'Clock Man', as a member of the bungie.net forum recalled part of the plot details, most notably a bearded man emerging from a clock, and he believed that it aired on Nickelodeon's Pinwheel. The short turned out to be a Czech short named O Parádivé Sally, which was uploaded onto YouTube in September 2017, and its identity was confirmed in December.
Carlton Your Doorman, a 1980 animated special intended as a Poorly Disguised Pilot for an animated Rhoda spin-off, only had its first few minutes existing on YouTube for a long time. It was later released as a bonus feature on Shout! Factory's season 5 DVD set of Rhoda.
Fat Dog Mendoza, a British cartoon about a superhero boy named Little Costume Buddy and his fat dog, Fat Dog, having random wacky adventures in their hometown of Neighborhood X (roll with it), has never been released on VHS or DVD and never even aired in the United States, but the entire series can be found on YouTube.
Static Shock is finally complete on DVD with the announcement of the final season for April 2018 via the Warner Archive.
As of April 2018, all eight episodes of Cave Kids are available to purchase digitally. There's no word yet about a DVD, though. In April 2019, the series was released on the Boomerang streaming service.
Fox released the first 17 seasons of The Simpsons on DVD, then stopped, telling viewers to use the new Simpsons World website which streams all the episodes (no good if you're not in the US!) or watch them on the FXX channel. However, due to popular demand, Season 18 was eventually released on DVD. Also, the entire series was eventually added to iTunes and Google Play.
The British cartoon The Dreamstone only saw the first six of it's 52 episode series released onto DVD, and even on VHS, only the first season (bar 'Megattack') and a handful of Season Two episodes saw release. The United States fared even worse only getting one VHS as proof of existence there. Come 2014, Monster Entertainment announced plans to release the entire series online and remastered, though only six random episodes were released on YouTube. They did grant usage of their masters to German distributor PIDAX however, who released all four seasons on DVD sets within a short timeframe in 2018. Since the DVDs also have an English track, there is at least an option for those who can import. Shortly after this Monster returned to their YouTube service and uploaded the entire serieson it's own official channel.
Disney
TaleSpin finally got a Volume 3 release in 2013, when Volume 2 came out in 2007. It was exclusive to the Disney Movie Club until 2014, and the DVDs themselves are bare in that the discs contain no artwork, save for the show's logo, and lack an episode list.
DuckTalesfinally got a Volume 4 release in 2018, eleven years after Volume 3 came out in 2007. For now, it is only a Disney Movie Club exclusive, and is of the same caliber as the more recent Disney Afternoon sets.
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh had quite a few VHS releases in the 1990s (beginning in 1994, many were released under the Pooh 'Playtime,' 'Learning' and 'Friendship' video series.) Only a handful of episodes were released on DVD in a similar manner, under the 'Growing Up With Winnie-the-Pooh' label, but they are all out of print. Since then, some episodes made their way onto 2009-2010 re-releases of some other Pooh DVDs, although at least one of those has also disappeared.note The entire series would eventually be made available in its entirety, albeit cropped to 16:9, in HD on iTunes.
For the Christmas Too special, the only way to watch it on DVD is through the Direct-to-Video movie, A Very Merry Pooh Year, which features the special edited into the movie as a flashback sequence. While the special is remastered for the film, a couple changes were made including changing Rabbit's fur to its normal yellow instead of the green-ish fur in the New Adventures series, while Christopher Robin's original voice track was dubbed over by the actor who portrayed him in the film's new sequences. So far, the 1994 VHS release is the only method of watching the special in its unaltered form, as Freeform's current broadcasts of it trims it down for commercial time (and, as of 2018, uses the re-dubbed voice track for Christopher Robin).
The Proud Family has the first 15 episodes available on iTunes, and its made-for-TV movie on DVD, Averted as of 2019, because the whole series was put up on Demand for Xfinity and on the DisneyNow Service.
In January 2019, the final 12 episodes of Scaredy Squirrel premiered in the USA on Starz Kids & Family and later Tubi. Before then, one could only buy the first 40 episodes on Amazon Instant Video and a few volumes on the iTunes Store.
Birdz, one of the last things on CBS' Saturday morning lineup in 1998. Scottish TV channel STV (which co-produced the series) uploaded the whole series on YouTube, which is blocked in the United States. As of 2019, all episodes are now legally available on Amazon Instant Video (individual purchase only) and Popcornflix and Tubi (legal ad-supported streaming).
The 30-minute animated Little Engine that Could feature from The '90s only existed in the VHS tapes that remain and an upload on YouTube every now and then. As of 2019, it can be streamed from Ameba.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is the Trope Namer. The phrase 'keep circulating the tapes' was a line in the credits from Seasons 1-4, inserted to give a winking consent to sharing tapes with others in order to popularize the show; it was removed in Season 5 for many of the legal reasons this entry concerns itself with. During the show's run, the hosts would give a Shout-Out to fans in places where the series wasn't aired (including a group of tape-sharing aficionados in Paris, France during the third season). Although many of the movies shown fall into the Missing Episode category and are unlikely to see wide release due to Copyright issues, a fair number are available for purchase legally. In this case, the problem is the reproduction rights to the movies since nobody expected there to be such a market for home recordings down the line, so movie rights were only secured for the show's on-air run. Episodes are released on DVD as the rights issues are ironed out. Many episodes were uploaded by Best Brains themselves to Google Video - many others are uploaded to YouTube at random, with some having been pulled by NBCUniversal. And what and when which episodes will air on Sunday nights as part of Comet's current double-playing of the series is anyone's guess. Word of God (well, word of Joel anyway) states that the phrase was not in reference to licensing/copyright issues but to the fact that Comedy Central was not available everywhere in the U.S. when the show premiered, similar to other channels in the early days of cable. So, the only way they could gain a national audience was for fans to trade tapes with people who could not watch it any other way. One of the creators has actually said 'Keep circulating some of the tapes,' meaning fans should buy the episodes available on DVD, but the others are fair game...which is what most of the dedicated fans do anyway. Special mention should be given to The Amazing Colossal Man and Godzilla vs. Megalon, released but quickly withdrawn due to rights issues. With the show's transfer from Rhino Home Video to Shout! Factory, the odds of every episode eventually being released on DVD has greatly risen, especially when the five nigh-mythical Gamera episodes were all released together. However, Shout Factory has started getting almost all the episodes pulled from YouTube, a sad Irony for those who had kept the show alive on the service. After the release of Volume 39, Shout Factory said it is unlikely any previously unreleased episodes will see the light of day. Currently, only 11 episodes were unable to have DVDs released of them by Shout Factory, #201 Rocketship X-M, #213 Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster, #309 The Amazing Colossal Man, #311 It Conquered the World, #416 Fire Maidens from Outer Space, #418 The Eye Creatures, #807 Terror from the Year 5000, #809 I Was A Teenage Werewolf, #905 The Deadly Bees, #906 The Space Children and #913 Quest of the Delta Knights. Shout Factory included the host segments from the above films in a special features set on Volume 39. Ironically, some of the films featured in MST3K are themselves difficult or impossible to find on legal home video releases, such as the TV movie Overdrawn at the Memory Bank or Operation Double 007, yet these are among the episodes that are actually available on DVD.
Many TV series have been available on DVD in the past but, for whatever reason, are no longer for sale. As a result, some releases have become collector's items and tend to show up online for prices too high for the general fan, leading them to obtain copies by other methods. Examples have included Kindred: The Embraced and Black Scorpion, two series that were released to DVD; the DVDs are no longer available, and now it's not uncommon to see them for sale online for hundreds of dollars.
Occasionally, a distributor will release one or more seasons of a series, but then, either due to low sales or licensing issues, will cease. As a result, fans find themselves having to 'circulate the tapes' until such a time the later seasons are released. Examples of this have included Kojak (which took many years off after the release of Season 1), and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The world is still waiting for the final seasons of Cannon and The Invisible Man. Of course, the biggest culprit of this phenomenon is 20th Century Fox, who have given this treatment to such shows as The Practice, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, NYPD Blue (except in the UK), Picket Fences and many others. It seems that Fox don't consider it worthwhile to release non-current, non-syndicated shows on DVD if they don't sell over a million copies. They're also very reluctant to sell off their licenses to other big studios or smaller enterprises.
Just because a show or film is very popular in the country where it is released doesn't mean it will become available in your neck of the woods. There are innumerable examples of TV series that air, for example, in the UK but receive neither broadcast nor DVD release in North America (examples include the cop series Scott & Bailey, the 2005 revival of Captain Scarlet, and the later seasons of Hustle) - in this regard, the trope crosses over with No Export for You. The only way for fans to see these shows is to obtain recordings of them.
Regional lock-out online is a rough equivalent for shows that have their archives online. Live in the United States? You can see every clip from The Daily Show on the Comedy Central website. Live in Australia? Hope that someone was nice enough to upload a copy of it to YouTube.note
There are still many films and TV programs that were released on VHS but not, as yet, DVD (or that have never been released at all), forcing fans to take the trope literally.
In the last few years there have been a number of films and TV series that home video distributors have deemed not viable for regular retail sale (the criteria for deciding what shows fall into this category seems to be somewhat random). Instead, these shows are made available via a 'manufacture on demand' scheme where the company burns DVD-Rs of the shows when they are ordered. While this has allowed some rare TV series and movies to be circulated, there are three downsides: 1. few of these DVD-R releases undergo any restoration or HD upgrading (and so it's a crapshoot how they might look on HD sets), 2. very rarely do they include any bonus features, and 3. (and the reason for this being mentioned here), not all DVD or Blu-ray players can actually play DVD-Rs and attempting to rip them into a media player-compatible format is stymied by outrageous Copy Protection since those DVR-Rs don't have to follow the DVD standard.note So if your favorite show ends up falling into category 3, then you still need to keep 'circulating the tapes.'
Some series have complete and widely available DVD releases, but almost comically spotty Blu-ray releases which appear to be a result of the distributors dipping their toe in the water but then changing their mind and sticking with just DVD. While having only later seasons but not earlier ones on Blu-ray is understandable, in the case of shows like Nip/Tuck[1], Scrubs[2], Rescue Me[3], and Burn Notice[4], only a single season of each was made available on Blu-ray.
Loss of licenses and original prints has relegated hundreds of pornographic films into non-digital obscurity. Because some adult stars and film producers are perfectly fine with having this aspect of their past lost and forgotten, helps make it so.
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ABC (Australia)
The Glass House is stuck with the 'too topical to show in repeats' problem. There has been a DVD release of a few of the best-of compilations, but otherwise the show is pretty much unavailable.
Its predecessor, Good News Week, is worse off, since not even a best-of compilation is available. While its most recent run has led to many clips being uploaded to YouTube, it hasn't seen a DVD release, and probably never will.
Swinging, one of the ABC's original children's series, was never released on VHS or DVD, and only three episodes have been recovered in their entirety so far (plus one that was recovered only in part). The show also has the added annoyance of having a title containing a word shared by several other TV show titles, causing online searches to return results for unrelated shows and making it unnecessarily hard to find the episodes that have been recovered.
The ending two-parter of the third season of Johnson and Friends were never released on home media, those being 'The Crying Baby' and 'Bringing Up Baby'. A copy of the latter did exist on YouTube, but the former was thought to be lost until the official channel uploaded it. The official channel has since gone under for unknown reasons as of 2018, however.
Cupid: The original, not the remake. Poor copies can be found and enjoyed, but not even the flop remake seems to have prompted anyone to put it on DVD.
The Drew Carey Show got as far as a Season One release and a 'best-of' DVD. Warner Home Video said that music licensing issues have all but killed any chance of a future release for the show's remaining eight seasons. As of 2018, digital subchannel Laff offers reruns.
Earth Star Voyager was a little-remembered but underground-circulated Disney Sunday Movie special intended as a backdoor pilot; poor ratings canned that. Disney fails to even acknowledge the film's existence these days, and other Made-for-TV Movie efforts that aired under this banner have faced the same fate.
While episodes of the 1960s The Green Hornet have been run on various cable channels, the series has never been commercially released on home video (aside from a cheaply-made disc featuring a compilation 'movie').
Happy Days: While the entire series has been rerun endlessly for the past 30 years in syndication, only six seasons have – to date – been issued on DVD. Seasons 2-6 have replace the original 1950s rock songs with generic 50s music (because of copyright/royalty issues). If you don't want generic music, you can always try INSP or Me-TV.
In Justice, which has the bonus of being difficult to search for since its title is a common phrase, was a fairly well-done Law & Order-type show with a big subversion: most of their clients didn't do the crime and were wrongfully imprisoned, so the lawyers had to unravel the clues to find the real perp and free the innocent convict. In one memorable episode, a man faced execution for a murder he probably didn't commit. A viewer may be surprised by the ending: he was put to death anyway.
John Denver & The Muppets: A Christmas Together, a popular Christmas special first aired in 1979, has never been released on videotape or disc, most likely due to the large number of song rights that would have to be secured. (Fans have put the special up on YouTube, and it still generates a fair amount of views there, especially during the holiday season.) The album that inspired the special, on the other hand, has a seemingly eternal life, being released several times over the years on vinyl, audiocasette, compact disc and even digital download.
The 1983 follow-up special Rocky Mountain Holiday is on DVD but is edited to remove a 'Funny Aneurysm' Moment (a scene involving John Denver flying a personal plane, as he died doing just that). In addition, the usage of the Jaws theme as an underscore at one point was replaced by a Suspiciously Similar Song, due to rights issues.
Similarly, 1987's A Muppet Family Christmas lost several songs for its video releases due to music rights issues. Later editions also edited out two scenes: one of Fozzie and Elmo turning on the Christmas tree, and the other when Fozzie talks to his mother about hanging stockings. To this day, the uncut version of the special remains a hot ticket on YouTube and in tape-trading circles (especially with the original commercials) when the holidays roll around.
1981's The Muppets Go to the Movies (a tie-in special to The Great Muppet Caper that doubled as a sendoff for The Muppet Show) and 1982's The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show haven't aired on American TV since they were shown on Nickelodeon in The '90s. The former got a VHS release in the UK and a DVD in Israel, while the latter got a VHS that was distributed to schools by Films Incorporated, who also distributed The Muppets Go Hollywood (see further down the page).
Muppets Tonight was supposed to have a full-series release once rights-holder Disney finished releasing the original The Muppet Show on DVD, but since Disney gave up on that series with two seasons left to go...
Aside from a few VHS releases in the 1990s, the 1991 remake of Land of the Lost has yet to see an official DVD release. Still, there's bootleg DVD sets, torrents, and YouTube.
Less Than Perfect had Seasons 1-2 released on DVD, but not 3-4. There is a bootleg DVD of the entire series (including the Season 4 episodes unaired in the U.S.), but it's over $100 and there don't appear to be any online sources. So fans are out of luck for now.
The remaining three seasons of Life Goes On. The first season's release was also delayed due to music licensing, which led to the show's Real Song Theme Tune ('Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' by The Beatles) to be replaced by an original track.
Life with Lucy, a failed attempt at a Spiritual Successor to I Love Lucy, featuring Lucille Ball herself as the owner of a hardware store, that ran for a spell in 1986.note In 2018, Time-Life released four of the 13 episodes (eight of which actually aired) of Life with Lucy as part of a 'Best of' compilation of all the Lucy shows.
The TV show Lime Street (1985), starring Robert Wagner. Only five episodes were aired (according to That Other Wiki three more unaired episodes were aired on Lifetime in 1987), and competition with NBC's The Golden Girls and 227 seriously harmed its ratings and made it even harder to come by. Only one full episode can be found on YouTube. And don't expect it on DVD anytime soon as Wagner himself doesn't want it released (keep in mind this was not necessarily due to the show being an Old Shame for him, but out of respect due to the premature death of teenage Samantha Smith, who played Wagner's daughter on the show, in a plane crash after completing several episodes, forcing the show's demise).
NYPD Blue following Season 9 (of 12). Thank you, Amazon Instant Video - in HD, no less.
Season 4 was released in 2006; Season 5 came out in 2014 (!). Season 10 is due out 2016. Looks like an aversion might finally be coming.
Season 3 of Once and Again, thanks to music licensing issues.
The Practice only a saw a release of the first two seasons back in 2007. This is a show that won awards every year it was on, was showcased in ABC's 50th Anniversary Celebration special, aired in the coveted post-Super Bowl spot in 1999 and spun off the highly-successful Boston Legal (which had all of its seasons released). While Shout! Factory took over distribution rights for the series and bizarrely released a boxset for the final season in 2014 (likely to capitalize off the fame of Boston Legal, whose main character plays a pivotal role in Practice's final season), but nothing else.
Vengeance Unlimited.
Who's the Boss? has only had the first season released on DVD. Poor sales prevented the rest of the series from being released.
Jake In Progress ran for two seasons on ABC. However no reruns, no YouTube videos, no DVD, it's a show that's been forgotten.
Although the entire ABC Afterschool Special series did get a DVD release, it's been out of print for a while. It's even harder to find the specials from rival channels like NBC and CBS that were similar (Afternoon Treat and Schoolbreak Special, respectively).
Similarly many episodes of sister series ABC Weekend Special, which aired on Saturday mornings, were never released to home media.
ABC's 50th Anniversary Celebration was a special that aired in 2003 that showcased ABC's shows for the past 50 years. Due to copyright issues with the shows and footage, don't expect a DVD Release anytime soon. The special is available on YouTube, however.
Blake's 7 is not available on Region 1 DVD (although it has been released in the UK).
Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, 'a show all about television', will never be released on DVD. Charlie Brooker claimed as much himself because of the licensing issues related to all the shows and music played during the course of its current six-season run. In one episode, Brooker discusses the 'fair use' clause, and how the BBC can use certain assets from television and music for free. He is known to (highly unofficially) support efforts to keep circulating the tapes. American fans can watch most of the episodes on YouTube.
David Bowie figures into two BBC productions that are stuck in video limbo.
Cracked Actor, an Omnibus documentary that followed Bowie on his 1974 tour of the U.S., has never been made available on video despite its high regard amongst fans, historians, and even the man himself (and Nicholas Roeg decided to cast Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth after seeing it, as Bowie had exactly the alien quality he was looking for).
The 1982 production of Bertolt Brecht's Baal featuring Bowie as the title character is another M.I.A. title. To add insult to injury, the tie-in EP with Bowie performing fully-orchestrated versions of its songs was released on vinyl and cassette, but only two of the five songs have made it to CD via anthologies. At least the Performance Video made for 'The Drowned Girl' can be found on the 'Sight & Sound' edition (U.K. only) of The Best of David Bowie 1980/87Greatest Hits Album and at YouTube's VEVO service.
Dick & Dom in da Bungalow; not rights issues here, as they did all the music in-house. Perhaps parents aren't keen to shell out for DVDs of anarchy and gunge? Snippets are on YouTube, and there's been a Clip Show and a DVD release which contained highlights from Series 3 (broadcast 2003-04), but the latter was released way back in Autumn 2004 and has since gone out-of-print. The 20 clip show episodes from 2009 contain a reasonable amount of highlights and such, but there is still a lot that has disappeared, particularly Series 1-2 (only shown on Digital CBBC when it was still in its infancy).
It is likely to be rights issues, due to the shows use of cartoons and live action sitcoms to give the hosts a break. Shows featured inside the show included: Even Stevens, Fairly OddParents, Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes and The Cramp Twins, amongst others.
Doctor Who:
The BBC are happy for people to openly distribute audio-plus-still image 'reconstructions' of destroyed episodes, as long as they don't do it on digital formats that might get file-shared. So videotapes are fine, but not DVD/Blu-Ray, video files on CD, digital files, or (for at least one group) ticker tape.
