Thundercats...

In the early '80s, Thundercats aired on TV and featured a band of feline-esque characters fighting the forces of evil. My pride and joy for many years, was a video tape archive of nearly every episode broadcast in the Philadelphia area. I've lovingly preserved the tapes and they still work, even twenty years after they were recorded. Video tapes can't last forever and sooner or later the tapes are going to degrade with the passage of time. So, when I heard that Thundercats was coming to DVD, I had to get it.

In a distant galaxy the world of Thundera is in crisis. The planet's structure has become unstable and is near collapse. With their destruction imminent Thundera's denizens--known as the Thundercats--escape in a spaceship and plot a course for a new home. While in transit the Thundercats are attacked by evil mutants and their craft is irreparably damaged. Jaga the eldest Thundercat sacrifices himself in order to pilot the ship safely to its destination: Third Earth.

I picked up the first DVD box set of Thundercats and I just had to see it right away. I was a little disappointed with the release. There weren't really any extras, the quality was only slightly better than what I have on VHS and there weren't any chapter stops within the episodes - i.e. : you can't skip over the opening or ending animation (although you can fast-forward). With current technology, it should be possible to restore the print for the DVD release, but, sadly it doesn't appear that any effort was made on the part of the publisher. A notable example occurs in the first episode, "Exodus", where the image jumps when the Thundercats are talking about the end of Thunderra.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that someone has gone to the trouble of releasing Thundercats on DVD. I just wish that they had spent a little more time working on it. After all, I've waited 20 years for the release and I wouldn't have minded waiting a while longer for the publisher to get everything just right.