Complete Harvey Toons Collection (2 Viewers)

[Rodney]

Does anyone have any info on this? It is slated to come out October 3rd.
Here is the cover art:

 

[Joe Lugoff]

At 6 minutes a cartoon, 14 hours would equal about 140 cartoons. That's a lot, but that's not all of them, so "complete" is misleading.

This could be good, but of course these will be the Paramount theatrical cartoons with the generic Harvey television openings. These cartoons will probably never have their original opening credits restored again.

 

[AaronSCH]

Try this website: Link Removed

 

[Rodney]

Aaron:

Your link gave me this information:

DVDtoons.com will return the week of August 7, 2006, with a complete website update. We apologize for the lack of updates, but things should return to normal in a few weeks.

But I did google it and found this cached information:

Based on the famous Harvey Comic Characters including Casper and Friends, these theatrical animated shorts are coming to DVD.

There are no details at the moment, but the Harveytoons set is scheduled for release on September 13, 2005, with a retail tag of $59.95.

I am hoping for more information when the website re-appears.

 

[Tory]

For a while now nobody has really been able to find out just what is on this set. It was suppose to be released a year ago and keeps getting removed from the schedule and then pushed back. A previous release date would have had it hit stores in a week or so and before that September last year and between those sometime in November last year.

There is a fear that this is just the Harveytoons show that aired on Boomerang most recently (previously on Fox Family Channel) and not a concentrated effort for restoration of a complete uncensored collection as not all appeared on it. Anyways sccording to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._Show_episodes the Harveytoons Show contains the following shorts:



This adds up to 312 shorts. I do not know how many in total

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Well, 14 hours would be at least 28 half-hour shows, but probably closer to 42 half-hour shows (allowing for about 10 minutes of commercials in each show.)

At 3 cartoons a show, that's between 84 and 126 cartoons, which is not only far short of all the Paramount-"Harveytoon" cartoons there are, but even short of how many were in that TV series.

So I'd love to know how they define the word "complete."

 

[Mark Y]

Whoever is compiling this set most likely does not even realize (or care) that "Harveytoons" ever existed as anything other than a series of 65 formatted half-hour shows produced for cable TV, or that Paramount Pictures ever had an animation studio.

It's sad. I know the Harvey titles are not completely original, but even they would be preferable to the short choppy TV titles in the formatted "Harveytoon Show" episodes (which, remember, is what appears on all the Casper DVDs released by Classic Media so far).

 

[Larry.P]

My guess (and by no means do I know for sure) is that the collection will only include the specific characters that have come to be associated with Harvey: Casper, Baby Huey, LIttle Audrey, Herman & Katnip, and possibly Buzzy the Crow. I'm thinking that the Modern Madcaps will not be included. Including the public domain episodes, which may or may not be included, this leaves the following qty of theatrical shorts:
Baby Huey - 11
Casper - 55 (not including the made-for-TV shorts)
Herman & Katnip - 32
Herman (solo) - 4
Katnip (solo) - 1
Little Audrey - 15
Buzzy The Crow - 8
I don't know if these will all be included but there is enough room. Maybe they will also include the casper shorts from the New Casper Cartoon Show. I would also guess that Richie Rich will not be included. If he were I would think he most certainly would have made the cover. The Richie Rich episodes were not part of the original Harvey toon package created for the Fox Family Channel. They were tacked on when the show went to Boomerang. My Guess is that Richie Rich will get his own separate release of the 13 full half-hour episodes that were produced by Film Roman in the 90's.
Just my thoughts.... I guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Tory]

Hopefully the year long delay is due to an added involvement by an animation historian trying to make this more presentable, uncensoring the titles, restoring them, giving them their original title cards, creating featurettes and commentaries. Hopefully the box art is not finalized yet and this is in fact volume one of many.Hopefully.