The BBC archives have also been able to recover a number of lost episodes of Doctor Who thanks to collectors who obtained (or held onto) film copies of the episodes, and BBC Video has made use of fan copies videotaped off 1970s-era broadcasts of many Jon Pertwee-era episodes for the purposes of color reconstruction or, in several cases, full episode recovery.
The thirtieth-anniversary charity Reunion Show'Dimensions In Time' will never be officially released on home video: The actors and crew all gave their time for free on the contractual agreement that it would be broadcast once and never be made available again in any form, apparently not thinking of the possibility of selling it with the proceeds going to Children In Need. Nobody actually minds much, as it's notoriously one of the most embarrassing things to ever happen in connection with the show.
Likewise, the Affectionate ParodyDoctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death had at one point come out on VHS, but never came out on DVD. It IS available on iTunes...but only for the UK. It's also available for free on Comic Relief's YouTube channel, but if one's hoping for a hard copy, they're either going to have to find the tape or out of luck. (The BBC has not ruled out a future release of Fatal Death but they won't even think about it until they get all the classic series on DVD first.)
The full episodes of Doctor Who Confidential are 45 minutes like the show itself. But the DVD releases only contain 15 minute cutdowns, due to disc space constraints. The only full Confidential episodes released on DVD are for the 2009 specials, as each episode there had its own disc so space wasn't an issue.
The original 2003 DVD release of 'The Two Doctors' featured the non-canon short A Fix with Sontarans, a crossover with the once-beloved children's program Jim'll Fix It, as a bonus feature; note the use of the term 'once-beloved.' A year after Jim'll Fix It host Jimmy Savile died, an ITV documentary outed him as one of the most prolific child predators in modern history, revealing how Savile was able to sexually assault a shockingly high amount of minors throughout his career. As a result, the BBC buried all of their material of Savile in their vaults, with A Fix with Sontarans being among the casualties: 'The Two Doctors' DVD was quietly remastered in 2014 to remove the short, while the original release was deleted from the BBC catalog. As a result, the only way to actually view the short is by shelling out considerable amounts of money for a used copy of the 2003 pressing or by finding uploads of it on various video sharing sites.
One of the extras on the DVD release of 'Revenge of the Cybermen' is a documentary which examines the lengths to which fans once went to get their hands on episodes which they had missed for one reason or another. This often involved paying large amounts of money for videotapes of the episodes in question, including ropey Nth generation copies.
Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy have mostly vanished into the BBC archive. Given the revival in popularity of Stewart Lee and Richard Herring on the stand-up circuit and on TV, perhaps they might emerge...Go Faster Stripe is your friend. Official legal DVDs of Fist of Fun Season 1 with lots of lovely special features. If it sells well, more will follow. (Herring and Lee will be selling them at their gigs so you can get them signed, too.)
The 1988 BBC-produced miniseries Game, Set, and Match, starring Ian Holm and based on a series of novels by Len Deighton, has never been officially seen since its initial airing because Deighton so despised it that he's barred any future release. High-quality bootlegs are available (for instance, a remastered DVD set), but they're not cheap. Or you could always look for a torrent.
Horrible Histories, the CBBC live-action series, at least for fans outside of Region 2 DVD coding. Fairly easy to find online, though: besides an official YouTube channel with a good selection of the best sketches (although most of them fall victim to being only available in other countries), full episodes are available for all of Series One & Two, part of Series Three, and the six-part Best-Of version hosted by Stephen Fry.
Only Season 1 (Series 1 & 2) and Season 2 (Series 3 & 4) of Law & Order: UK have been released on DVD in the US. To watch the remaining episodes, which have been released in the UK, anyone in Region 1 will need to either (a) purchase a universal DVD player, or (b) scour the internet. Luckily, Series 5-8 are readily available, which is very good as season 8 has never even been aired on BBC America.
The BBC ran the forerunner of pretty much all reality shows back in the 1970s called Living In The Past where a bunch of historical re-enactors tried to live successfully in an Iron Age lifestyle. They have never released the 12 one hour episodes, nor issued any reasons for refusing to do so (although it is suspected that they didn't get the proper permissions to sell footage of some of the participants).
Only one of the three series of Monkey Dust has been released on DVD. The status of further releases is unknown.
Not the Nine O'Clock News has had two 'best of' DVDs released, but will never have a full release; for various reasons including copyright issues with music, and performer Chris Langham having been convicted on child porn charges.
Subverted; while Only Fools and Horses is still the BBC's best-selling series of all time on both VHS and DVD, the Corporation's apparent desire to eradicate all traces of the original Ronnie Hazlehurst theme tune has led to the VHS releases of the first series (which, unlike the DVD, kept the original theme intact) becoming quite sought after by purist fans.
The same applies to the original version of 'A Royal Flush,' which is unavailable on any home video format (the VHS release had about a minute of footage removed, and the DVD release removed nearly ten minutes of footage and added a laugh track). However, the original cut still appears from time to time on the digital channels, so it's not too hard to find decent quality versions of it.
In a straight version, several mini-episodes such as Christmas Trees, Licensed To Drill and the Comic Relief Special have never been released on VHS or DVDs.
The Phantom of the Opera: Behind the Mask is a 2006 documentary on the original London production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical (which had just hit its 20th anniversary). It features interviews with many of the original cast members, creative team, and otherwise on top of vintage rehearsal, show, and news footage. In the U.S., it occasionally aired on the cable channel Ovation before its Network Decay. It's never had a standalone home media release, nor has it been included on DVDs of related material such as the 25th anniversary Royal Albert Hall performance.
CBBC series Planet Ajay has no DVD releases, and for the longest time anybody wanting to watch the series after it originally aired was shit out of luck. As of 2018, however, the entire series can be found on YouTube, but the chances of a DVD release are practically non-existent for two reasons: Firstly, there were segments featuring the eponymous main character Ajay singing a popular song from another artist Once per Episode, so there are likely music rights problems involved; and secondly, the show has been long forgotten anyway, so it's unlikely to be considered profitable enough for a DVD release.
Spike Milligan's Q sketch series - Q5 (1969), Q6 (1975), Q7 (1977), Q8 (1978), Q9 (1980), and There's a Lot of It About (1982) - were cited as a huge influence on Monty Python's Flying Circus by the members of Monty Python themselves. Even though at most four of the 38 episodes are lost (all from Q5), the surviving episodes have never been released on DVD, and the most readily available fan copies are variable quality home recordings from Australian broadcasts from between 1979 and 1986 (at a time when Milligan was living and working in Australia).
Rentaghost: Only Season 1 has been released on DVD, and only very briefly. The other series are unlikely to see release any time soon due to contractual disputes with the surviving cast members and rights issues surrounding the music clips used in the series.
Robot Wars. Only one VHS and five DVDs were ever produced. The first was a guide to the First Wars, the next three were clip shows and technical information from the teams about specific popular robots (Chaos 2, Hypno-Disc, and Razer), the fourth was about the house robots, and the fifth was a release of the First World Championship, the only episode to get a commercial release. While certainly interesting to watch, it's a far cry from what should've been released.
The retrospective BBC news series The Rock 'n' Roll Years, a montage of news coverage set to popular music of the year, included hundreds of licensed music tracks that would need clearing for any kind of DVD release. It has turned up very occasionally on BBC Four.
Rutland Weekend Television was Eric Idle's post-Monty Python show. It won't get a release because of music rights issues and because Idle considers it something of an Old Shame. He's partly justified — some skits are pretty dodgy, but others are quite funny, especially the musical numbers. Just look up 'George Harrison (yes, him) on Rutland Weekend Television'.
Any programmes featuring Jimmy Savile are unlikely to see the light of day again due to the can of worms opened up by revelations in the ITV documentary Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savileregarding his involvement with child abuse. This includes a substantial chunk of Top of the Pops's run and the entirety of Jim'll Fix It.
Speaking of Top of the Pops, BBC Four re-runs either skip or edit a number of other episodes:
Episodes hosted by Dave Lee Travis, due to his groping conviction.
Episodes hosted by Mike Smith, who was due to sign a licensing agreement to permit rebroadcasts when the Savile revelations happened and every news report used footage of the one episode they presented together. He then blocked all footage of any of his shows being used and passed away before the re-runs got to his episodes, meaning the episodes are still blocked today.
Episodes featuring Jonathan King hosting a US charts segment are edited to remove him due to his pedophilia convictions. This occasionally also removes other performances as he sometimes linked back to a performance happening back in the UK.
Episodes featuring performances by convicted pedophile Gary Glitter (who later hosted the show a few times in the 90's) are edited to remove him (unless he appears during the UK chart rundown). Prior to the Savile revelations, his footage was left intact since it was felt that enough time had passed and he does not earn any royalties from the re-runs.
Episodes featuring performances by Rolf Harris are edited for similar reasons. It is assumed if episodes from the 2000's are re-run, then performances by Lostprophets will also be removed.
Subverted with an episode of Tweenies featuring a Jimmy Savile impersonator. This episode was accidentally aired by The BBC nine days after the investigation report was published, prompting complaints. An apology was made a few hours later, promising they wouldn't show that episode ever again.
The Sketch ComedyScotch and Wry has had a few compilation DVDs but the whole series has never been released in its entirety.
Due to music rights issues, Shoestring wasn't released on DVD in its entirety until 2017. By that point it hadn't been rerun since 2002 and was practically impossible to find.
Demon-hunting drama Strange, consisting of a pilot episode and a six-episode series, has never been released on DVD, and is only occasionally broadcast on other channels.
Good luck finding any of the (surviving) episodes of The Wednesday Play or Play For Today that weren't hugely popular/controversial like Cathy Come Home, Abigail's Party, or Brimstone and Treacle.
Abigail's Party at least was released on BBC Video in The '80s, and can be watched on YouTube.
Many shows presented by Clive James have also suffered from this. Snippets of his talkshows do turn up on YouTube from time to time, but will likely not see reruns or a DVD release soon seeing that he often pokes fun at archive footage from other TV stations for which copyright needs to be paid. Another example of this is his 1993 ambitious documentary series Fame In The 20th Century, about celebrities in the 20th century. The show used a lot of archive footage and clips from films and TV series, again bringing copyright problems into the mix. There is a book about the series, though, and it is available online on James' personal web site. On the Internet itself there is hardly any footage of this series to be found.
The Sparticle Mystery, a show where a machine designed to detect parallel universes sends everyone 15 or older into a parallel universe, fits this trope to some extent. In the US, Series 1 and 2 are available on Netflix, but shows come and go from there, and there's no way to download available shows. Series 3 is even scarcer, as it's only available from the BBC Store - and if you aren't connecting to the Internet from within the UK, you aren't getting in there. Furthermore, there are no copies anywhere on DVD or Blu-ray. Fortunately, all the episodes can be found floating around somewhere on the Internet.
Hitring, a music program, has gone down in history as the very first winner of De HA! Van Humo, but due to the fact that it was so badly preserved only segments of episodes are available for viewing.
Celluloid Rock, a documentary detailing the history of rock, has become unavailable for viewing. Thankfully its content has been put in books.
The Beachcombers. Aside from being one of the longest-running Canadian drama series ever made, the series basically redefined the concept of 'CanCon' (Canadian-made programming). Part of the problem may be the show's length; it ran for an astounding 19 seasons (plus a pair of made-for-TV movies). The only way you can watch the series right now is via old reruns on Canadian specialty stations.
Even then, the reruns are only of the last few seasons. The first decade or so (considered by many to be the best years of the show) is still locked in the vault. The CBC has been refusing to release them for years, for unknown reasons.
A rather sad example would be Christmas Dreams, a 2009 Made-for-TV Movie about a girl who stumbles upon a magical store while searching for a gift for her sister, and ends up striking an Intergenerational Friendship with its owner. Edward Asner and Tom Cavanagh costar. All the while, the characters perform some of the more rarely sung Christmas songs like 'Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep' from White Christmas and 'Maybe This Christmas' by Ron Sexsmith. While it's a worthy Genre Throwback to older Christmas films, it was only aired once, and was never seen on any channel, broadcast or cable, ever again. It's not available online or on any streaming services, and didn't even get a video release. The only video footage that can be found is a two-minute trailer created by Tricon Films, the movie's production company.note A shame, since it's so recent that circulating the tapes shouldn't be a problem for it.
Then again, since the movie relies so much on obscure Christmas songs, music rights issues might be in play here - though like Kids Incorporated, they'd be easier to clear since all of the songs are sung by the characters and not the original artists. Why it still hasn't aired since is a mystery for the ages. Perhaps the world was not ready for a new lavish Christmas TV movie and decided to stick with more familiar stuff like Rudolph, Frosty and The Grinch for much of the foreseeable future...
Seasons 4-7 of Da Vinci's Inquest have not been released on DVD, nor the spinoff series DaVinci's City Hall or the TV movie The Quality of Life (which in itself was a victim of Executive Meddling). The only legal releases were DVD sets given out to the cast and crew. It's believed that low sales are to blame for the missing seasons, which is surprising, considering that the program was consistently the most-watched show on Canadian television for most of its run. Thankfully the syndicated rights are so cheap in the United States you can find it from a good American friend willing to record it off RTV, WGN or syndication for you.
The Edison Twins was a popular children's series that aired on the CBC (and on The Disney Channel in the US) in the 1980s. Except for a handful of episodes on VHS, the series has never seen a proper video release. While the entire run can be bought on Amazon Instant Video, it's available only in the US, and not Canada, its country of origin.
Four on the Floor, radio comedy troupe The Frantics' attempt to break into television, ran for a single series of 13 episodes in 1986; it has not been released on video, although episodes sometimes show up on YouTube.
The Friendly Giant. The show ran from 1958-85, but aside from scattered video tapings from syndicated airings, very few episodes have ever been released in their entirety. CBC doesn't have any shame in marketing merchandise based on the show (or using the puppets in lewd sketches, as evidenced by a controversial 2010 Gemini Awards broadcast), though.
The Listener. If you're an American, the series got cancelled halfway through the 1st season (of 5). In any case, the only DVD listing is for a region 2 release of Season 1, which won't even play in Canada (you know, the country of origin)! Even torrents are somewhat difficult to find.
While Made in Canada (aka The Industry) is still aired on some US public television stations and the Canadian channel Bite, only the six-episode Season 1 was made into a DVD, which is now out-of-print.
Mr. Dressup, a children's program that was to Canada what Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was to America.note The series ran for almost 40 years, and inspired entire generations of Canadian children. Ernie Coombs even won several awards for his work. Yet, aside from a one-off 'Tickle Treasures' collection of 4 random episodes (picked by two of the show's puppet co-hosts) and a smattering of online episodes on YouTube, the series isn't available to buy anywhere.
MythQuest: Aired 13 episodes in 2001. Reruns showed up occasionally, but were few and far between. The situation got better in 2012, when Netflix picked up the show, but only for the USA.
Even though every episode of The Red Green Show has been made available on DVD at one point or another, the producers of the show have taken the (perhaps unprecedented) step of putting all 15 seasons and 300 episodes of the series on YouTube themselves.
The landmark sketch comedy show SCTV. Seasons 1-2 (filmed in Toronto), most of Season 3 (shot in Alberta), and Season 6 (which aired on cable channels on both sides of the U.S./Canada border) still haven't been released in any way, shape or form. Seasons 4-5 (the Network 90 seasons broadcast on NBC in the U.S.) were released by Shout! Factory after a long period of music rights clearance issues, but sketches were dropped because the rights couldn't be cleared.
Sesame Park. Yes, there was a Canadian version of Sesame Street. This iteration of the show ran for six years from 1996 to 2002, and consisted of almost-entirely Canadian content with unique Muppets created specifically for the show, including Basil The Bear, the cat Chaos, and the wheelchair-bound Anything Muppet Katie. Despite the fact that it was a critical darling during its run, the show was unceremoniously canned and nothing has been said of it ever since. The reason it didn't catch on was that the real Sesame Street was still watchable in Canada since PBS appears on many Canadian cable services, and thus harmed the show's ratings. While clips of the show can be found on YouTube (and are further hard to find because the show title is so common), there are only two full episodes on said website so far.
DVD releases of This Hour Has 22 Minutes stalled after Season 2 due to unknown reasons. This could possibly be because of low sales - the show never really hit its stride until the 1996-97 season, which saw the cast start interacting in increasingly outlandish ways with Canadian politicians. This one's less painful than most, because you can still catch repeats of later seasons of the channel, but if you're looking for the famous incidents like Rick Mercer's 'Doris Day' petition or Paul Martin putting Greg Thomey in a headlock, you'll have to go search it out on YouTube or try iTunes.
In the same vein, the one-off special Talking To Americans (where 22 Minutes co-host Rick Mercer travels around the United States getting random U.S. residents to verify ridiculous statements he makes, simply because he claims to be a journalist). It was the highest-rated special in the channel's history. It propelled Mercer to the big leagues. Had him making fun of future President George W. Bush and Mike Huckabee months (and years) before they would reach the national stage. Won several Gemini Awards. Got repeated in syndication for years afterwards. Online copies of the special still get tens of thousands of hits. Yet, the special still hasn't been released because Mercer feels it was in bad taste after the events of September 11, 2001. You can still watch it online, though.
To be fair to the CBC, however, one can see why 22 Minutes at least hasn't been released, as the series focuses on topical humour about issues of the day, and thus would be considered outdated and likely of limited commercial appeal (though that hasn't stopped decade-old reruns from being syndicated...), considering many of today's consumers probably don't even remember who Paul Martin is. There may be interest from a nostalgia point of view at a later date, but the show is likely considered too recent for even that.
The interstitials in CBC's children's programming blocks. Most of them aren't available anywhere. One particularly glaring example is Get Set For Life (2000-2003). It featured none other than Alyson Court as the main host, yet there's barely so much as a mention of it online, and YouTube didn't get any part of it until spring 2015. As of then there's still very little footage circulating anywhere, so if you have a VHS converter, a YouTube account and any part of the block recorded from its run, get at it! A considerably less hard to find official soundtrack album entitled Get Set To Sing with Alyson and Michael was made in 2002, which will pop up here and there around the thrift store/yard sale circuit and occasionally on sites like eBay.
The Noddy Shop had a few home video releases in the United Kingdom and Australia with the UK voices for the Noddy segments (two on VHS and one on DVD) and the Internet Archive has the episode 'Skunked' as part of it's 9/11 archive.note The rest of the episodes cannot be found anywhere, unless viewers have tapes of episodes recorded off PBS, TV Ontario, Get Set For Life or CBBC. The show was going to get a North American VHS release and avert this trope, but oddly enough, they wound up only releasing the American-dubbed Noddy's Toyland Adventures segments with musical interludes in between each one.
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Beakman's World has been available to stream in its (almost) entirety on Netflix, but there is still no full DVD release forthcoming (though it has been released in Mexico and Brazil, where it's far more popular). Looks like we're stuck with the 'Best of' set made after Season 1...
Bobby Vinton's Rock N Rollers, a 1978 hour-long 50's throwback TV special that also featured Stockard Channing, Penny Marshall and Eric Estrada among others. All that exists online is a promo, which is in circulation solely because it aired during The Star Wars Holiday Special.
Central Park West was a Prime Time Soap about a pair of siblings (Madchen Amick and John Barrowman) living it up in the world of rich, backstabbing New York socialites. The show, produced by Melrose Place co-creator Darren Star, was an attempt by CBS to cash in on that show's success at a time when they were trying to court a younger demographic, and had a name cast including Mariel Hemingway and Lauren Hutton. It floundered in the ratings, though, and disappeared without a trace after a disastrous midseason Retool.
Close to Home was a legal drama that ran from 2005-07. And nothing has been said of it since. Fans believe that the backlash that resulted when the main character's husband was killed off resulted in the studio deciding not to put any effort into releasing it.
