Shout! Studios

If there's some weird sound / on your DVD / who you gonna call?

Shout! Factory is the latest company to hold the U.S. distribution rights to the original Transformers cartoon. They also have released DVD versions of many other nostalgic cartoons, like C.O.P.S., Captain N: The Game Master, and Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. Oh, and that one show that always gets mixed up with the Transformers.

Releases

For their Generation 1 DVDs, Shout! Factory have notably cleaned up the extra sound effects and animation errors introduced by Kid Rhino and Magno Sound & Video that have previously been present in many different companies' releases worldwide. Though much closer to the originals, the cleanup was not perfect; some scenes required mastering from lower-quality records, resulting in noticeable jumps in visual quality within episodes. A few episodes also had their soundtracks incorrectly tweaked; for example, many of the sound effects in "Countdown to Extinction" are almost inaudible, despite being prominent before.

The Shout! Factory DVDs order the episodes of the first two seasons by a custom order based on "logic of continuity" (actually derived from a list from the unofficial guidebook "Prime Targets"), rather than the original air dates or the production order. Story-wise, this leads to oddities such as a host of new characters showing up in the third episode, only to disappear again for several episodes after. However, this custom order does correct some oversights, Properly placing Aerial Assault after The Revenge of Bruticus, for example. However, for the third season, Shout! Factory arranged the episodes in a way they were "mandated" to by a higher source.

• The Transformers — The Complete First Season: 25th Anniversary Edition (June 16, 2009)

Contains the entire first season across two discs, plus a third disc of bonus material including a featurette on "the origins of the Transformers", commercials, PSAs, and the script for "Transport to Oblivion". This set also includes a magnet in the form of the G1 Autobot insignia.

• The Transformers — More than Meets the Eye (September 1, 2009)

Contains the episodes "More than Meets the Eye" parts 1-3, "Transport to Oblivion" and "Roll for It".

• The Transformers — Season Two, Volume One: 25th Anniversary Edition (September 15, 2009)

Contains 28 episodes of the second season across four discs.

• The Transformers — The Complete Series: 25th Anniversary "Matrix of Leadership" Collection (October 20, 2009)

Sixteen-disc set compiling the four individual "25th Anniversary Edition" season releases, with extra bonus material including more episode scripts, an exclusive interview with Bob Budiansky, and a featurette on "voicing the robots in disguise". This set also includes a 60-page book and Autobot and Decepticon insignia magnets.

• The Transformers — Season Two, Volume Two: 25th Anniversary Edition (January 12, 2010)

Contains the remaining 21 episodes of the second season across three discs, plus a fourth disc of bonus material including a featurette on "forming the Transformers animated series", a concept art gallery, excerpts from the show's production bible, commercials and PSAs.

• The Transformers — Seasons Three and Four: 25th Anniversary Edition (April 20, 2010)

Contains the third and fourth seasons across four discs, plus a fifth disc of bonus material including "The Autobots, The Decepticons & the Fans" featurette, a concept art gallery, production bible excerpts, commercials and PSAs.

• 
  Complete First Season
• 
  More than Meets the Eye
• 
  Season Two, Volume One
• 
  Complete Series
• 
  Season Two, Volume Two
• 
  Seasons Three and Four

Notes

• The episode order as used by Shout! Factory for season one (in production order), and season two (mostly in airdate order), actually stems from utilizing the episode order as suggested in the unofficial guidebook Prime Targets. The book presents a list which places priority on the over-arching continuity of the series, rearranging the latter half of season two and the whole of season three into neither production, nor airdate order.
  • When publicising their Season Two, Volume One DVD, Shout! somewhat bizarrely initially claimed that Hasbro had canonised the episode order presented in the unofficial book. Shortly afterwards however, they were instructed to restore season three's airdate order for the Matrix of Leadership Collection, regardless of continuity between some of the episodes. Shout! obliged, but this instruction came too late to change the disc covers or accompanying booklet, leading to much confusion about various season three episodes being on the 'wrong' discs.

• On the first season set's "Triple Changer: The Origins of the Transformers" featurette, and the Matrix of Leadership Collection's interview with Bob Budiansky, there is a deliberate obfuscation of Marvel Comics' involvement in fashioning much of the Transformers' early backstory and no direct mention that they were the publisher behind the 1980s comics. Clips from the very first Transformers commercial for issue #1 of the comic are shown, but are cut off before Victor Caroli's narration can mention it will be coming "from Marvel Comics", with even the brief image of the comic in the commercial also having Marvel's logo blurred out. The tiptoeing around Marvel's name is particularly noticeable in Budiansky's solo interview as he only ever refers to working for "the comic book company", even when mentioning receiving a fan letter from someone named Stan Lee, who was apparently well-known for being associated with "the comic book company".

• The Secret Files of Teletraan II no longer appear after their respective season three episodes, but are instead all included separately as isolated extras.

• Following the precedent of Sony's The Transformers: The Movie 20th Anniversary Special Edition DVD, all the commercials on the Shout! discs have the kids' faces blurred out due to clearance issues.

• These commercials are of unfortunately low quality; the commercial for the Insecticons, for example, contains the horizontal distortion lines common to degraded VHS videotapes. No original masters were saved or archived for the commercials, hence the quality issues.

• Shout! looked into obtaining the U.S. home video rights to include "Scramble City" for the Matrix of Leadership Collection, but were unsuccessful, simply stating that "Toei has no interest in licensing to third parties".

• In the 60-page booklet that accompanies the Complete Set, selected character profiles are mixed in with episode summaries. These profiles are taken from Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye profile books and paired with art (some of it new). This means that Unicron's profile mentions his cosmic battle with Primus, for example, and Shockwave's profile is randomly mean and sarcastic since mention of the profile being from Starscream's datatrax is omitted.

Restoration

• Shout! Factory conducted a painstaking editing process to correct the animation errors and sound effect additions made by Kid Rhino and Magno Sound & Video.
  • From the DVD insert: "Transformers DVDs released prior to our 25th Anniversary Edition were missing animation seen in the original broadcast. We did extensive research, found the discrepancies between the original broadcast masters and the restored masters used for the last DVD release, reinserted the correct animation, and color corrected it as best we could to match the shots before and after. But because a one-inch master tape simply can't hold up to the quality of the restored masters, you may notice occasional shots—or even scenes—in some episodes that seem slightly softer than others. Just take comfort in knowing that laser blasts have been reinserted, backgrounds have been corrected and Starscream is Starscream once again."
  • Some of the fixed scenes are indeed "softer" than the surrounding animation—though since the last time the correct versions were released for North American purchase was on VHS tapes over 10 years ago, by this point the Shout! versions probably look as good as or better than them. Though not absolutely every Kid Rhino coloring error was fixed, the vast majority were, and certainly all of the sequences of mistaken animation that confused the plot were fixed. Shout! even repaired some audio errors that had been present on several prior releases of "Fire on the Mountain," and also included the totally better original, non-narrated closing sequence for "Dark Awakening" where Kid Rhino had used the later version.

• A version of the theme song including all of the extra sound effects introduced by Magno is used on the DVD title menu, but not in the actual episodes.

External link

• Shout! Factory's homepage