 

[Tory]

I found this information at some online comicbook stores. I think this information is taken from Diamond solicitation catalog, an advance order catalog of comic books and related stuff:


http://westfieldcomics.com/wow/dvd.html

http://www.cosmiccomix.com/previews/previews.txt

http://www.comicbookresources.com/re...xt/2005_07.txt

http://www.nekosphere.com/froogle.php?x=AUG064715

Scroll down, you have to search for it.

Not much but it looks like Richie Rich will be appearing.

 

[Tory]

Any reviews out yet? Perhaps Wal-Mart has done what they did with Dick Tracy but they do not list it on their site and have yet to visit one this week. I know there is a different cover than last time this topic was touched upon and a new plot description:

http://www.sonymusicstore.com/store/...3&skuId=112912


Anyways one wee to go for sure unless they delay it again.

 

[Larry.P]

Sony is now listing a release date of 11/7/06.
I'm a little worried about the Amazon listing. It shows a run time of 200 minutes. I remember the old cover art for the release said it was over 14 hours of cartoons. The new cover doesn't say anything.
Hopefully the amazon listing is incorrect.

 

[Tory]

Push it too close to Looney Tunes Golden Collection 4 and then delete it altogether only to appear to be released the next summer, push it back each month or two, then place it too close to Looney Tunes Golden Collection 5 and repeat.

This should be out sooner than Halloween. I am still holding out hope that it will be at Wal-Mart before that day.

200 minutes is the listing at a lot of websites and many had that up when it said 14 hours on the cover.

 

[Ruz-El]

It sounds intriging and dodgy at the same time. I will be waiting for a review confirming that these are uncut before purchasing, if it ever actually comes out.

 

[Rodney]

It's like Sony really doesn't want to sell this thing. They don't advertise, they don't give enough information, and now it is delayed? Sheesh!

 

[Mark Y]

In some bizarro parallel universe, any delay would be because someone at Classic Media who cares about this stuff was contacted by someone like Jerry Beck and then went back to their staff and said, "Hey guys, guess what? I just found out these Harveytoons were once released to theatres and all along I thought this was just some lame late 1990s TV package. There are better versions of these cartoons, and it would be a snap to just remaster them from the original film masters. Hey, in fact, why don't we contact Paramount and see if we could even get them to loan us their negatives, which have the original theatrical titles?"

Naaaaahhh...

 

[Joe Lugoff]

What you described would happen in some sensible, rational parallel universe. I'm afraid we live in the bizarro universe .............

 

[Jonathan Peterson]

From Digital Bits:

"I'm pleased today to report one of the best things I've heard in a while: Classic Media has announced that they'll be releasing The Complete Harveytoons Collection on 11/7. That's right, I said THE COMPLETE. This 4 disc set (double-sided DVD-18s), will include ALL 312 classic Harveytoons shorts (1,142 minutes worth!) with digitally remastered picture and sound. Anyone else, like me, old enough to know and love these shorts? Yeah, we're talking Casper the Friendly Ghost. We're talking Richie Rich. We're talking Wendy and Herman and Katnip, Hot Stuff, Baby Huey, Little Audrey and The Modern Madcaps. The set will SRP for just $39.98, and it comes in collectible packaging with an original Casper comic printed inside. Very cool news indeed."

Woohoo!!! I just pre-ordered mine from Amazon.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

This doesn't ring true. [By the way, I hope these DVD-18's work better than Universal's. Universal has stopped using them because there were so many problems!]

But back to why this doesn't ring true. Two major reasons:

1) The so-called "Harveytoons" were actually produced by Paramount for a period of about 25 years. There were many more than 312 of them. So this set isn't really "complete." But 312 is a sizable chunk of them; however:

2) 1,142 minutes divided by 312 cartoons equals a running time of 3 minutes, 40 seconds per cartoon, which is way too short.

So something's wrong here, and I'm going to wait for a sensible explanation, which I'm sure won't be long in coming on this most knowledgable forum.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

On the surface this sounds great, but with its pricepoint, almost
seems too good to be true.

Why do I have this strange feeling these might be treated like
public domain titles?