Cold Case used roughly five popular songs per episode. Unfortunately, removing them would ruin the flashback sequences, which are the whole point of the show.
Early Edition was a victim of this for a long time, though Seasons 1-2 have since been released. No word on the last two, though, and it's been a while since it was rerun.
EZ Streets: 3 episodes were released on DVD in 2006. No word on the remaining 6.
Forever Knight's first season aired on CBS in their old late-night 'Crime Time After Prime Time' slot, with the odd scheduling quirk that Season One aired for over a season and a half to hold the slot for David Letterman's talk show. While the show was fighting for a second season, some fans asked series creator James Parriott about the tapes they'd been circulating. His reply was widely reported to be, 'Be fruitful and multiply!'note
Frank's Place. A classic example of Too Good to Last, this critically-acclaimed but low-rated dramedy was cancelled after one season on CBS. A DVD release is unlikely due to music-clearance issues.
Fresno, a miniseries that parodied Dallas and shows like it (it was set in Fresno on a raisin plantation), only aired once on broadcast TV and has never been released in hard copy.
He & She, the sophisticated, Emmy-winning sitcom starring Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss which aired for a single season in 1967-68. Considered the precursor to the more 'mature' style of situation comedy of the 1970s, it has never been released to home video in any form, and has been rerun very rarely.
Jake and the Fatman: Despite a healthy 5-season run; the series only made it Season 2 before DVD releases stalled due to poor sales. Additionally; unlike parent series Matlock and spinoff Diagnosis: Murder; this show has been little-seen in syndication since it ended in 1992.
Julie Andrews: One Step Into Spring was to receive a DVD release by April 2013, which was briefly moved to March 2014 (to compete with Muppets Most Wanted, as The Muppets are heavily featured in the special) before being shelved entirely (though it is still listed on sites like Amazon). Again, can be found on YouTube.
Lou Grant was unavailable in May 2016, where Shout! Factory released the first season.
Like ABC, CBS ran a few specials featuring The Muppets that are currently in video limbo.
The Muppets Go Hollywood (1979): A variety special tie-in to The Muppet Movie, notable in that it was apparently never rerun,note even in syndication packages of Muppet specials (i.e., the one Nickelodeon had in The '90s). However, it was released on VHS in 1988 by Films Incorporated; this release was distributed to educational outlets that year.
The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years (1986 Milestone Celebration special): Palace Video in the UK released a VHS sometime in the late 80's.
The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson (1990): Created in the wake of Jim Henson's sudden death, this HeartwarmingTear Jerker of a special (which won the Writer's Guild of America award) is caught in video limbo due to the fractured ownership of Henson-related properties: Disney owns the 'classic' Muppets, Sesame Workshop has the Sesame Street crew, Sony has non-Muppet works like Labyrinth...
The Henson Company also teamed up with Paulist Productions to create a one-off Christmas Eve mass special in 2013. Dubbed A New York Christmas To Remember, it was presented at New York's St. Paul The Apostle church, and its major selling point was a nativity dramatization narrated by Regis Philbin and with puppets by Jim's then-recently deceased wife Jane. Like most Christmas Eve mass specials, it hasn't been rerun, and it was presented on YouTube briefly in 2014-15, but taken down by Paulist shortly after. It has, however, been circulated on at least one trading site (but we'd rather not say which one).
Murphy Brown. Thanks to music rights tangles (and low sales — buy the season, fans!), everything after Season 1 is stalled. That's 200+ episodes sitting around collecting dust in a Warner Bros. vault. Even when it was in syndication, it was usually shoehorned into horrible middle-of-the-night timeslots. The only way to have a semi-complete viewing experience is through torrents and downloads, which happen to be plagued by at least five missing episodes and the occasional removal of certain scenes for syndication (such as Mike Wallace's appearance in the Grand Finale). Since you can torrent 90% of the series, that already makes this situation better than most...but be prepared for long waits if you want to try, since the torrents rarely have seeds. Things have improved a bit since Encore Classic started airing the show in December 2013, but since that's a premium channel you only get as part of a multi-channel package, you're paying more to watch the show than you should be, and thanks to the always fun Copy Protection thrown on premium channel recordings, forget about burning it to DVD. Reruns are also on Antenna TV, but it only airs late at night. Eighteen random episodes did appear on CBS All Access to promote the revival.
Looking for a home video release of the much-maligned The New Perry Mason? Too bad, because CBS wants nothing to do with that series. Also doesn't help that they don't even own the series despite owning the franchise; the show was produced and owned by 20th Century Fox Television, who had also provided production facilities to CBS for the original Perry Mason series. Unless you happen to own a recording or kinescope print of an episode or two, then you're screwed.
Night Heat, a Canadian police drama series (produced by CTV) that aired as part of CBS' 'Crime Time After Prime Time' block of drama programming — it and Forever Knight (see above) were the first Canadian-produced dramas to ever air on an American network. Even though the show was generally praised for its edgy content, and featured some early appearances by noted actors like Keanu Reeves, the series still hasn't been made available on DVD. Thankfully, it still runs in syndication on Canadian channels like TVTropolis.
Now and Again was a one-season-wonder in 1999-2000 that has been perennially around the top of the requested list for unreleased shows on the website TV Shows on DVD, but it didn't receive an official DVD release until 2014.
Our Miss Brooks was a winner in the Nielsen ratings during its 1952-1956 television run, however only the episodes 'Home Cooked Meal' and 'The Big Jump' have been released on legitimate DVD. Happily averted with the radio episodes (1948-1956), which have lapsed into public domain and are available online. Also averted with the movie, which is available from the Warner Brothers' Archive Collection and occasionally airs on Turner Classic Movies.
Partners, because of low ratings and was met with negative reviews, CBS stopped airing it halfway through. The only place that the complete series was aired was in South Africa, which means that North America will probably not get a DVD release any time soon.
Phyllis: Unavailable on DVD.
Rescue 911, though immensely popular in its own right, has yet to see a DVD release (likely due to the true stories involved). However, that hasn't stopped people from posting various episodes online.
Rhoda: Seasons 1-4 on DVD, Season 5 MIA. Season 4 was an online exclusive release from Shout! Factory, and all the DVDs have episodes that were Edited for Syndication. Uncut episodes of Season 1 will remain a hot item. That said, Shout! Factory deliberately delayed the release of later seasons to get as much original footage as possible.
Riders In The Sky: A very brief 1991-1992 series, perhaps best described as Pee-wee's PlayhouseIN THE WILD WEST!, and with the 'Riders in the Sky' troupe as the leads. Clips do pop up on YouTube from time to time, enough to prove that the series existed, but almost no full episodes. ( After Paul Reubens' arrest in the early 90s, Playhouse was pulled from CBS' reruns schedule. Riders was more or less a hastily put-together Suspiciously Similar Substitute to occupy that time slot and let the Playhouse fade away naturally.)
The Gone with the Wind sequel miniseries Scarlett was a rarity even on VHS, but attaining a DVD is even more difficult. It's one of the most sought-after titles on the format.
The Sentinel: Season 1 was released on DVD around 2005, none of the remaining three seasons have been released.
Silk Stalkings after Season 5 has not been released, and the DVD releases of the first 5 seasons have gone out of print.
Still Standing: Not a single season has been released on DVD, and as of writing this, is no longer syndicated (at least in America).
Switch (1975) has never been released on home video, and currently can only be watched online.
The White Shadow: Seasons 1-2 on DVD, Season 3 MIA.
Wiseguy. The second half of Season 2 was the 'Dead Dog Records' arc, and of course it involved a lot of music.
Without a Trace, Seasons 3-7.
A Year at the Top ran for five episodes in 1977. It was never rerun or released on home media, and is now impossible to find, legally or otherwise.
Yes, Dear, Why this show isn't available in any form of media is anyone's guess. Hope you managed to record reruns on TBS, CMT or on Nick Jr.. through their NickMom block.
Channel 4's cult smash As If (2001-04) has completely disappeared off the face of the earth, seemingly due to the perennial licensing rights for the soundtrack problem. They'd mostly fixed this issue by the time Skins (basically As Ifwith younger people and more MDMA, and in Bristol not London — they still paid just as much attention to the soundtrack, though) happened, although there's still a few tracks where they wonked out (the replacement of Lily Allen's 'The Fear' with Katy Perry's 'I Kissed A Girl' in Series 3 being the most egregious). Likewise the short-lived Cultural Translation which aired on UPN. However in this case the remake was universally reviled and it's For Your Own Good that you avoid it in any form.
The original British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? outside of the UK. There's only one set of Series 1-2 on both sides of the Atlantic. A&E, who released the Region 1 British box set, has let it run out of print and no longer acknowledges its existence. American viewers can watch British Whose Line on Hulu...the last two series, to be precise. There's no legal way to watch Seasons 3-8 in America anymore, since Comedy Central (its original U.S. syndicator, though BBC America briefly reran episodes in the early 2000s) took the show off their lineup a long time ago—and even then, they only showed Seasons 6-10 because, since the American version gained popularity, they thought nobody would want to watch Whose Line without Ryan and Colin. British fans get to watch the whole thing through 4 On Demand, but they lock out foreign IPs. And the vast majority of episodes you could find on the internet were either from Comedy Central or BBC America broadcasts, which were all edited for time and often for content (remember, these aired before South Park became popular).
BattleBots. You'd think there'd be some DVD release of the series now that a Summer 2015 reboot is definitely happening. Only two DVDs/VHS tapes were ever released, neither with actual seasons on them (one was a clip show, the other showed one of the 1999 Pay-Per-View events). Not only that, but most of the episodes were only run two or three times. Season 5 episodes were only aired once.
The Chappelle's Show DVDs are missing about half of the live music performances (probably because of rights issues). However, Comedy Central periodically reruns the episodes, so resourceful viewers can get copies of these.
Like most talk shows, you only ever see recent episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The only DVD releases are a compilation of episodes dealing with the 2004 election and a 'Best Of' collection, respectively. But every segment (all of them!) is available on their website. Even going back to 1999!
Segments from the Craig Kilborn era of The Daily Show are non-existent, either on the website or on DVD. It's likely that the network's Old Shame toward this run of the series has kept it from ever resurfacing (aside from brief flashbacks shown on Stewart-era episodes). Comedy Central's website doesn't even acknowledge Kilborn's stint at all. On an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where Colbert reunited his fellow correspondents, Stewart noted Colbert was on the show before him with Kilborn. Colbert noted the tapes of that era are impossible to find, and went on to say that there is no proof the Daily Show existed before Jon Stewart became the host. Whether or not Colbert was being humorous or serious about this position depends on how you interpret the moment.
I'm With Busey. Episodes have routinely appeared online, and petitions have been started for Comedy Central to release the show on DVD. As of 2017, the show is still unavailable on home video.
Emergency Vets was a popular reality/medical series on Animal Planet that ran from 1998 to 2002 with a follow-up episode in 2005 and a special in 2006. There has never been official video/DVD release of any of it. Very few full episodes exist online. Later, a spin-off show, E-Vet Interns, started airing in 2007. It lasted more than a whole season, with only three episodes made in the second season before production stopped. It hasn't been released either.
That's My Baby was only ever released on the VideoNow PVD format.
The 2005 Discovery Channel documentary series It Takes a Thief (2005) has this problem, as well. It was received fairly well (with the hosts making occasional rounds to various cable news channels) and lasted two seasons. Then, in 2007, it mysteriously disappeared and hasn't been released by Discovery on DVD. This is strange, as Discovery usually releases almost anything it shows on DVD. It gets stranger, as the network decided to rebroadcast the whole series in 2009...in full High Definition for both seasons.
Junkyard Wars: Despite being the spiritual ancestor of of shows like MythBusters (and being co-hosted by one of the stars of Red Dwarf, to boot), there's been no sign of a North American DVD release of this show.
Monster House (no, not that one) vanished off both the Discovery Channel and the Internet with little fanfare and hasn't been heard from since. Which is puzzling, given that its older-sibling series Monster Garage is available.
Justifiably, Sons of Guns, which was easily found on all services at the start of 2014, is no longer available at all in any form due to the show's main cast member committing a Role-Ending Misdemeanor involving the sexual assault of a child; Discovery pulled it as soon as they could, outside of a contractual obligation to Netflix that kept it there until the Discovery deal ended.
Walt Disney Home Video is notorious for not releasing complete-season sets of recent shows, at least in the US. And in some cases the episodes released have been edited together. Hannah Montana in an example: to date, Disney has only released the first and fourth seasons as sets in North America, along with compilations of scattered episodes.
Adventures in Wonderland never got a DVD release, much to the annoyance of its fans. Currently, it can only be obtained through old VHS releases and on video-sharing sites like YouTube.
Bear in the Big Blue House was released heavily in the United States on both VHS and DVD, but many episodes were never given a U.S. release. Still want them? Your best bet is to try and source a DVD copy of the episodes from a foreign website. (That, or you look up the entire series in Polish.)
Bunnytown, only received one DVD release, though the series is available on Hulu.
Flash Forward (not the 2009 ABC show), which starred a pre-Firefly and Space Cases Jewel Staite and Ben Foster, and featured a few guest appearances from Ryan Gosling. Not only did the Disney Channel stop rerunning episodes around 2001 when Lizzie McGuire took off, it's nigh impossible to find any clips of it anywhere online. Fortunately, the entire show is available on YouTube.
As soon as the final episode of Hannah Montana aired, they NEVER reran it again (in the US) for some unknown reason. One rumor was it was related to Billy Ray Cyrus. Previously you can watch the whole show if you have Netflix, and some episodes of the show can be seen at differing times on the channel's Disney Replay block, but you can watch the whole thing through the Disney NOW app, but of course you'll still need a participating Pay TV Provider account to access it.
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. While all three films have been released on DVD, the TV series never has, and now it's off the air again after the end of Hub Network.
Johnny and the Sprites, a puppet/live-action hybrid featuring John Tartaglia, only ever received one DVD release and one music album. It was later picked up for repeats on Disney Junior after the change-over from Playhouse Disney.
Kids Incorporated on DVD would be a fan's nightmare — every single song (barring the original ones) would have to be cut; that said, since all the songs are performed by the kids and aren't the original recordings of the songs, so it'll be easier to clear rights. There's one other issue, though — the rights are split between MGM (the show itself), Disney (holders of the physical tapes), and 20th Century Fox (MGM's current DVD distributor).
Out of the Box was a Playhouse Disney classic—a live-action sketch show featuring a man & woman named Tony & Vivian and a group of kids who got together every day to do arts and crafts projects, story skits and musical numbers, almost like an American version of Art Attack. It had a couple of VHS releases and very, very, very scant DVD exposure. To make matters worse, no full episodes are available on YouTube, just some clips.
Snow White Live at Radio City Music Hall hasn't been seen for years due to an ongoing pay dispute with one of the performers. To date, it's only been available on off-air recordings of the HBO and Disney Channel broadcasts and an out-of-print official VHS/Betamax release by Disney.
So Weird: Sadly, the show was not popular enough to get a DVD release, let's not even talk about a Soundtrack album... the complete series can still be found in VCR quality in torrent. The same goes for some individual rips of songs and an incomplete collection of more songs, with bad quality and many dialogues over the lyrics... still totally worth it.
Under the Umbrella Tree was a Canadian series created for CBC (see above) in The '80s but is more well-known for being syndicated through Disney. Check Noreen Young's site to buy DVD's - which are independently released, since Disney's rights to the show expired in 2005.
Welcome to Pooh Corner, one of Disney Channel's first original programs, has had only a handful of VHS releases from the mid-1980s (all out of print and almost impossible to find, at least in good condition) and a Disney-licensed educational DVD with only two episodes available. Outside of that, it's been out of reruns for years and there are no plans for any sort of official DVD release or digital download, leaving people who want to find non-home-video-released episodes to check their old Disney Channel recordings.
Most of the pre-2004 Disney Channel movies aren't available on DVD. Some of them are on video, but those are long gone. One particular movie stands out in this regard - it's considerably easier to hear 'My Hero Is You', the song Hayden Panettiere performs over the end credits of Tiger Cruise, than to see the movie itself. Many older DCOMs are more or less out of circulation, but this one was rarely shown even when it was new (admittedly the movie, in which September 11th plays a major part, is a change in tone from its stablemates) and despite the presence of Panettiere (in the lead role), Bill Pullman and iCarly's Jennette McCurdy, has never been released on DVD. Those interested have to resort to YouTube (especially those living outside the US).
To celebrate the 100th Original MovieAdventures in Babysitting (2016), Disney Channel has put their films up on Amazon Video, iTunes and Google Play. And yes, that includes Tiger Cruise and some movies tied in with shows that have yet to see their episodes become available to download. Their pre-1997 films (or Premiere Films) on the other hand will most likely not see the light of day.
Much like the above example: until 2014 almost nothing on Disney Channel was available through any means other than being aired on Disney Channel itself, including past series (meaning that many series only had a few select episodes available for viewing - on YouTube, hosted illegally through independent third parties and were frequently subjected to being taken down). In 2013 it started airing the 'Disney Replay' block featuring older shows that hadn't been shown on the network in years but, again, the only legal means to access these episodes was either through directly watching this block or recording it on DVR. In 2014 Disney Channel finally started uploading complete series of select shows on Netflix, but that remains the only means to legally have random/on-demand access to shows outside directly from Disney Channel services. And of course you can watch even the old ones on the Disney NOW app, but a Pay TV Provider account is needed to watch them all.
Lunch Box, a show that showcased several shorts from around the world based off books as well as the occasional Direct-to-Video production like Mother Goose Rock 'N Rhyme and Barney And The Backyard Gang. Like similar shows of the era that showcased foreign productions as part of a newer show, it would be very hard to get the rights to every individual short featured on there.
Sing Me A Story With Belle, a syndicated Disney series where Belle from Beauty and the Beast owns the bookshop in her village, had two VHS releases consisting of two episodes each. The VHS release of the direct-to-video film Belle's Magical World also contained two episodes as bonus features, as did its DVD release as well as the DVD release of Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. The show was never released in full on any format, and the aforementioned releases do not cover all 26 episodes of the show. If you still want to watch it, a quick YouTube search should give you most of the episodes.
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21 Jump Streetwas actually released in its entirety on DVD, but people (mostly, those who had watched its original run in the late '80s) felt cheated that it didn't feature the original soundtrack, and complained a lot about that online. The series was pretty iconic for featuring lots of music by artists then-and-still-now famous, or of artists that later became famous; apparently because getting Copyright to put this on DVD was deemed too expensive to the producers, this was all replaced by muzak and music by little-known artists. note
Bakersfield, P.D. aired on FOX for one season and despite being re-aired on Trio under 'Brilliant But Canceled' has never been released on DVD. Several episodes were uploaded to YouTube but all 17 episodes are virtually impossible to find.
The Bernie Mac Show beyond Season 1, likely due to music clearance issues. The series is currently airing on Bounce TV.
Brimstone. It was Screwed by the Network, but then again, it's FOX, after all.
Good luck finding the original Fox run of Don’t Forget the Lyrics, as the only episodes airing anywhere on television are the 2010-2011 syndicated version.
The Fox Clubhouse in its entirety is like this, due to the multiple copyrights behind the shows that were a part of the show. The only one of the shows which ever got a complete release in North America was The Animal Show With Stinky and Jake. The other shows have been released in one way or another, but for U.S. fans, it's a problem:
Johnson and Friends: Australia got the whole series on DVD, but the United States didn't have the same luck. An official Johnson and Friends YouTube channel used to exist that had all of the episodes uploaded, but the channel went under in 2018 for unknown reasons.
Rimbas Island: There are only two VHS tapes in existence featuring this show, which was part of the already-rare-itself Bright Beginnings collection from Buena Vista Home Video and DIC Toon-Time Video. The other episodes of the show are impossible to find.
The Magic Adventures of Mumfie: See the Western Animation page for details.
Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension. An oft-forgotten Saturday morning sci-fi series that aired on Fox Kids during the 2001-02 season (their final season as Fox Kids), which had a surprisingly good plot to it. Unfortunately, the show has yet to see a DVD release due to a lack of interest, because few people remember it.
The Good Guys was a 2010 Buddy Cop Show made by Matt Nix, the creator of Burn Notice. Most likely due to music rights (the show was never very popular), the show will never see a DVD release. Netflix saved this one from being lost forever, as the music of Foghat, Queen and others contributed the atmosphere of the show.
Key West, despite an overwhelming demand for a DVD release of its only season, isn't likely to be released any time soon. The usual reason given is that Fox doesn't believe it would sell, despite the vocal demands of the fans of this show.
K-Ville, a short but relatively well-received series, has still not had any kind of DVD release, despite the show ending in late 2007. Fortunately, the episodes can be found on Hulu and Xfinity- for free.
Much like Saturday Night Live, MADtv also has DVD release issues, though not because of Old Shame or music licensing issues but rather poor sales. Warner Bros. only released Season 1 and a 'Best of' compilation drawn from Seasons 8-10. Despite promises of a Season 2 DVD release on the Season 1 set, it didn't arrive until 2013 — nearly ten years after the first set — and it was released by Shout! Factory instead of WB.
Music rights were cited as the reason fans of Malcolm in the Middle are unable to obtain DVDs of Season 2 onwards, with no one entertaining the possibility of simply replacing the contested music. However, the show is available on Hulu (every episode from seasons one to seven is present and accounted for and the music that would have been removed from a DVD release is there), and DVDs for all 7 seasons (with the music in tact) were later released in the U.K. and Australia.
Models Inc., a spinoff of FOX's Melrose Place focusing on Amanda Woodward's (Heather Locklear) mother, Hilary, who ran a modeling agency. Aside from a marathon airing on E! Television, the show has never been officially released.
The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg only ever had one home video release, a long out-of-print VHS with the series premiere as a feature-length movie, and has never been released on DVD...except in, of all places, Germany.
The New Addams Family, aired on Fox Family, has never been released on DVD, or even VHS, in North America, as the rights are now tied up with Disney (owner of co-producer Saban's library), Corus Entertainment and the Charles Addams estate. The only DVD release was from the UK as a 2-disc set containing the first eight episodes. Its pilot film, Addams Family Reunion, hasn't fared much better, having only been released on VHS, which is now out-of-print and fairly pricey on eBay.
The 1990s hip-hop cop drama New York Undercover probably won't make it to DVD (and will take years if it does) because of music rights. Like Cold Case, they use a lot of popular songs; removing them would damage the show. NYU also featured a lot of live performances by top artists of the period (Keith Sweat, Boyz II Men, and Notorious B.I.G. among others). In most episodes, they were shown at the end once the case was solved, and so cutting those might not hurt the integrity of the show...but for episodes where the artists performed in the middle of the show, cutting them would mess things up. At least you can watch reruns on TV One....and Centric.
Saban's Masked Rider has had very few episodes released on DVD. What's surprising, though, is the lack of online availability. For a series that debuted in the mid-90s and was a spin-off of the phenomenally popular Power Rangers, the fact that a good chunk of it has only in the late 2000s seen widespread circulation is unbelievable.
There's a good reason for this: the show was a horribly-doneMacekre, to the point where the Japanese creator of the franchise is said to have sworn to never let it be licensed in America again.
Profit was an example of this for a long time until Anchor Bay released all twelve episodes (eight aired; four unaired) on DVD. It got to the point where David Greenwald, the series creator, circulated the tapes himself with DVD sets that he himself made!
So You Think You Can Dance. The legal issues surrounding the music involved make a DVD release next to impossible. Fortunately, most of the individual dances, if not full episodes, can be found on YouTube.
The Street was a short-lived 2000 series that would probably be totally forgotten if not for the fact that it was the only TV show to feature Jennifer Connelly in the cast. Even after she won an Academy Award and became a familiar Hollywood actress, Sony never saw fit to release the series on DVD or sell rerun rights to another channel.
The Tick season one got a U.S. DVD release but was missing an episode, 'The Tick vs. The Mole-Men'. Season two was released in the U.S. without the episode 'Alone Together'. The reasons why these episodes are omitted is unclear. Season three was not released in the U.S. although UK DVD sets of all three seasons with all episodes included have been released.
Time of Your Life, a very obscure spin-off of Party of Five, has yet to see the light of day on DVD. However, the entire series aired on a French TV station at one point, and a YouTube user was lucky to capture that.
The War at Home surprisingly got a DVD release of Season 1, but not 2, which is currently only available online. Notably, season 1 got far less positive reviews than the next one, which was praised for its tackling of homosexuality.
Werewolf was one of the first shows the FOX network aired, and lasted two seasons. Unfortunately, it featured some popular music, and music rights are reportedly the main holdup on getting a DVD release. Airings on cable channels have included some, but not all, episodes because of this. Shout! Factory was supposed to release it on DVD, but the release was quietly cancelled.
Woops!, a post-apocalyptic sitcom from 1992. Only the pilot and last episode circulate online — good news for the latter, as it was notorious enough to warrant a placement in What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events In Television History.
Arliss, starring Robert Wuhl as an unscrupulous Jerry Maguire-like sports agent, has never been released on DVD. Despite the show running for six seasons and being modestly popular, its only DVD release was a 'Best Of' collection that was released in 2001, and only featured 13 episodes from different seasons (but it's very easily acquirable as a $2 discount DVD collection at Walgreens thanks to extreme overprinting). Not only were no episodes from the second or third season featured, but it didn't bother to include the pilot or series finale. There has been no interest from HBO as far as releasing the series in a long time, and it's impossible to find online as well.
There's a reason for this: it's something of an Old Shame for the network. Arli$$ was long considered the lone black spot on HBO's otherwise stellar line up. It was a punchline to jokes about bad 21st century TV shows on everything from Saturday Night Livenote to The Simpsons. Furthermore, the show only lasted as long as it did because of the fact that Robert Wuhl was best friends with a high ranking HBO executive who kept the show going as a favor to his friend.
Encyclopedia was a collaboration between HBO and Sesame Workshop that covered a different letter of the alphabet in every episode, with up to twelve different segments of skits or songs covering encyclopedia topics. Although it earned positive reviews from critics and won some Emmys, it hasn’t been re-released or re-aired since the 1990s. Clips and episodes of the show are rather scarce online, and although the show supposedly had all its episodes released on VHS, only the “B” episode has ever been able to be found online for purchase alongside a tie-in puzzle book. It doesn’t help that not only is the show’s title rather hard to Google, it shares a similar name to another HBO series from around that time, Encyclopedia Brown.
Most episodes of the Encyclopedia Brown series saw release on VHS, except for 'The Case of the Incredible Culpepper'. You can likely find them at your local library, but other than those tapes, they haven’t been re-released or re-aired in any form either.
The Hitchhiker, a three-season anthology featuring a mysterious wanderer who tells stories about humanity's dark side, never had a complete series release, despite being marketed as such. A three-volume set of various episodes from throughout the show's run were released by HBO Home Video in 2004, but were later discontinued, as was a Canadian release of seasons 1 and 3 in 2004. A Hitchhiker: The Complete Collection was released by Alliance Entertainment in 2011, but is not actually 'complete' - it only has 30 episodes of 85. Part of the reason why the full series has never been released is a rights dispute over the second season.
The anthology series LifeStories: Families in Crisis (which dramatized true stories of families dealing with hot-button issues) ran for years on the network and briefly ran in syndication as well, but has never been seen on DVD. Even though the show featured a few actors before they were famous (such as Ben Affleck and Calista Flockhart) and airs occasionally on HBO Family, HBO has limited interest in releasing it.
HBO used to broadcast recordings of live theater productions, as did many other early pay-cable services. With the apparent exception of a Sherlock Holmes play (airs occasionally on premium cable channels) and the 1982 Camelot revival starring Richard Harris (saw a DVD release) these have all vanished into obscurity.
Art Attack. Yeah, the arts and crafts show. The show ran through more than a decade and was eventually cancelled in 2007. It was 'revived' in the late 2010s, yet there's not much left, not even in the web. A few sporadic VHS releases (like the Top 20 Art Attack) are the only remnants of the show available. Even Disney Channel (well, it was Disney Channel Spain) confirmed that there's no such thing as Art Attack DVDs for sale. There was a short-lived magazine, a set of 'games' to make different crafts, and even a room with the huge paintbrushes and other giant material in Disneyland, but no way to find the show itself.
The first 246 episodes (covering Seasons 1-6) of The Bill are available for purchase in Australia. The company that produced the DVDs folded after that, and the copyright passed over to Village Roadshow, who have decided to sit on it and do nothing. 246 episodes might sound impressive until you realise that there have been 2,422 episodes produced in 27 years. The UK releases are still ongoing, but they're moving at a much slower pace.
The DVD release rights in Australia have since been taken over by Shock DVD, who seem to be continuing with the releases. As of June 2012, series 1-8, which comprise 502 episodes, have been released.
While there exist a few DVD releases of Harry Hills Tv Burp, they have been limited to compilations of the show's best bits, with full releases seemingly impossible due to the publishing rights associated with the other programs' clips. These same issues prevented the show from being repeated on ITV's catch-up website. Still, individual sketches and entire episodes are easy to find on YouTube.
Knights of God, a sci-fi series produced by TVS note in the late '80s in which a future Britain has been taken over by a fascist religious order (the Knights of God of the title) following a civil war, isn't available officially on DVD, and seemingly not on VHS either. Given TVS' archive seems to be mired in rights issues, it probably won't be. There is a Novelization however, a few copies of which you might find available on Amazon.
Series 5-7 of Law & Order: UK have only been released on DVD in the UK. Anyone in the US who wants to see them will have to either purchase a universal DVD player or scour the internet (fortunately the episodes are available in this format). Anyone wanting to see Series 8 will have to scour the internet for it too, as not only has it not yet been released on DVD, it hasn't even been aired on BBC America as yet.
Seasons 4-5 of The Muppet Show. The Season 3 box set was released in 2008. (In addition, music rights issues led to several numbers getting left out of the Season 1 set.) A chunk of Seasons 4-5 episodes made it to the Time-Life compilation DVDs at the Turn of the Millennium, but not only are those out-of-print, but these episodes were mixed with ones from prior seasons, so double-dipping will be required for those who have the box sets. Rights-holder Disney doesn't seem to consider their Muppet holdings a priority, especially after the middling financial success of Muppets Most Wanted. Season 4 was announced to have a DVD release sometime in 2010 at the 2009 D23 Expo but said DVD set still has yet to see the light of day. In 2015, Debbie McClellan (vice president of The Muppet Studios) revealed that the reason for why Season 4 continues to be delayed is due to clearing the music rights as well as having to pay off the still living musicians behind the songs. But she encourages fans to keep asking Disney about the last two seasons of The Muppet Show in hopes of eventually seeing them released.
Police, Camera, Action!, an extremely popular ITV show, has bootlegs floating around on torrent sites but has never had an official DVD release. Add the fact that fans wantall versions, including the Edited for Syndication copies, and it looks impossible, but not unlikely. Copyright of police footage comes into play here. Music rights are an often-cited theory as to why the show hasn't been released.
Police Stop!, which kicked off the police genre in The '90s, was a VHS-only release between 1993-1995, and then aired on television 1996-2002, before returning on ITV4 in 2008. Now, you can't get it at all unless you get the first episode via illegal downloading. Old worn VHS tapes can be found on eBay, but no digital copies.
The 2gether TV series has yet to see a DVD release, while the DVD for the original TV movie is out of print and runs for very high prices on secondhand sites.
On an episode of Headbanger's Ball, the host read on air a letter from a fan asking if he could buy a copy of a recent episode, in which a particular musician had been an in-studio guest. The host explained that MTV didn't sell copies of previous episodes, and directed the letter writer to investigate the classified ads section of various Heavy Metal-themed magazines. The host was openly explaining to the viewer that there was a significant videotape-trading underground, and implicitly endorsing making use of such resources.
Human Giant got a DVD release for Season 1, but Season 2 has yet to be released. It stopped being re-run quite some time ago and season 3 is in Development Hell, so the only way to watch it at all is the 'sneak peek' bits on the season 1 DVD. You'd think a series that stars a veritable All-Star Cast of comedians would be a little higher up in the release queue.
Jackass currently does not have a proper release for the series. In the beginning season one was skipped in favor of season two and three being put out as two 'Best of...' sets, both labelled 'Best of Season Two' and 'Best of Season Three' as a nod to the fact that MTV flat out refused to allow the show's creators to issue season one onto DVD uncensored (a good chunk of season one was recycled footage from earlier video project Johnny Knoxville and Bam Margera worked on co-opted for Jackass and censored for TV), as Knoxville retained veto rights over all home video release of the show. Season one didn't see a release as a 'Best Of...' DVD until five-six years after the series went off the air, when the second Jackass film came out. The season one set was censored (meaning the 'Self-Defense Sketch', which Knoxville wanted released uncut to include the ending, where he gets shot while wearing a bull-proof vest is cut) and moreso, the 'Best of...' season two and three were re-issued with about twenty minutes of new content on them. Oh and it gets better/worse: there was also a box set containing the season one compilation and the revised season two and three sets along with an exclusive bonus set containing the uncut hour long 'Gumball Rally' special and several 'Where are they now' specials MTV produced to promote the first Jackass movie. For the release of Jackass 3, the creators put out a single disc DVD 'The Lost Tapes' that basically serves as a end-all home for all of the unreleased segments as well as each episode's opening and closing credit segment.
The Self Defense Test segment, from a 'Big Brother' Skateboard video called 'Landspeed', is only available on VHS and has long been out of print; indeed, all online versions of the segment are the MV edit of it.
The Sifl and Olly Show aired from 1997-99, and has yet to see an official release. Unlike other MTV series, S&O didn't include recorded music; most of the music was original, with a few covers here and there. The only episodes to see a DVD release were the unaired Season 3, published by co-creator Liam Lynch.
227, one of NBC's hit programs of the 1980s, only had Season 1 released, and it's not likely the others will come out. Fortunately, it's been a rerunning favorite of the Up network, especially back in its early days as GMC, and reruns are also shown on Encore Black.
ALF is a very special case. The entire series has been released, but only the chopped-up versions that were Edited for Syndication. The producers have insisted that it would be too expensive to compile the original episodes for DVD release, but that didn't stop Europe from getting an uncut version of the series.
The original broadcast version of 1986's Made-for-TV MovieBabes in Toyland. As originally aired it was 140 minutes long without commercials, but it was cut to 94 minutes for a European theatrical release and it's that version that was released to home video and syndication.
The Bold Ones - an NBC Wheel Program that aired from 1969-73, never released on DVD. As of November 2013, digital subchannel Cozi TV airs episodes Sundays at 7 p.m. Eastern.
The Cosby Show: Though it's been released on DVD and episodes can be found within five seconds on search engines like Google, cable networks like TVLand, Bounce, BET and Centric began pulling televised reruns of the groundbreaking Bill Cosby-starring sitcom in the wake of growing allegations of sexual assault against women. The cancelation order is indefinite at this point, at least on TVLand, whose website has even deleted all mention of the show; this is a rare step for them as even references to past rerun packages can be accessed, at least indirectly. Later cancellation orders covered other shows Cosby was involved with, including Cosby, and sightings of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and pre-Cosby Show programs are also becoming harder to find.
As of this writing, the entire run of The Cosby Show is still available for streaming on Amazon Prime, as are ‘’The Bill Cosby Show’’ andCosby. His Nick Jr. series Little Bill is still available, but only on a pay-per-episode basis on Vudu. As of Dec 2018, the show has resumed airing on TV One.
The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd: A well-regarded dramedy that aired on NBC for one season (1987-88), was rescued by Lifetime when NBC cancelled it, and ran until 1991. It hasn't been syndicated since 2002, and has never been released on DVD or even VHS. Even nigh impossible to find online.
Experiment in Television: The series ran for five years, and while Jim Henson's episodes The Cube and Youth '68 are fairly easy to find due to the celebrity status of the man himself, good luck tracking down anything else from the show's run.
Fame, the TV adaptation of the 1980 film, ran on NBC for two seasons (1982-83) and was Un-Cancelled in First-Run Syndication, running until 1987. Only the two seasons that ran on NBC received season set releases, with the syndicated seasons still in limbo to this day. The whole show ran on the Canadian channel MuchMoreMusic from around the Turn of the Millennium until it underwent Network Decay around 2008 or 2009 (it's since gone by the name M3); as such, most online copies of the unreleased episodes have the network logo in the lower right corner. It was last seen in 2011, when Ovation reran it in the U.S.
The Hogan Family isn't on DVD, iTunes or Netflix, and is quite hard to find on YouTube (only two-thirds of a full episode and about 2 random clips are there as of this writing), with the one YT channel that hosted all the episodes having them all taken down. Torrents of the show are even scarcer - good luck trying to find the House FireWham Episode 'Burned Out' (or any episode guest starring Willard Scott, for that matter) even with torrents - and some don't even have peers to connect with in uTorrent. ABC Family and Canadian network CTS (since renamed Yes TV) have also aired the show during the 2000's, so you'll have to hold on to your recordings from those networks. That said, at least one user on the Sitcoms Online forum might have it as long as you have stuff to trade.
According to That Other Wiki, the only episode to get a video release was 'Bad Timing' (the one where the older son, played by Jason Bateman, and his Girl of the Week contemplate having sexnote ), released 'especially for teachers and health educators to use as a tool to promote safe sex'; nowadays even that can't be found on eBay.
Hull High, a musical high school drama that predates High School Musical and Glee and features several future Roundhouse actors, only aired for a while in 1990, and while some episodes/clips can be found on YouTube, they're always foreign dubs. Good thing thesongs were left in English.
The Jim Henson Hour exists only in bits and pieces on DVD due to the now-splintered ownership of the segments it featured. Usually, the first half of the show was a 'MuppeTelevision' segment with Kermit and company, and the second half a standalone special or an episode from the first series of The Storyteller that hadn't yet aired in the U.S. The Storyteller is available in its entirety through Sony, and the specials The Song of the Cloud Forest and the full-hour special Dog City have been released by Lionsgate. But this leaves all of the MuppeTelevision segments (one of which only aired in the U.K.), Lighthouse Island, Miss Piggy's Hollywood, Monster Maker, Living with Dinosaurs, and Secrets of the Muppets (the last three full-hour specials) unavailable. However, the whole show can be found online in varying sources - while only the first two episodes, the 'Secrets of the Muppets' special (which premiered on Nickelodeon in 1992, three years after the show was cancelled) and both pilots are on YouTube as of this writing, the rest of the show was available on Vimeo for a spell and, as of April 2015, all of the episodes (save for the segments copyrighted by the Jim Henson Company) can be found on the Henson Rarities YouTube channel. The uncut episodes can also be obtained through torrents.
Sesame Street: 20 And Still Counting was originally intended as a Poorly Disguised Pilot for The Jim Henson Hour, but was packaged as a standalone special and aired one week before Hour debuted. It was released on DVD twice, in 2010 by Lionsgatenote and in 2013 by Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment.
Joey, the Friends spin-off, had its first season released in the U.S., but not the second (including the episodes that never aired in the United States), which was only released in Canada. That normally wouldn't be a problem since Canadian DVD releases are Region 1 and will work on any U.S. DVD player, except for the fact that season 2 has been out of print for several years and as such is rather pricey now. However, the season 2 episodes are readily available online.
Journeyman aired its short (13 episodes) run on NBC back in 2007, got nixed by a combination of a late airtime (meaning lower ratings) and the fallout from the writers' strike, and never got released on DVD.
LAX, a short-lived drama about the employees at Los Angeles International Airport. Perhaps understandable, considering the show's terrible ratings during its run.
Midnight Caller still hasn't been released on DVD, and tapes can sell for over a hundred dollars. Thankfully most of the episodes can be found online.
The Muppets at Walt Disney World was a 1990 special that was notable as Jim Henson's final Muppet project to premiere in his lifetime, as he died just ten days after it aired. One thing that might be holding this one up is the fact that it was created to celebrate the Muppets becoming part of the Walt Disney Company, and Henson's death threw the whole business into disarray, so it plays as something of a 'Funny Aneurysm' Moment now. As of July 2015, this can be found on YouTube very easily.
The Name of the Game. Season 1 of the late 60's anthology series with Gene Barry, Tony Franciosa, and Robert Stack had been slated for an August 2014 release date, but that was postponed indefinitely. There is still no word on when this series will be released.
Night Court fits this from Season 4 onward if your DVD player can't play DVD-Rs. (If yours can, Seasons 4-8 are available through the Warner Archive service. Alternatively, try digital subchannel Laff as of 2018.) The series spent most of its life as part of their legendary Thursday lineup alongside The Cosby Show and Cheers and earned John Larroquette four consecutive Emmys for Best Supporting Actor — a record that still stands to this day. The problem here is that most of the show's popularity came during the middle of its run; it didn't come together until Season 3 because of a LOT of early cast changes brought on by actor deaths (Selma Diamond and Florence Halop) and prior contracts (Markie Post appeared as Christine Sullivan in one Season 2 episode, but was still doing The Fall Guy and couldn't join the cast regularly until Season 3). It's a catch-22: Many of the show's fans don't care for Seasons 1-2 because half the cast they loved isn't present, but the studio won't consider releasing the rest of the series on standard DVDs until the sales for the first two DVD sets improve.
Both American versions of Red Dwarf (the aired pilot episode and pitchfilm). They've been circulating for years, and master-quality clips of #1 were even used in an official DVD featurette devoted to the Americanization. #2 was available on YouTube in an edited form whose only change was cleanly removing all clips of the British cast.
Remington Steele only saw a release of Season 1 in the United Kingdom and other non-American territories.
Saturday Night Live. Season sets, as opposed to best-of compilations, finally saw the light of day in 2009, with the music rights sorted out for each episode to air uncut. However, the boxsets stalled at season five (1979 to 1980 season; the last one featuring the remnants of the 'Not Ready for Primetime' players and featuring Harry Shearer before he did voicework on The Simpsons). The next couple of seasons constitute Old Shame on NBC's behalf (particularly season six, which is often cited as SNL's worst season ever). Netflix had Saturday Night Live episodes from 1975 to the end of season 38 (2012-2013)note , but only the 1970s episodes are shown uncut and uncensored. The episodes in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s collections are edited to remove music and sketches that are either not funny, have been cut due to controversy note , or have licensing/copyright issues note . Now, Netflix has dropped the 1970s and 1980s collections. The Canadian feed of Netflix had the 1990s (but only from season 20 to season 25) and the 2000s collection (from season 26 to 33) until Valentine's Day (February 14) 2014, while the American feed has the 2010s collection of SNL episodes and only has seasons 37 (2011-2012) and season 38 (season 2012-2013) as of this writing.
While full episodes may be becoming impossible to get (unless you actually stay up on a Saturday night to record it or use torrents), websites like NBC.com and Yahoo Video do have collections of the best sketches from SNL's near-40 years on the air.
Sketches can be removed even after a day (when SNL appears on XFinity On-Demand or Hulu), especially if they have copyrighted music. The Lady Gaga hosted episode of 2013 had several sketches (including her opening monologue and the bittersweet sketch where Lady Gaga appears as an old woman named Mrs. Germanottanote who tries to convince her landlord that she used to be known for her songs 'Poker Face' and 'Bad Romance' and for her bizarre costumes and stage shows) removed when the episode was uploaded to Hulu the next day.
Then there's plain sketch removals; after the glass repair company Safelite became very unhappy about a parody commercial in the 2017 Gal Gadot episode that portrayed a glass installer as a predator breaking a customer's windshield on purpose to creep on her daughter (and just two days after the Harvey Weinstein story broke and started the 'Me Too' movement), NBC thought wiser and junked the sketch entirely from any further dissemination on YouTube, their site and any place they allow episodes to replay, replacing it with a dress rehearsal piece. If that happens, better hope you kept the recording for the night to watch a sketch you enjoyed but everyone else found wanting.
Lionsgate released a (now sadly out-of-print) massive compilation of the best musical performances that originally aired as a quartet of specials for the show's 25th anniversary back in 1999.
St. Elsewhere: Only Season 1 on DVD, although this is another one that UK folks can enjoy via Channel 4 on Demand.
Seasons 3-6 of Third Watch, largely due to music copyright issues.
If you're looking for a DVD of most of the NBC's TNBC Saturday Morning lineup, you're going to be waiting awhile. While Saved by the Bell and California Dreams eventually got releases, Hang Time, City Guys and several others haven't. (It doesn't help that most of the shows were canned after one season.)
The Torkelsons, later retooled as 'Almost Home': both lasted only one season, consisting of 33 episodes together, in 1991-1993. It has a small, but dedicated fan-base, who kept circulating petitions to get it released on DVD, to no avail. By the early '00s, as people were getting DVD burners and technology to convert VHS's to digital, DVD's (bootleg, of course) were being sold by individuals on E-bay, and sometimes given away for free via fan forums. Since 2008, the entire series is on YouTube (in pretty bad video quality unfortunately, it being a rip of a 15 year old VHS); the producers have never bothered to petition a Copyright claim about this.
TV Nation, a 1994 TV show that mixed the prevalent news-magazine genre with humor and was hosted by Michael Moore (the show in turn influenced his later series, The Awful Truth). While the latter is available on DVD, the former only made a brief appearance as a best-of compilation on VHS (reportedly conflicts between Moore and NBC have prevented any chance of a DVD release, the Executive Meddling the show suffered also led production to cease after a single season).
Viper has no reruns no DVD release. The only way to find it is on YouTube. A few people have put most of the better episodes up, but they're typically in VHS quality; the presence of local-station logos may be a point of contention.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete: While the first two seasons were released on DVD, season 3's was cancelled. It was not because of clearance issues, but because Paramount, Nickelodeon's video distributor had bought out DreamWorks. Likewise, Paramount pulled it from the schedule. Years later, Chris Viscardi later said that the DVDs were finished, and were stored in a warehouse. So if someone happens to go inside said warehouse and steal the DVDs from it, and possibly sell it on eBay, it's possible.
Any live action production from the Cy Schneider or early Geraldine Laybourne years of Nickelodeon such as the biography series Against The Odds (hosted by BillBixby), the behind-the-scenes movie production series Stand By, Lights, Camera, Action! (hosted by Leonard Nimoy), and Out of Control — a sort of SCTV for kids headed up by Dave Coulier years before Full House — seem to have been largely forgotten.
All That has yet to see any DVD release, likely due to the musical acts. Even in reruns, the K-Ci & Jojo performance was removed from its episode (and all performances are removed in The '90s Are All That airings). Several episodes from Seasons 2-4 are available on iTunes, most of them with the musical guests removed. However, three episodes have them intact in a separate 'All That: Retro Essentials' volume.
Neither The '90s Are All That nor its successor The Splat have aired any episodes from the first season, making them very hard to come by and only circulating in VHS recordings of their original broadcasts or 1990s reruns (save for the second episode, which aired on Nick in 2005 to commemorate the series' 10th anniversary).
The pilot episode in particular hadn't surfaced online until the early 2010's.
The series has since been added on the NickSplat VRV streaming service and the series has an official YouTube channel that posts clips from the show.
Animorphs only had 12 episodes released on VHS, and nothing else. Fans have taken to uploading the rest of the series online, even though most consider it a bad show. Qubo (one of Ion's spinoff cable channels) reran it in 2014.
Are You Afraid of the Dark? was never released on DVD in the US, but did receive complete season sets on Region 1 DVD in Canada by Cookie Jar and Coliseum (after its initial airings on YTV). Said sets are now out of print and go for upwards of $100, so occasional late night TeenNick airings are the only way to see them without breaking the bank. Eventually, Nickelodeon and Amazon conspired to release a pair of 3-disc MOD sets.
The series is now on NickSplat streaming service on VRV and it's currently airing on the Nick's channel on Pluto TV.
Attack of the Giant Vulture, a segment from Nickelodeon's Short Films by Short People was heavily sought after for years, until someone finally found it a few years ago.
The Brothers Garcia had no home media release at all. Several recordings of the series from reruns on The N circulate but are hard to find. In 2013, one YouTube user uploaded recordings of every episode... with Greek subtitles. One of the co-creators of the series posted a comment on the upload of the first episode stating that he has been trying for years to get Nickelodeon to sell him back the rights for the series so that he could release it digitally and on DVD, but to no avail. Reruns on The Splat are unlikely as several episodes feature celebrity guest stars and in some cases, copyrighted music, such as one episode where George fantasizes about spending the day with Shaggy (as himself) with a montage set to his music.
BrainSurge never had a DVD release, and Nickelodeon stopped airing reruns. Episodes are on YouTube, which is a good thing because It is one of the very few shows that Viacom doesn't take episodes down. Family Brainsurge is even worse. There's barely any episodes or clips that are in good quality.
Caitlin's Way originally aired on Nickelodeon from 2000-2002, and repeats aired on TeenNick from 2003-2009. Despite its longevity, it never had an official release on DVD or VHS. Dedicated fans have uploaded most of the episodes on YouTube.
Cappelli and Company, a 1993 local show from WTAE in Pittsburgh which got carriage on Nick Jr. for two years, is hard to find, stopped airing reruns after 2003 in Pittsburgh, and it hasn't aired outside of the U.S.. Unless you know someone who had a Hearst-owned station where they lived in the 1990s and taped the show off there or Nick Jr. (or have access to the WTAE tape archive), you might be out of luck.
Only the first season of Clarissa Explains It All was ever released on DVD, and only a select few episodes from the other seasons are available from other sources. A series of Sony Wonder tapes with themes (i.e. 'Clarissa Explains Dating') were released in the 90s, and most have been uploaded to YouTube. Although it was one of the inaugural shows to kick off The '90s Are All That, it only ran for 2 months in 2011, and has made sporadic appearances since then. The complete first four seasons and a few episodes of the fifth season can be found on Hulu Plus.
Cry Baby Lane was lost for over a decade, having only aired on Nickelodeon once and never seeing a home release. After a Reddit user found a recorded VHS of it in 2011, Nickelodeon re-aired it that Halloween and advertised it as a banned film.
The rights to The Donna Reed Show, an inescapable fixture of the early days of Nick At Nite, were partially reclaimed by the estates of Reed and onetime husband/producer Tony Owen in 2008. The Reed and Owen estates now hold the rights to the first five seasons, while seasons 6-8 are still held by Sony, making rebroadcast rights snarled enough that the series is currently unavailable to air. DVD season sets actually are starting to come out, but getting all of them isn't exactly guaranteed in the new order of things. Vindicated somewhat; everything's been settled and Tribune's Antenna TV network began to air the series in September 2012.
Eureeka's Castle only got three VHS releases that you'll have to pay a ton of money for, and there are only a handful episodes on YouTube. Not helping matters is that like Pinwheel, the show often used short films made by other companies.
After the demise of Nick GaS, most of Nickelodeon's Game Show library from the late 1980s and early 1990s has vanished from the airwaves and can only be seen on YouTube. Affected shows include Double Dare (original and Super Sloppy editions), Finders Keepersnote , Think Fast, Make The Grade, Get the Picture, and Nick Arcadenote . A few shows from the mid to late 1990s, such as Family Double Dare, Nickelodeon GUTS, Legends of the Hidden Temple, and Figure It Out, have briefly re-surfaced on TeenNick's The '90s Are All That block. A few select episodes are also available for purchase on iTunes, including 11 episodes of the ultra-rare Fox Family Double Dare. iTunes also has a few episodes of the 1987 version of Super Sloppy Double Dare and Nick Arcade. In 2015, Nickelodeon also released a DVD containing one or two episodes each of both Super Sloppy and Family Double Dare, Legends, Figure It Out, Guts and Nick Arcade. Reruns of the original edition of Double Dare returned to TV on The '90s Are All That's successor block, The Splat, along with all game shows that had aired on the previous block. Clips from Wild and Crazy Kids and Nick Arcade were featured in a game show-themed promo launched before The Splat premiered, but have yet to air on the block.
Speaking of Wild and Crazy Kids, the 2002 revival of the series hasn't aired since its cancellation in the same year.
Just for Kicks, probably the most short-lived and rarest Nickelodeon TV show to ever hit the airwaves. There is absolutely, positively no trace of the show left online at all. If you have a copy of at least part of the show from its run, don't get rid of it! As of 2017, the complete series is on YouTube.
King Pins aired on Nickelodeon as a one time special in 1988. Very little is known about this game show other than it having a bowling theme with married couples competing. It may not even exist as no copies have ever surfaced.
The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo has all 12 episodes from the first and second season available on iTunes, but good luck finding the remaining 28 episodes of the third and fourth season.
Pinwheel, Nickelodeon's flagship series in its earliest years, will likely never see a legitimate DVD release if only because of the rights issues surrounding the many animated segments (and the fact that the network sees the series as an Old Shame, saying that they'd rather leave it as a 'distant memory'). A few episodes have surfaced on bootleg DVDs and YouTube. Some of the animated segments, however, have seen full series DVD releases (just to name a few: Bod, Paddington Bear, The Rabbit with the Checkered Ears, and Charlie's Climbing Tree), though seldom outside their countries of origin. The series' only home video release was a compilation VHS tape with songs from the series, but it's long out of print.
Roundhouse. The first two episodes were each released on VHS compilations with episodes from other Snick shows. The rest of the series is pretty much never going to get an official DVD release. Especially egregious since every song featured on the show was original, save for one song cowritten by Madonna (who never recorded it) and another written by the show's music director in The '70s. However, a few episodes from all four seasons showed up on YouTube over the years, and from 2014-15, a truly dedicated fan who went through recording every single episode during its run uploaded all the episodes he taped - nearly every episode was uploaded to his channel, save for half of season 3 and a few episodes from seasons 1 and 2, and that was only because the tape he recorded them on broke. (The remaining season 1 episodes and three of the five missing season 3 episodes have been uploaded by other users.)
Salute Your Shorts, aside from sporadic airings on The '90s Are All That. Though, it is a part of the rotating catalog of the NickSplat streaming service on VRV
Space Cases. Only a select few episodes from the first season were aired on The '90s Are All That and its successor The Splat to date. Otherwise, there's always YouTube.
Only seasons 1 and 2 of Victorious are available on DVD, with no apparent plans to release the last two seasons anytime soon. The series is available on Amazon Instant Video, though.
A Walk in Your Shoes was a reality show that showcased two teenagers who swapped lives for the day that aired on Noggin and later, Noggin's teen programming block The N, from 2000 to 2004. There is very little evidence of the show online, and a search on YouTube shows only a couple of episodes ('Muslim' and 'Homeless'), a few clips from 'Ballet/Hip-Hop' and a teaser for 'Desert/Water'.
You Can't Do That on Television, while airing on Nickelodeon and whose American distribution rights are owned by said network, has not seen any release outside a 'Worst of' tape in 1989. Further compounding matters is that various changes in management at CJOH (where the show was produced) over the years have resulted in a lot of paperwork getting lost, particularly concerning which (if any) cast and/or crew members would be entitled to royalties/additional usage fees/etc. were the show released on DVD. However, reruns would eventually resurface in 2015 on The Splat, and the first Nickelodeon season was available on iTunes, but is currently unavailable.
Some episodes have since been uploaded on the creator, Roger Price's YouTube channel (Truly Horrible Entertainment). Roger Price also currently owns the rights to the show.
You Do Too, a Nick Jr. UK show from 2002 featuring puppets and humans interacting with each other as they answered mail sent into them by viewers, is very hard to find, and hasn't aired outside of the country. It might as well be The Brothers Flub of Nick Jr. shows.
Series 11-13 of Series/Hi-5' as originally broadcasted have become a case of this (their YT channel features the first 10 seasons in full). Serval DV Ds do include a few full episodes of these seasons rather than the popular 60-minute compilation edits.
Some Kind of Wonderful, The Movie which is a documentary on the search for the remaining two members of the Hi-5 House gang has never gained a DVD release although it should've been.
Hey Hey It's Saturday is best remembered in its 1985-1999 run, even having its own official website. Contents from the 1984-1985 'Saturday Night' era, segments from the 1971-1983 Saturday Morning Cartoon run, and the 2010 run (although the contents of the first episode are on a YouTube channel) are trickier to get.
3-2-1 Contact. Broadcasters actually encouraged taping of the show. A handful of episodes were commercially released on VHS, but they're very expensive now. Worse, the first season was broadcast when VHS was in its infancy, so if you happen to have a home recording of any of its episodes, don't erase it.
Alive From Off Center (1985-1996): Originally hosted by Laurie Anderson, this show featured all sorts of avant garde performance shorts. They ranged from a guy using the streets of New York as a drum set, to a Laurie Anderson skit (featuring her reoccuring gender bending character) and a memorable short featuring no human actors but had a Rube Goldberg Device run completely uninterrupted and without human intervention for 15 minutes. This series, despite it's eleven year run, was never released on home video and episodes survive only due to VHS taping while it was on the air.
An American Family, the 1973 docudrama also known to be the very first example of 'Reality TV' on American television, has had a 2000s revival reairing in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of eldest Loud sibling Lance's death, the DVD release of a 'best of'-type package put together by Alan and Susan Raymond (without input from the surviving Loud family members), and the release of the HBO film about the making of the show called Cinema Verite. Before that, it had aired in full once in ca. 1990 (which, unlike the most recent series of repeats, came with its original music intact — some people recorded that reairing onto VHS and used it to convert into video files that were then uploaded online). Aside from that, you'd have actually had to have been old enough in 1973 to watch the series because, thanks to those pesky music clearance issues and the fallout between the Louds and the Raymonds (who took over control of the whole shebang from the show's creator Craig Gilbert or his estate), you are very unlikely ever to see the original 12 episodes get any sort of official release.
Barney & Friends:
Its original incarnation Barney and the Backyard Gang, has not only never had a DVD release, but most of the episodes have not seen a re-release since the mid-90's, with the only two episodes to see re-releases after that period being 'Barney In Concert' and 'Waiting For Santa' in VHS form.
Seasons 1-6 of the show have not aired on TV for years, and very few of those episodes got VHS releases back in the day. Season 1 got the most video releases, with 20 episodes being put out by Time-Life Video via an exclusive TV offer and 4 more getting commercial releases by The Lyons Group themselves.note In contrast, Season 2 only got six episodes released,note Season 3 only had three released,note Seasons 4 and 5 only had two released each, and Season 6 had zero released. The good news is that all of the episodes can be found online, but they're of varying quality.
Between the Lions has a few VHS releases, all of which are of course out of print, and a DVD called 'Vowel Power' comprising five episodes, but other than that there's nothing. However, Malaysia got the first and second seasons in their entirety on DVD, but as the show got Screwed by the Network before Seasons 3 and 4 could air in that country, episodes from the third and fourth seasons are still in tape circulation limbo. Episodes can easily be found on YouTube, though.
Bill Nye the Science Guy continues to be a much-beloved science show that is still played in classrooms across the world, yet it has never received a proper commercial DVD release. Nye's own website doesn't sell it, there are only a few (overpriced) single episodes being sold through the official Disney store, and the first two seasons have been released in outrageously expensive sets that are only sold to schools and educators (and, on average, cost over $1,500 - yes, you read that right). However, this is somewhat mollified by the massive VHS release that proceeded it (which had all the episodes), which can be found in classrooms getting rid of their old tapes. In addition, there are certain websites that only teachers can access to watch episodes, if it helps. As of May 2015, it is now available on Netflix.
The main stumbling block for a commercial DVD release is a contractual stipulation Nye imposed on Disney during the show's conception that was revealed in a 2017 lawsuit. Although Disney owns the series and all the footage related to it, Nye is entitled to a percentage of licensing profits per the stipulation, meaning that if Disney were to widely release the series on home video, the sets would have to be priced out of affordability to the general public in order to both make a profit from the releases and honor the royalty arrangement, explaining why the single-episode DVDs and educator-only season sets are sold in high prices.
The Electric Company (1971): This led to Sesame Workshop making the original show available to fans. Before, it resisted putting anything on DVD while fan sites who uploaded clips were forced to take them down when threatened with 'cease and desist' letters. The Workshop expressed surprise at the response to the release of the first DVD that a Volume 2 was later issued. Out of the 780 episodes aired, only 40 have come to DVD, and another 29 to iTunes. After star Bill Cosby got knocked down by a sex scandal, the series will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Lamb Chop's Play-Along is in a music rights nightmare, which explains the lack of any DVD releases. During its PBS run, however, select segments of the series were released on home video by A&M Video, but never any complete episodes, and said VHS tapes are now rare to come across. Episodes still air on Kids and Teens TV, but one has to hope NBCU has the money to secure all the song rights for a proper DVD release. Its short-lived spin-off, The Charlie Horse Music Pizza, suffers a similar fate. Not only has the series not been seen since the closure of the PBJ network in 2016, but only five VHS releases exist, containing 5 segments each. These sets are hard to come across even on eBay.
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: The first run (1968-76) has not aired on PBS since 1995. The black and white season (1968) has probably not aired since the early 1970s due to the diminishing lack of interest in monochrome programming with the rising adoption of color TV. The first color season (1969) has not aired since 1983 and the remaining seasons (1970-76) were gradually phased out between 1989 and 1995. This was due to fears that these episodes could confuse children due to their different look and characters, and because there were more than enough episodes of the second run (1979-2001) in the can for reruns. Outside of 20 episodes released on Amazon, that run remains unavailable; meanwhile, except for the 1983 'Conflict' week, which was pulled from reruns in 1996 note and is not available on Amazon, the second run is available in its entirety.
NOVA. The digital releases only go back to a selection of episodes from Season 27 (2000). The show started in 1974. There are some single-episode, expensive DVDs and VHS tapes as well, but anything older than 2000 is extremely rare.
Many classic Sesame Street segments can be found online and on compilation DVDs. However, only 21 complete (or at least near-complete) episodes from 1989 on back have been officially released on DVD or digitally, including a test pilot. About a handful of street scenes from between 1999 and 2003 got released on DVD, while some episodes from 2004 onward are the full episodes, complete with Elmo's World, whereas others are only the street scenes, if you have full versions of those and other missing episodes, please hold on to them. Also, the episode with the Wicked Witch of the West, originally aired in February 1976, is very hard to find due to airing only once. note After overwhelmingly negative reaction to the episode — many parents complained that their children were frightened by the witch's behavior and threats and were now afraid to watch the show — the show was not reaired during the show's summer 1976 rerun cycle, and not even so much as brief clips have been seen anywhere since. Additionally, as the home video recording industry was in its infancy in 1976, original off-air copies of the episode are likely very difficult to nearly impossible to find.
Shining Time Station appears to be headed for this, likely never to get a DVD release despite having been nominated for three Emmy Awards and having Ringo Starr and George Carlin playing Mr. Conductor. Luckily, episodes can still be found online. It's been speculated that Thomas And The Magic Railroad may have played a hand.
When the archive of Siskel & Ebert & the Movies was made available online in the mid-2000s, Roger Ebert said that as far as he knew, the master tapes of his and Gene Siskel's first two series, Opening Soon at a Theater Near You/Sneak Previews (1975-82) on PBS and the syndicated At the Movies (1982-86), had mostly been wiped. Fortunately, not only did some master tapes escape destruction, but off-air recordings have since been found of hundreds of other episodes. That said, the collection is nowhere near exhaustive (particularly for the original 1975-77 incarnation of Opening Soon at a Theater Near You), and the quality varies considerably. Most of the episodes that do circulate were available for free at Siskel & Ebert.org until the site went down in mid 2017 and the domain name rights expired in early 2018.
Square One TV. The series has not been re-run since the early 2000s (and even then, only 65 of the 230 episodes were re-run), and there are currently no DVD releases planned. Domestic recordings are known to exist of many episodes, and they sometimes show up on YouTube, but they are nowhere near exhaustive, and quality varies widely. One segment of Square One that has generated its own separate demand for release is the police spoof Mathnet, which featured big-name guest stars and storylines that appealed to adults so much, that PBS at one point edited together one Mathnet storyline into a made-for-TV movie that aired in prime time.
You can easily find most of the original BBC UK dubs of Teletubbies officially on YouTube, but as for the PBS US dub, you can find several compilation DVD and VHS releases which last from an hour to 90 minutes, but for regular half-hour episodes, it's extremely scarce. Basically put, since PBS sold off the show in 2008, no one knows who's in possession of the master tapes. Oh, and there's 365 episodes of the show, though, reportedly, some of them were never actually re-dubbed.
Tots TV's American dub, in which Tilly spoke Spanish, is very hard to find aside from a few rare VHS releases and an episode on the Internet Archive's Understanding 9/11 mini-site.
There was a 1990s PBS miniseries called The United States Of Poetry that featured poems being read by the authors and widely varied cinematography like artistic music videos. You may be able to find a VHS copy languishing in your local library, but otherwise it's gone.
The American Experience special Vietnam: A Television History was significantly edited from its original 1983 broadcast and VHS release when it made the leap to DVD. Most disconcerting are the removal of references to harsh treatment of Vietnamese rubber plantation workers and quip from a former French officer about comparing said workers to insects. Additionally the second episode, The First Vietnam War, and the last episode, Legacy, were excised in their entirety in the DVD set. The latter episode covered the aftermath of Vietnam post-1975. The only way you can see the episodes in their original format now is to check in to your local library.
'The Voyage of the Mimi', a 1980s educational drama about the titular ship and its crew and starring a very young Ben Affleck as the ship captain's grandson, seems to be an almost entirely forgotten program, in spite of it being Affleck's first claim to fame.
Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and all of the original tunes by Rockapella that its episodes included. Ditto its successor series, Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego.
WonderWorks was a joint PBS/Disney series that created short made-for-TV movies based on acclaimed children's books, such as Jacob Have I Loved, Bridge to Terebithia, and The Hoboken Chicken Emergency. It also brought several other countries' miniseries adaptations of classic kidlit to the United States. Despite most of the films seeing release on VHS (some were also fixtures of the Disney Channel in The '80s), only a few have seen the light of day on DVD, and never under the WonderWorks banner. These include the first two titles mentioned, the BBC adaptations of A Little Princess and The Chronicles of Narnia, and the first two Kevin Sullivan-produced Anne of Green Gables adaptations.
Frog and its sequel, 'Frogs!, starring Paul Williams, only exist on VHS and had a few PBS airings, but have since vanished with no DVD release.
Anyone who liked the two Zoom series and wanted to see them on DVD was out of luck for many years. The 90s series only had a 'Making Of' VHS and a 'Party With..' (Meanwhile, the original 1970s had a single 'Best Of' VHS release.) In the case of the 90s series, however, things have since looked up. 2011 saw half of season two being uploaded onto YouTube, and in 2015, a truly dedicated fan who went to the lengths of constantly recording the series uploaded every episode he'd taped to YouTube, which included every episode, aside from three-quarters of season 1, and that was only because the network had failed to rerun the entire season. If anyone has those season one episodes, they should probably hang onto them.
Ramona, a 10-episode miniseries based on some Ramona Quimby books starring a young Sarah Polley, had some VHS and Laserdisc releases, but they're long out of print and never jumped to DVD.
The very first Frontline documentary, 'NFL and Game Fixing: An Unauthorized History of the NFL', has not been seen since its initial broadcast due to the NFL generally not liking any insinuation of any ties to organized crime, to the point where it's even been suggested that host Jessica Savitch's untimely death in a car accident before the year was out was because of her involvement in the story.
In 1987, the Flying Karamozov Brothers and Avener the Eccentric put on a production of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. Unfortunately, not even the performers themselves ended up with copies of the show and it was never offered as, say, a fundraising bonus. So if you didn't tape it—or if your tape had degraded—you were probably resigned to never seeing it again. Thankfully, somebody did upload the show in its entirety to YouTube in 2014.
Download Torrent English Subtitles Strange Days At Blake Holsey High End
Despite being one of the most iconic sitcoms in Australia, Hey Dad..! never got any full-season DVD releases in its home country, only a 'Best Of' compilation. It definitely won't be getting any now, since show star Robert Hughes was convicted of multiple sexual assaults against young girls.
The Showtime special Andy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall (1980), taken from the 1979 one-night-only production often regarded as the pinnacle of Kaufman's career, only had one VHS release in 2000.
Doom Runners, a TV Movie from Showtime, is only available on VHS — and even then in fairly limited supply. Since the film is hardly more than a blip on the nostalgia radar, the chances of it seeing any kind of physical rerelease ever are slim, but in 2013 it started turning up on the various Showtime movie networks (Flix, et.al.).
Full Color Football: The History of The American Football League, a five part Showtime/NFL Films produced documentary, has yet to be released on DVD (though the NFL Network runs the occasional rerun). Warner Bros. owns the rights, but seems to be sitting on the title despite strong fan demand.
Nightmare Classics was a four-episode anthology series produced by Shelley Duvall, Cannon Films and Showtime that was much different in tone than Duvall's previous anthology series Faerie Tale Theatre and Tall Tales and Legends. While those two were popular enough to warrant DVD releases, the Nightmare Classics episodes faded into obscurity after they hit VHS. It seems that the issue with a release is the fact that it was a co-production (Warner Bros. owns the rights to later Cannon titles while Showtime is owned by CBS).
While less angsty than the Felicity example due to being available to own on DVD, Queer as Folk is becoming this with regards to the original, aired version with the soundtrack still intact. When Netflix finally bought the rights to stream the series, the rights to the majority of the songs had expired, leading Showtime to be forced to have fourth-rate bands record mockbuster tunes to substitute them (most times they're obvious, but some fans have admitted to liking a number of the mockbuster tunes even to the point of preferring them to the original). With no planned blu-ray release and DVD expected to go the way of the dinosaur soon, the Netflix version may be all there is left to legally watch.
The Strangerers (sic) was a science fiction comedy drama made for Sky1, starring Mark Williams and Jack Docherty and written by Rob Grant. Sky cancelled the show after one season and has never repeated it (and Sky repeats everything), or released it on DVD.
Ten Minute Tales: A series of shorts run over 11 days on Sky Television over Christmas 2009. Despite having some of the best actors around and some of the best writers (Neil Gaiman being one), the network has no plans to put it on DVD, so those who want to re-watch (which you will, as most of them are pretty deep and require several viewings to fully understand them) and/or those who don't have Sky will have to find them elsewhere.
The Beat, a six-episode (13 were produced) police procedural series that aired on UPN. Despite being created by the same people as the critically lauded Homicide: Life on the Street, and featuring John Munch and a young Mark Ruffalo, the series has pretty much vanished, with no signs of it on YouTube, on demand or on DVD.
Kamen Rider Dragon Knight has never been released on DVD in The United States despite rave reviews, though low ratings. Completely averted elsewhere especially in Japan where it was more popular than Kamen Rider Ryuki, the show its source footage originates from.
Kevin Hill, an oft-forgotten series starring Taye Diggs and a pre-Mad Men Christina Hendricks, which focuses on a lawyer who is suddenly forced to care for his deceased cousin's 10-month-old daughter, Sarah. The show was cancelled after its first season due to low ratings, and it has since disappeared into the ether.
Mercy Point was an intriguing mixture of hospital drama and science fiction. Only eight episodes were made, and the last two were never aired. Those apparently remain completely unseen by anyone in the public to this day. There is no mention anywhere of the show having had a single rerun after its initial run in 1998-99. There are rumors that the series was heading for legal trouble due to similarities with 2000 AD series named Mercy Heights, which may contribute to the low profile.
Red Handed, a four-episode hidden camera series on UPN (narrated by Adam Carolla). To judge by contemporary reviews condemning the focus on lowbrow, profane, and otherwise juvenile humor, its disappearance might be for the best.
Ringer, the Sarah Michelle Gellar comeback vehicle, only lasted a season with no DVD release in sight. It is on Netflix, though.
The Steve Harvey Show only has a 5 episode best of DVD and no plans to release any seasons. The Wayans Bros. only has season 1 available on DVD (Though all five seasons can be viewed on Amazon's digital service). Neither show is available on Netflix or Hulu. But both shows are easily accesible, as they're Adored by the Network as Filler for the Viacom networks MTV2, BET and Centric.
The short-lived WB series Tarzan suffered this fate. You can still find it online, though the quality is debatable.
Everything after Season 1 of What I Like About You. Warner has no current plans to release the other 3 seasons. On the Season 1 set, the theme song was replaced with some completely irrelevant other tune. Fortunately the rest of the episodes are all availible online.
The Adventures of Shirley Holmes has been all but forgotten by Credo/Forefront, despite being very popular during its four-season run on YTV and gaining significant critical acclaim. More than a decade after the last season ended, the episodes are no longer being rerun, and there is very little hope of an official release in the future. Bootleg DVDs can be found online if you look really hard for them, though, and a few dedicated fans are working on uploading the episodes to the web.
The Big Comfy Couch ran for seven seasons on YTV (over a period of 14 years), but it has never received a proper DVD release. Time-Life Video released many episodes of the series on VHS in the mid-90's, but releases have been all over the place as far as DVD goes. The series got a release of several early episodes featuring Alyson Court (the original actress who played Loonette) in the early 2000's, which subsequently went out of print. The 'remake' season in 2006 is still incomplete despite receiving a partial release, and the only way to see the rest of the episodes is to catch a repeat on Treehouse TV. Also, the entire series is available by FilmRise on YouTube. (Oddly though, the second intro for seasons 3-5 replaces the original intro for seasons 1-2, with the exception of 'This Little Piggy').
The YTV series Catwalk, about a group of young adults trying to establish themselves as a musical group. The show was notable for starring a pre-Party of Five Neve Campbell, and the episodes dealt with mature subject matter and themes, and was very progressive for its time. Despite the success of the first season, the show was cancelled in 1994, and half the episodes were never broadcast. It's never been released on DVD, likely due to a lawsuit arising between the show and a Connecticut-based band (also named Catwalk) regarding the name of the show.
Maniac Mansion, the Canadian television spinoff of the Lucasarts game of the same name, hasn't been seen in North America since it stopped airing in syndication in Canada on YTV in 2002. Despite the level of critical acclaim the series received when it first debuted, the fourth-wall breaking humor, and a cast made up of alumni from the Second City Theatre Company, none of the three seasons have ever been released in their entirety on DVD (two Season 1 episodes were released on VHS more than a decade ago). You can find the complete series through torrents. The fact that Disney now owns the series through Lucasfilm does not bode well for it.
System Crash, a sketch comedy series about a group of students in a media club at the fictional Lambton High School, aired from 1999-2002 and garnered a significant amount of popularity. However, it disappeared after the network began transitioning its programming block to younger audiences. It never received an official DVD release, and the only remnants of the series are occasional episodes that float around on YouTube or torrents.
My Special Book is a children's series which aired on both the YTV Jr. block and its successor Treehouse TV for 90 episodes. None of the episodes were ever released on home media; the image found on the show's page was literally the only part of the series that had surfaced until a camrip of one episode was uploaded to YouTube, although we do have the titles of all 90 episodes as well.
Any award show produced by Dick Clark Productions. Don't get your hopes up on a full DVD Release of the Golden Globes Awards or the Billboard Music Awards.
The Kids Choice Awards has also never seen a complete DVD Release of all the ceremonies for obvious reasons. The good news is most of the ceremonies can be found on various sites, although don't expect to find a lot on YouTube.
The NAACP Image Awards. Only a couple of the ceremonies are available online, including the 1996, 1997 and the 2015 ceremonies (the last one has the original commercials on it, but the audio is EXTREMELY Loud). YouTube and the AP Archive have clips, but good luck finding the full ceremonies, ESPECIALLY the new ones!
The People's Choice Awards is another awards show that can easily be found online, but there are some exceptions. Good luck finding the ceremonies from 1975 to 2009. Only clips from that era are available online.
The Spike Video Game Awards, which aired from 2003 to 2013, count as this. Only the 2005, 2007, 2010, and 2011 Ceremonies are available in full online, where other ceremonies are available only in clips or downright impossible to find (especially the full ceremonies). Only parts 1 and 3 of the 2009 ceremony are available online (although part 3 has it labeled as a different title for some reason).
While it's pretty easy to find the Teen Choice Awards ceremonies from 2009 to present online, good luck finding the full ceremonies from 1999 to 2008. The 2008 Teen Choice Awards is on YouTube, but it's only in 2 parts and it only has the host segments and nothing else. Clips from that era are on YouTube and AP Archive also.
The TV Guide Awards is another Award Show hard to find thing. Only clips from the 1999-2001 ceremonies (as well as 1964) are available online. The whole ceremonies are IMPOSSIBLE to find online. Same goes to the Cable Ace Awards and the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards word for word.
Game Shows pretty much across the board. With GSN constantly moving away (and back, and away again, and...) from showing the 'classics', it's become increasingly hard to find episodes of even iconic shows such as Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud
, Jeopardy!, and
Download Torrent English Subtitles Strange Days At Blake Holsey High Point
Pyramid. And this isn't even getting into the countless series that have been wiped, or those that simply haven't been transferred to a digital format for preservation (such as some of the holdings at the Library of Congress). Fox's new Buzzr channel with Fremantle which started in June 2015 offers some slight hope that these shows might be seen again.
In addition, as explained in more detail under The Price Is Right, home video release of product-based series would be problematic from a licensing and rights perspective. Plus, at least for more recent game shows but possibly older ones as well, a DVD release might also require permission from the many contestants who may have signed contracts approving rebroadcast but not home video release.
Concentration — NBC Universal hasn't touched the format in over 20 years, and won't authorize cable reruns or a DVD release.
The bawdy Everything Goes (kind of a cross between The Hollywood Squares and Strip Poker), which ran on Escapade (1981-84) and the Playboy Channel (1984-88), has nothing other than a 'Best of' tape in 1983 covering Seasons 1-2.
Globo Loco, a children's game show from CITV, regarded as much as to be nominated for the 'Best Kids Entertainment Show' award. There's one episode on YouTube from its second series and a snippet or two, but that's it.
The Gong Show — likely music rights. USA Network showed repeats in the 1980s, and GSN has aired episodes of the NBC, Barris syndicated, and Bleu syndicated versions; it's very possible that GSN still has the rights to broadcast it, so if people want to see it they should start campaigning hard).
Have I Got News for You has a compilation DVD covering the first 23 series (albeit with some extras including a commentary the whole way through with Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, which isn't bad at all for a TV DVD from 2002). Then there's another compilation covering just the next year, but with four extended complete episodes including a double-length version of the first Boris Johnson-hosted one and some more special features, and a third compilation of the two years after that, with a single but lengthy behind-the-scenes special feature and a nearly triple-length version of the second Boris episode. If they won't put out more than five complete episodes, they at least know the way to our hearts. (And yes, this show too can be found online in its entirety.) The same applies to other topical panel shows such as Mock the Week and 8 out of 10 Cats (who have similar releases compiling highlights and Too Hot for TV material).
Hit Man with Peter Tomarken — the 130 educational films used during the show's 13-week run were only licensed for one showing apiece, and Jay Wolpert has been unable to renegotiate.
Knightmare came to an abrupt end in 1994, and probably will never see the light of day again. A terrible shame, given how much fun it was and how important it was for its pioneering use of Chroma Key and virtual-reality technology. It reran on Sci-Fi Channel (UK) during the 1990s after it went off-air from CITV, and on Challenge TV in the early 21st Century. It has never been released on video or DVD, except illegally.
The Hollywood Squares is an odd case- the different versions have either been rescued or haven't been rerun, at least not in a while. The Davidson version was last seen on the USA Network, while Bergeron's run was last seen on GSN- and even then, certain episodes were absent due to clearance issues.
The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour was unable to be rerun for almost 35 years after its cancellation due to dual ownership of the two formats, however, the legal rights appear to have been cleared up, as Fremantle'snote digital subchannel Buzzr added it to its lineup in February 2019. Contrary to long-held belief, while Gene Rayburn wasn't really pleased with the show (particularly the botched Squares format), he never put an embargo on it — that was his next show, Break the Bank (1985) (he had disputes with the producers, so hence that show falls under this category too — though the embargo may not be valid anymore, thanks to the original distributor eventually coming under the umbrella of Fox).
Name That Tune — music rights, primarily. The Lange version was rerun on both the USA Network and The Family Channel, while the Kennedy version hasn't been seen at all since it ended (that run is now under the control of Ralph Edwards' estate).
Now You See It (Chuck Henry) — he won't clear his run as he wasn't pleased with his work and thinks it'll ruin his reputation as a news anchor/reporter. Many fans think he's being way too hard on himself, plus there's the fact that he had to be rescued while reporting on a forest fire.
The Millon Second Quiz (Which aired on NBC in 2013) definitely counts as this. Some clips of the show are available on YouTube, but there are almost NO full episodes online. The only episode that's available online is the September 13, 2013 Episode, which can be found on Archive.org's TV News Archive (Just a warning though, it's mislabeled, so you have to find it HARD to watch it). Even worse, the show was aired live, so it's unknown if master tapes for the show even exist.
The Price Is Right — there's a number of theories why (CBS doesn't want reruns up against first-run shows/is asking too much for it, Fremantle Media is asking too much for it, Bob Barker has some say in the matter, etc.). With the GSN repeats and BCI/Mill Creek Entertainment DVD set, there was a moratorium on certain episodes by Barker, including but not limited to those where fur coats were given as prizes; said 'fur ban' knocks out the series premiere plus the next two taped episodes, one of which had been shelved after taping due to an ineligible contestant (its existence remains in question).
There are also claims that episodes featuring model Holly Hallstrom are also on the 'do not air' list because of bitter (non-)relations between her and Barker - Hallstrom testified against Barker at several of his sexual harassment trials, and sided with another ex-model, Dian Parkinson, when the Barker-Parkinson affair blew up; Barker unceremoniously dismissed her from the show in the fallout.
Meanwhile, DennisJames' five-year syndicated run has never been repeated, because according to former Price staffer Scott Robinson something like five of the 301-episode 1972-80 nighttime series did not have a fur.
Although virtually all episodes are known to exist of the current version, GSN stopped airing repeats in 2000 and only one 'classic' has aired since then (the May 23, 1975 episode was shown by CBS in 2002). That aside, it is unknown when (or if) Barker's 'ban' on repeats of his era will expire, such as upon his death or if a clause in his will will extend the ban.
The 1994 syndicated run with Doug Davidson hasn't been rerun either, but that's due to rights issues (ironically, between Fremantle and CBS- Paramount Television distributed it, and of course they were absorbed into CBS with the 2005 Viacom/CBS split-up).
The original Bill Cullen series is widely thought to be a different color of horse than the current show, yet repeats of it are not shown either. GSN previously aired 67 nighttime episodes and one daytime show; several other episodes have turned up on YouTube (probably excluded due to cigarette sponsorship on some shows) and the ABC nighttime finale is on the DVD set.
Home video release of Price might also be restricted by licensing issues, as each episode contains multiple references to real-life brand names, including logos and slogans (though since the mid-2000's, the show's prize descriptions have become genericized and more generic products have been offered, possibly to address these types of restrictions). Pretty much every company featured would need to give permission (and some would probably demand a fee), and that assumes they'd even allow 'outdated' branding and products to be featured. Granted, this issue applies to virtually every other game show with product prizes.(Let's Make a Deal, the shopping era of Wheel of Fortune, etc.), but Price was all about product placement, so the issue would be even worse.
For similar reasons, the Australian format of the show (1980s with Ian Turpie as the host, and various later series with Larry Emdur) have never been re-aired after their original network run.
QI is available on DVD in the UK (only Series 1-3, unfortunately), but due to copyright issues for the images they use it will never be shown or released elsewhere. One estimate puts the international image rights for one episode at over £10,000. Yet it's being shown in Australia on the ABC, so at least they can watch it legit; this probably has something to do with the longstanding legal detente that Australia has due to close legal and cultural ties with the UK. Unfortunately, fans in the US have to find alternate means, as it's not even shown on BBC America! Starting in 2015, Hulu has three seasons on at a time; worst of all, they're not even the XL cuts.
Wheel of Fortune — a King World representative stated in August 2006 that the Chuck Woolery era (1975-81) was wiped along with early Pat Sajak shows, and it appears that the archive begins around mid-1985. GSN has only ever shown certain seasons of the nighttime version, and even then there's some oddities:
Season 2 (1984-85) received a single near-complete cycle; about a week or so of episodes were never aired.
Season 5 (1987-88) was likely never shown in its entirety.
Seasons 8-9 (1990-92) and 11 (1993-94) have never been aired, for unknown reasons.
Very few episodes past Season 14 (1996-97) have been shown, although Season 31 (2013-14) started airing in October 2016, followed by a small portion of Season 30 (June 2013) starting in January 2017.
However, GSN skips the November 4, 2013 episode (for unknown reasons, but likely because it had a Halloween set with Sajak cracking jokes about the crew slacking on its removal) and an entire week of episodes from March 2014 (again for unknown reasons; the week was sponsored by Beaches Resorts, although another week sponsored by its parent company Sandals Resorts airs without issues).
The September 11, 2001 episode was thought to be lost for obvious reasons, until fans discovered it over a decade later buried on archive.org. It turns out that Washington DC's ABC affiliate WJLA had aired the episode at 11:30 PM the following Saturday, followed immediately by the next two episodes, although titles for other programming appeared in listings.
The fifth episode of Season 34's Veterans Week was not aired in many areas, partially because, due to Election Day coverage delaying the second episode onwards, it was scheduled to air on November 12, 2016, a Saturday. Normally, Saturday (or Sunday) airings of Wheel are reruns and are often scheduled by local stations to air at random times to make room for national and local weekend programming. Due to ongoing coverage of the election results, many stations aired the episode in overnight timeslots or did not air it at all, and the episode never reran.
The vast majority of soap operas, especially of the Long Runner Anglo variety, simply have far too many episodes to ever be released...at least not in full.
Australian company Shock Entertainment are bucking the trend by actually beginning to put Neighbours to DVD - this started with the 'Defining Moments' collection in 2002 - fifteen episodes of births, deaths and weddings, from 1986 to 2002 - followed by two 'Iconic Episodes' collections of at least 22 episodes each and minimal overlap with the earlier collection. However, on April 4, 2012 Shock released Neighbours: From the Beginning, Volume 1 which comprises the first 56 episodes (of over 8000 to date). Three more From the Beginning volumes of similar length followed, as well as The Charlene Years, Volume 1 (which helpfully followed on from the then-unreleased From the Beginning Volume 4). There have been no further box sets released since 2013, but that still amounts to 297 episodes from 1985-1986.
For contrast, only four DVDs of Home and Away have been released. The first two were special unaired episodes, 'Secrets and the City' and 'Hearts Divided', each presented with two previous episodes to set the scene. The latter two were clip shows presented by cast members, Home and Away Romances and Home and Away Weddings. Funnily enough, the Romances disc came with a bonus feature that would have been a much bigger selling point: the 1988 feature-length pilot episode. The 'Weddings' disc had a single full episode, Leah and Vinnie's wedding.
Hispanic telenovelas are in no better situation. On one side, they tend to be shorter (a standard six-month run aired Monday to Saturday is about 180 chapters), so they could get a DVD release if they want. On the other side, selling them for syndication runs abroad allows the producers to recoup part of the costs, so they won't release any 'recent' (up to 10 years ago) soap. Worse, when they do have a release, it's usually only a 'best of' thing compressing the story (ex. 180 chapters reduced to 60), putting an epileptic monkey in charge of editing, and trimming scenes at random, creating an unwatchable mutant of a soap.
In Venezuela, it has become increasingly common to see on the street sellers of pirate DVDs of Colombian soaps. Half of the titles are 'narconovelas', soap operas with drug-dealing themes whose contents couldn't be broadcast under actual Venezuelan laws unless it was post-Midnight; the other half are current and former soaps about vallenato musicians, a musical genre which is popular but not mainstream (one of those, Oye Bonita, was eventually aired). The remaining one was Chepe Fortuna, a comedic soap which was broadcast but quickly pulled off the air when someone in the government decided that a villain-esque character named Venezuela was a Stealth Insult to the country (said character was a Fat BastardSmall Name, Big Ego lady with a teeny tiny dog named Hugo; draw your own conclusions).
A notable inversion of this trope is the original Dark Shadows. Except for one single lost episode, all 1,200+ episodes of this soap opera were released on DVD in a single box set, constituting the greatest number of episodes ever released to home video at one time. Prior to this, incredibly, the entire series had been released on VHS as well, likely requiring diehard fans to build additions to their homes in order to hold all the tapes. It's also the only soap to ever see widespread rerun circulation, resulting in many unofficial tapes being circulated before the DVD set came out.
NBC released a DVD set of 10-or-so episodes of Sunset Beach for promotional purposes. Some lunatics in the UK banded together and traded recordings until all but 1 out of 725 shows were posted on YouTube.
In the early 2000s, the tide seemed to be turning for classic soaps, with a few rerunning on cable television, several offered via streaming websites, and the legendary Guiding Light and As the World Turns receiving official DVD releases. After a few years, all of these offerings disappeared. Currently, a Guiding Light DVD set of 20 episodes sells for nearly $200.
The Young Doctors is usually considered as one of the best pre-Neighbours Australian soap-operas despite being basically impossible to find footage from the show online, only info from those who remembered it and the run history.
There have been Best Of compilations of American Bandstandnote , The Midnight Special, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and Soul Train...but aside from the last show being rerun on Centric, seeing full-season releases or full-show reruns doesn't seem to be in the cards, mostly because of the cost and effort involved in securing the rights of musical and (in the cases ofMidnight and Concert) stand-up comedy performances.
A lot of 1970s and '80s episodes of 'American Bandstand' (as well as a few from the 1960s) were reaired briefly on VH1 in the mid - late 1990s, completely uncut and with all its original music. You're pretty much guaranteed to find that any YouTube uploads of 'American Bandstand' performances from the '70s and early '80s will come from those repeats. Why VH1 were allowed to rerun those episodes uncut is a question only the late Dick Clark could've answered.
Effective early 2014, Soul Train is being broadcast on digital MeTV subchannel Bounce TV.
Anglia Television's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.
Mostly due to the fact it was a local (Seattle) show and the station that created it is now part of a larger station group, Almost Live! has also never seen the light of a DVD box set...despite the fact that you could probably convince half the city to give up espresso for a month just to get one. For those outside Seattle, Almost Live was what established 'Bill Nye the Science Guy', and his Almost Live colleagues made appearances on the show. Also well worth it to see Nye in some amusing but definitely-not-for-kids stuff like 'The Street Walking Lawyers of Aurora Ave.' and 'Ree-bok Cross-dressers'.
Many, many, manyprehistoric animal documentaries have not been released on DVD. Wanna see them? Your best friends are Netflix, YouTube, and torrents. They are the only places you'll find Animal Armageddon, Dino Lab, Dinosaur Revolution, Koreanosaurus, Life After Dinosaurs, Prehistoric, Prehistoric Assassins, and Prehistoric Monsters Revealed, along with many lesser, mostly-science and few-CGI documentaries, like Super Croc, Utah's Dino Graveyard, and others.
Ants In Your Pants was a Canadian children's series which took on the unique form of an MTV-style music video anthology, and was run endlessly on Treehouse TV for about a decade. Sadly, Treehouse seems to have all but forgotten about it, and no home video releases are in sight, likely due to music rights/licensing issues (an out of print soundtrack album has been made though). A handful of the songs/videos featured have been uploaded to YouTube as well, compiled onto a rather nifty playlist.
Beat The Cyborgs was a CITV entertainment show broadcast in 2003, so for such a comparatively recent series it's disheartening to see not just a lack of VHS or DVD, but NO online clips of the show (just one trailer, all there is as visual representation on YouTube that this show existed). It can't be revived due to the tragic death of Mark Speight, who was the Borgmaster.
Big Bag was a preschool show that used to air on Cartoon Network around 1998, and was one of few live-action shows produced for the channel. It was produced by the award-winning company behind Sesame Street (Sesame Workshop, then known as the Children's Television Workshop) and had a few international versions released on other channels. Because Big Bag's ratings were so low, SW has neglected to reissue the show.
Blips, a British children's program created by Ragdoll Productions of Teletubbies fame. None of the 26 episodes were ever released on home media, and it hasn't been seen airing on television since 2006. As of this writing, only the online Flash game made for the show has been recovered.
Brothers, a Showtime original sitcom that aired from 1984 - 1989, was briefly reran in syndication in the early 1990s and then seemed to completely disappear from view. This is in spite of the program's groundbreaking take on homosexuality and gay issues and the novelty of getting to see Yeardley Smith in a live-action setting. (There is also a 'hey, it's that famous relation' in terms of the eldest of the three fictional Waters siblings being played by Brandon Maggart, who is now best known for being Fiona Apple's father.) One possible explanation for the program not getting a DVD release is that it was always a cult program, since it was one of the first examples of original programming on pay TV and not as well-known as 'Soap', another early gay TV pioneer (but which aired on a network).
The 1987 TV movie Casanova, directed by Simon Langton, written by George MacDonald Fraser and starring Richard Chamberlain, Faye Dunaway, Ornella Muti, Sylvia Kristel and Hanna Schygulla, has never been released on VHS or DVD in the United States other than a severely-edited 122-minute VHS version in 1992. A much longer version with nudity has been released on VHS in various European countries and Latin America, but there has never been an official DVD release anywhere. The best available version appears to be a Japanese laserdisc of the original U.S. broadcast version of the movie (with Japanese subtitles).
Cloud 9 have only released two of their series, The Tribe and The Adventures Of Swiss Family Robinson despite most of their shows being cult classics and/or starring big name actors like William Shatner.
Fox News Channels succesful comedy show Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld will never have episodes released publicly, despite the fact that it is well archived at Fox. The only way to watch this show is finding ripped episodes online. There is only about 10 episodes that can be found on youtube, which is sad considering the daily program had 1,853 episodes, and because of Fox News sticking to habits, this is likely to happen to The Greg Gutfeld Show also.
In 1998, CNN aired an amazing 24-part special on the Cold War. It was released on VHS, but then September 11th happened and large amounts of footage from the later episodes, which dealt with the USA's interventions in the Middle East, were reclassified. But those episodes were never recalled, so if you get your hands on them you can legally watch classified footage (which bits are classified is unknown, of course). Copies still float around online, and the series is shown in many history, international relations, and foreign policy classes.
Somewhat averted as the series was released in full by Warner Brothers on DVD in early June of 2012 at a reasonable price, though it's definitely likely some of the re-classified footage has been culled out of the DVD release.
Conquest, a show hosted by Peter Woodward on The History Channel a mere six years ago. The History Channel's website doesn't even list the show anymore and acts like the 28 episodes they made and aired never happened. Which is unfortunate, because it was a great show that depicted many classical weapons and their history/use.
Crash Zone, a 1999 Australian TV show that aired on the Seven Network for 26 episodes was released over 6 VHS volumes that were made exclusively available to schools. The show never got a public home media release, VHS or otherwise, when the second season was made available on iTunes. The only trace of season 1 to be found online is a trailer, though it is hoped that the first season will also eventually be released on iTunes.
The Crayon Box, a puppet show based on the popular poem by Shane DeRolf, is very difficult to find, despite the series getting several pieces of merchandise and airing with Bananas in Pyjamas in the United States. Polygram was going to release the show on multiple VHS tapes, but it wound up being cancelled for unexplained reasons.
Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: Seasons 1-4 on DVD; seasons 5-11 are MIA.
Divorce Court - The current version, featuring real-life arbitration hearings of divorce cases, is alive and well in syndication. Nobody, it seems, remembers (or is interested in airing) two earlier dramas bearing the name Divorce Court ... y'know, the one that featured fictional stories supposedly based on 'real-life' divorce cases, and student attorneys arguing the cases with actors playing the litigants and witnesses. The original version of the original format debuted in 1957, with Judge Volitare Perkins presiding; despite running a then-impressive 12 years in syndication (in that time, it was one of the longest runs in syndication), the series has never been repeated and is largely forgotten today. An updated version, with even more relevant and sometimes raunchier stories, premiered in the spring of 1985, with Judge William B. Keene serving as the judge. That series has been re-aired (most notably on Court TV and earlier, on the USA Network), but except for occasional uploads to video-sharing services has not been seen since at least the mid-1990s.
Don't Eat the Neighbours - a joint British-Canadian puppet series which aired between 2001 and 2002. There was only ever one video/DVD release with just four episodes, out of a total of twenty six.
Any of the E! True Hollywood Story specials. Aside from the understandably daunting task of trying to release 14 seasons worth of unrelated media (ranging from TV and film stars to celebrity scandals and popular culture), many of the episodes have music or footage clearance issues. That said, many of the episodes could (and should) have been released as extras on DVD sets that didn't have any extras in the first place (Miami Vice, Married With Children, and others). This isn't helped by the fact that E! has only released a scant few episodes to Emmy Award voters only and has since limited reruns to episodes that feature reality TV famewhores. Thankfully in syndication, but mainly as late-night filler for TV stations and edited to fit a half-hour and remove E! branding.
They (or at least Comcast) have also seen fit to pull down any uploads on YouTube for no apparent reason. Considering the above, don't expect to see most of them any time soon.
The CTV news drama E.N.G.: Not only did this show (about a team of anchors at a politically-charged news station) run for five seasons, but it was one of the most watched programs on the channel it aired on. It won a whopping ten Gemini Awards (including Best Dramatic Series four years in a row) and practically swept every other Canadian series critically and commercially when it was on...until it was dumped from the network without explanation. Twenty years later, and it still hasn't been released.
$40 a Day, a series hosted by Rachael Ray which originally appeared on Food Network, and subsequently re-aired on Cooking Channel, The Travel Channel, and TLC, disappeared from air in the 2010s. The creators likely felt that inflation made the show too much of a relic. It's not available on DVD or for streaming, either. At least, not officially; you'll find a few episodes on YouTube.
Freddy's Nightmares — A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series. Five episodes were released on VHS in the 1990s, which are long out-of-print. There was also a DVD set in Region 2 which contained the first three episodes, but alleged poor sales kept it from being released anywhere else and stopped any more episodes from being given a DVD treatment.
Glasgow Kiss, an extremely well-done six-part series about a Glaswegian sportswriter and the financial management planner he falls in love with (played by Iain Glen and Sharon Small, respectively), has yet to appear on DVD. It can be found on the internet, but requires considerable effort to hunt down.
It's not easy being a Japanese fan of Goosebumps, since the dub of the series that aired on public broadcaster NHK is presumed to be lost, with the videos from Nico Nico Douga removed for copyright infringement. It last aired on Disney XD in 2009.
Any TV series hosted by Rolf Harris will definitely not be getting an official home release after he was jailed for sexual abuse of children.
David Lynch's three-episode miniseries Hotel Room.
Any surviving episodes of the 80's syndicated talk show Hot Seat With Wally George (an early example of featuring a confrontational ideologue as talk show host) only exist in home video recordings or YouTube clips. Because they couldn't afford to store them, the television station that produced the series destroyed all the masters of the show.
A quick search does not reveal any episode of the Indian TV serial Hum Log to have been released on DVD (although the first episode was uploaded to YouTube by Doordarshan, the channel that aired the show). Shame, as the show holds a special place in history as the first Indian TV serial ever.
Infinity Limited, by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1980-84.
The Invisible Man has had two different releases of its first season on DVD, plus a release of the pilot and first episode in France which a number of American fans ordered from overseas before the full sets were released in the states. However, there is still no sign of the second season being released on DVD in any form. Both seasons are available on Hulu, though.
It's unlikely that Iron Chef will ever be released on DVD, due to a combination of length (there were over 300 episodes), copyright issues (much of the music was from Backdraft, Glory, and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story), and licensing issues among Japan, the United States, and Australia. Also, many episodes never left Japan in the first place. note
Iron Chef America has no excuse. Despite that, only the Battle of The Masters was released on DVD.
Iron Chef Japan is still being shown on The Cooking Channel, albeit with the original music now swapped for copyright friendly tracks.
The very popular Dutch 1960s series Ja Zuster, Nee Zuster is only available now as fragments and as recorded songs, not due to copyright issues but because most of the master tapes were lost.
Reruns of the 1980s Christian Television Network kids' game show Joy Junction fell into this trope due to incidents not too dissimilar from the abrupt vanishing of The Cosby Show; when one of the cast members, Ron Brown (who had a segment where he performed with a marionette named Marty), was arrested in 2012 as part of a sting operation that later revealed that Brown had been part of chat rooms discussing killing children and eating them; eventually being convicted in 2013. Upon the arrest, CTN as well as TBN sub-channel Smile of a Child immediately pulled reruns of the series.
The Judge: An '80s dramatized court show that never aired on TV after repeats on USA Network in the early 1990s.
About half of Kaze no Haruka is available to view online. Much searching has not revealed any part of the series to have been released either on DVD or for download.
The original Latin American dubbed version of Kometto-san (Señorita Cometa in Spanish), a 1960s Widget SeriesToku mixing live action, puppets and animation (And ended on a Bittersweet Ending, as seen here) that aired in Mexico and other Latin American countries through the 1970s and mid-1980s was lost after an earthquake in 1985 destroyed part of the facilities (including some of the tape archives) of Televisa, the network that held the rights to the series. Home copies of some episodes that were recorded prior to 1985 in formats such as Betamax (home tapes were not as common then) have been posted online. Although the dub's master tapes were permanently lost, a redub of the entire series was made in 2013 that aired on the Mexico City channel Cadenatres as well as to be released on home media in the near future.
The 1960s anthology series Kraft Suspense Theatre has never been released on DVD.
The Canadian-produced sister series to Kung Fu, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Despite starring David Carradine and running for four seasons in syndication (a longer run than the original, not the first timethat's happened), the show didn't see any DVD release until 2014, when the first season was released in the US only (surprisingly, not in Canada!). The second season was released on DVD in 2015, but the final two seasons have yet to see a DVD release to this day. It is available online and on torrents, though.
The Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode 'The Glory That Was' only appears to be available as a premium video from USA Network's channel on YouTube, presumably because of the lesbian sex scene that opens the episode. This is unfortunate, because it's also one of the few episodes in which the fate of Wheeler's ex-fiancée is mentioned.
Despite being released in Europe, there seems to be absolutely no plans for a DVD release for Lilyhammer in the United States. To make matters worse, the American rights belong to Netflix and they seem to see absolutely no value in releasing things outside the streaming section of the Web site (you can't even rent 'rental only' discs of the show).
While older episodes of Maury have generally been easy to locate beginning with season eight in 1998 (which is where producer NBCUniversal's archive of the series begins), episodes prior to that are impossible to look for outside of home recordings due to CBS owning the rights to itnote . Not even the Nosey streaming service, which showcases episodes of Maury, has been able to get hold of any of the Paramount-produced episodes (only the NBCUniversal-produced/owned episodes are shown). On top of that, both Maury Povich and NBCUniversal are unable to gain clearance from CBS in regards to those episodes, explaining why 'milestone' episodes exclusively feature footage from the Universal-produced episodes.
Memphis Beat, never released on DVD (entire two seasons) after its cancellation by TNT in 2011.
The horror TV series Monsters. If you have Chiller, you can catch it, usually via marathons.
The New Adventures of Robin Hood, a kitschy 1990s series from TNT in the vein of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena, has only Season 1 available on DVD, and then not until 2010. The remaining three seasons are completely unavailable.
The Made-for-TV MovieOil Storm received a lot of attention after apparently predicting Hurricane Katrina. However, as it is a mockumentary made up in part from various forms of archival footage, it is unclear if it will ever be rereleased.
MTM Enterprises seems particularly cursed. The studio was synonymous with 'quality television' in the 1970s and 1980s, producing some of the most critically-acclaimed series in American TV history, but none of them (with the exception of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Remington Steele, The Bob Newhart Show, Hill Street Blues, and WKRP in Cincinnatinote , the second being no doubt thanks to Pierce Brosnan's megastardom) have seen anything close to their complete runs getting out on DVD. You can blame the library's current owners, 20th Century Fox, for this otherwise inexplicable behavior. Shout! Factory has stepped in and worked with Fox to release Newhart, Rhoda and Lou Grant.
And on the subject of MTM, the people who owned them for a while- the English television company TVS (Television South), which was part of ITV, is also caught up in this. A month after TVS ceased broadcasting it was bought by International Family Entertainment, who did use some TVS shows on the now defunct UK version of The Family Channel. IFE was bought by 20th Century Fox (who now have the MTM rights) and Saban Entertainment, who in turn sold the rights to Disney as a very minor part of their takeover of Fox / ABC Family and the international Fox Kids / Jetix channels. Unfortunately at some point during this game of musical programme rights, all the paperwork relating to TVS's programmes was thrown out, meaning the entire library is basically in rights hell and unlikely to see the light of day. For example, a lot of folks would give their eyeteeth to see The Witches and the Grinnygog again, which at the moment is only available as an illegal bootleg. A few shows did escape this, in the months leading up to the end, TVS sold its current network shows like Art Attack and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries to independent producers (and How 2 to Scottish Television), complete with the back catalogues of those shows, and the local news and sport archive was sold to successor Meridian. However, the vast majority of TVS shows- including the pre-1993 episodes of Catch-Phrase, the 1988-90 adaptation of Concentration, and All Clued Up- are buggered.
The Original Amateur Hour began as an old-time radio show in the 1930's before moving to TV, Channel Hopping between all of theBig ThreeTV networks (andDuMont), and should be considered groundbreaking in that it was the Trope Maker for the TV talent show, paving the way for everything from Star Search to American Idol, and it also launched the careers of luminaries like Raúl Juliá, Frank Sinatra, Irene Cara, Connie Francis, Beverly Sills, Ann-Margret, Pat Boone, José Feliciano, and Gladys Knight. While full episodes are hard to find, especially on YouTube, the masters are presumably still out there, stored in the Library of Congress - a documentary about the show hosted by Boone was released on DVD, and among the bonus features were two complete episodes of the show, including the original commercials; three episodes and an excerpt of the DuMont run are also among the channel's surviving warenote . A revived version with Willard Scott aired on the above-mentioned Family Channel in 1992; despite its warm response and high ratings (not to mention the TV debut of Nick Carter) this new version only lasted one season. Good luck finding full episodes of that now.
In this case, this trope can be attributed to the gigantic backlog of episodes, as well as the fact that very few people had VHS recorders, let alone knew how to use them properly, by the time the show ended its original run in 1970 (they did by the time the ABC Family version got on the air, and ironically that one's much harder to find than the episodes from The '50s). However, like most of the examples on this page you can see bits and pieces from every incarnation of the show on (where else?) YouTube.
Our America With Lisa Ling on OWN has managed, through what has got to be the worst cable deal ever, to find itself in this territory despite being an active show producing new episodes. And one of the highest-rated shows on the network. A network that reruns just about everything else on the roster to death. If there isn't a new episode being aired, or a new episode about to be aired, good luck finding it online, on the schedule, anywhere. Lisa isn't overly happy with the arrangement either.
Out of Jimmy's Head never got a DVD release due to its abysmal ratings and huge backlash from older audiences due to being on a channel not well-regarded for its live-action fare. Apparently even said channel itself wants it to be forgotten. It's telling that the French/Spanish dubs seem to be lost forever, even though the Re-Animated DVD promised audio tracks for those languages. Edgar Givry, the French voice of Croco, still remembers working on the series, though.
Out of This World not only has DVD distribution tied up in limbo due to legal issues with the showrunners being blocked from making any more money off the show. This prevents the it from airing on American television, where reruns last aired in the mid-nineties.
Philadelphia had a number of fondly remembered, locally produced children's shows back in the Seventies and Eighties. WCAU had Starstuff and The Candy Apple News Company, while WPVI had the long-running Chief Halftown and Captain Noah's Magical Ark.
Aside from a short-lived iTunes release of 'Peek A Boo', the Jim Henson Play-A-Long Video series can only be found on old VHS tapes with no DVD or digital release in sight. Not only do they have a cult following with those who grew up watching them, but 'Wow, You're A Cartoonist!' kick-started the career of Tatyana Ali of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fame.
The complete series DVD of Playmakers, the acclaimed ESPN scripted football drama, has gone out of print and likely won't ever be re-released due to the same reason the series was cancelled in the first place: The NFL's objections to the subject matter (including at least two storylines on drug use: one on cocaine, the other on steroids).
Pop Up Video is presumably stymied by music rights issues (although it saw one VHS / DVD compilation release in 1999). A select few videos can be found on VH1's website and YouTube. VH-1 Classic once aired all the full reruns, but they disappeared upon the network's transition to MTV Classic in August 2016.
Speaking of VH-1: any I Love the _____ series. More movie, television, and music clip rights issues than you can shake a stick at. The decade-based series were often rerun up through 2009, but I Love Toys (2006) wasn't so lucky, and the 90-minute I Love the Holidays special only ran a few times in 2005. Good luck finding either of them in full, in any format (not even trading websites have them circulated).
Behind the Music only had a handful of VHS/DVD releases, and music rights issues make them unlikely to show up again. VH-1 Classic reran many of the more popular episodes, often in 'remastered' versions which added relevant events that happened to the artist(s) since the original airings. Again, all that disappeared when VH-1 Classic became MTV Classic, and now those episodes seem to be lost forever, as well as others that were never 'Remastered' to begin with (such as those chronicling a certain year in popular music, or one that looked at the final days of John Lennon).
Pizza has a DVD release for its fifth season, and its Spiritual Successor shows have had DVD releases too, but its first four seasons aren't available in any official way.
Radio Free Roscoe, a Canadian Family Channel production that was later picked up by The N (now TeenNick), had two (or four, depending on which country you saw it aired in) seasons, with a total of 52 episodes but has only ever received one DVD release; a compilation of eight fan-selected episodes from the first season. Copies of the remaining episodes can still be found online and for download, though like many Family Channel original productions, a full DVD release seems unlikely.
The AMC period sitcom Remember WENN, an unfortunate casualty of the pre-Mad Men era, is not on DVD and not in syndication.
Certain non-official translations of Retro Game Master were taken down from YouTube or otherwise removed when Kotaku announced another episode that had already been previously fan translated. Once Kotaku's license to show the series expired, they pretty much officially sanctioned people watching fansubbed versions instead. Also, circulating the tapes is the only way for anyone to watch the parts of the show that aren't the challenges; rights issues make it so that even in Japan, the official DVD releases cut down each episode to just the challenge segments. The broadcasting company plans on taking down all the episodes on YouTube, subs and all.
The early '90s Irish Puppet ShowRimini Riddle is now impossible to find, except for two short clips on YouTube. Most of what is known about the show comes from the vague memories of people who watched it as kids.
The Rosie O'Donnell Show. Despite the show being very popular during its run, it was cancelled in 2002 and was not even rerun. Episodes and clips are pretty easy to find on YouTube however.
Sightings, a paranormal news program that aired in syndication during the early-to-mid 1990s.
Space: 1999 had two episodes released by U.S.A. Home Video, but both tapes were sued by two of its stars and blocked from further distribution within a year. The silliest thing about this is, the reason they wound up unavailable on video for over a decade afterward wasn't copyright infringement, but rather low quality. That's right, the very first uncut videocassettes of the series in the United States were banned because the video wasn't detailed or colorful enough. You can read some more about this silliness, among other things, here.
Spectreman. BCI-Eclipse, the company that released other Toku series like Ultraman and Iron King in the United States, actually stated that they wanted to release it but were unable to determine who currently owned the rights to the English dub of the series.
The award-winning, four-season syndicated TV show Starting Over (not the movie with Burt Reynolds).
Superior Court: Another dramatized court show in the 1980s never released on DVD since it last aired in repeats on USA Network in the early 1990s.
Most of the Japanese live-action Super Sentai series have never aired in the United States and none have ever seen any home media release. This includes the classic Himitsu Sentai Goranger, which essentially kicked the genre off in the mid-1970s. DVD releases in countries where certain seasons were popular (Brazil, France) exist, but whether they have English subtitles and the viewer can bypass the regional lock is another issue.
Fortunately Shout! Factory came to the (eventual) rescue, with complete season releases (though they unfortunately still exclude the various side movies and specials) starting with Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger; as of spring 2018, the line has continued with Gosei Sentai Dairanger, Ninja Sentai Kakuranger, Chouriki Sentai Ohranger, Gekisou Sentai Carranger, Denji Sentai Megaranger, Seijuu Sentai Gingaman and Kyukyu Sentai GoGoV, and releases of Mirai Sentai Timeranger, Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger and the pre-Zyuranger series Choujin Sentai Jetman are also all scheduled for release later in the year.
Takeshi's Castle was only shown at 7:00 AM on Virgin 1's cable channel. Those with basic Freeview could only see it at 4:00 AM.
The final season of the Gag DubMost Extreme Elimination Challenge never appeared on DVD, and the 'Real Monsters vs. Commercial Mascots' episode on the Season 2 box set was subjected to Clumsy Copyright Censorship and is also unavailable on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu.
And for that matter, the Almost live Special that kicked off Season 3, and the two Season 4 Clip Shows were also left out of the DVD releases.
This Is the Life and other religious dramas from the 1950s through early 1980s were once a staple of Sunday morning television. In a nutshell, these Christian dramas – underwritten by a Protestant or Catholic synod – would present a story where the main characters faced a moral dilemma and attempted to resolve it through their own secular means before turning to the Christian solution; the host would then review the situation at the end, provide a brief commentary on how the lesson can be applied to the viewer's life, and give appropriate Scripture reading. Many of these programs starred both established actors and then-unknowns prior to their first big break. Since the last of these shows – the Missouri Lutheran Synod-underwritten This Is the Life, circa 1988 – ended first-run production, these Christian anthologies have virtually vanished. YouTube didn't get any episodes until around 2011, when three episodes, one from the original ABC run and two others from the early-to-mid 1960s were uploaded there; no episodes have been offered for sale on home video (not even in the 1980s by Christian-based ministries, during or after first-run production), and finding any station that has saved the tapes may be more difficult than the proverbial camel passing through a needle's eye. The most likely place to find any of these shows would likely be a church that might have old off-air VHS recordings of the show in its library, or a rural public access station that has old tapes in its archive and are running them as filler, but even in remote rural areas, most public access cable TV stations don't publish their broadcast schedules. Many religious cable networks won't air them these days because their 'for everyone' morals don't meet the certain viewpoints they espouse, and that the Aesops too often represented the teachings of the era.
Related: Insight, a syndicated anthology drama series by Paulist Productions, which ran from 1960 to 1985. Notable for airing during late night, early mornings, and other strange times. Essentially The Twilight Zone with a religious twist. However, unlike most typical religious programming, its sectarian nature was seldom evident at first glance due to the lack of heavy handed preachiness. It guest starred many established actors of the time as well as up and coming actors who would later become stars. Out of the 25 years of the show's run (250 episodes), only ten episodes are available from Paulist Press (VHS only as of 2011). Good luck in finding most of the rest of it. Many rumors exist as to why it's not headed for DVD anytime soon. One posible reason is that the show represented Catholic theology of its time and may no longer represent current Church doctrine on a lot of issues.
Tracker only had a DVD release in the form of a cobbled-together pseudo-'movie' of a couple of episodes. Fans refused to buy it, and Lions Gate never saw the point of a whole series DVD release. Cue the fan-made DVDs.
The both the Hawaiian and Cinar English dubs of the Ultra Series show Ultraseven, due to Tsuburaya’s ongoing legal battle with Chaiyo Productions/UMC. Tsuburaya currently owns the three surviving episodes of the Hawaiian Dub (21, 22, 35), and all the audio and visual materials from the Cinar Dub. Tsuburaya has released the three Hawaiian Dub episodes as a DVD bonus feature, and for years fans have been circulating taped episodes of the Cinar Dub since it went off the air on TNT.
It's not dubbed - only subtitled - but Ultra Seven (And Ultra Q) did see release from Shout! Factory.
The 1993 produced-in-Canada TV version of The Untouchables with Tom Amandes, William Forsythe, and John Rhys-Davies.
The popular Swedish Vintergatan ('Milky Way') series, which were humorous science fiction adventures for children. The two seasons can't be released on DVD because of music rights issues. On the other hand, Swedish Television reruns it once a year, so you can tape it yourself with no legal problems.
Saban's VR Troopers has not been rerun since its initial airing, and some episodes are extremely rare in that the full episode only aired once.
In 'Field Goal', Footbot's football bomb was caught and passed back to him near the end of the battle, which is why he was smoking before JB used the laser lance on him. He also initially was impaled like most monsters and threw his arms up in surrender
In 'Troopers Out Of Time', despite what later edits would lead you to believe, the laser lance did NOT finish off Fanbot, in fact, it did next to nothing except distract him from sucking up JB because it TICKLED. After the distraction was over, the previously goofy Fanbot decided to get serious and prepared to suck JB up permanently before he had to use the VR Technobazooka to finish off the robot (normally reserved for air assault), but for some reason powered up the laser lance again (probably to take out the nearby skugs). This wasn't American footage, either, the original Metal Heroes episode suffered the same fate.
In the episode where they went back in time and Ryan was left in the present to battle Lizbot, there's a missing scene where he battles and destroys Lizbot. She was destroyed in an unusually violent manner that ended with her coughing up whatever blood they have and was cut from rebroadcasts for obvious reasons.
In the last episode, when Grimlord is trying to drain the new robot Galileo, the scene before he crashes the computer is longer.
Young Blades hasn't been released on DVD, which is unsurprising due to its lack of popularity and its being on PAX. There are a few unofficial DVD copies out there, however: after one fan lost all her taped episodes during Hurricane Katrina, she wrote to the production company and they sold her all the episodes on DVD, including missing scenes. Several other fans followed her example.