Warner Archive: Popeye the Sailor (1940s) First Volume on Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Lord Dalek]

Paramount owns the other shorts through 1950 via Republic, and Universal owns the rest via Dreamworks Animation.

It's a long complicated story. Cliffnotes is Paramount sold most of it's film library piecemeal to TV distributors in the 1950's. That's how Universal ended up with most of Paramount's early features.

Paramount also owns all the shorts they made after 1960 (The Cat, Honey Half-Witch, Swifty and Shorty, etc.) They haven't been since the days of Nickelodeon's Cartoon Kablooey though.

 

[ClassicTVMan1981X]

Paramount also owns all the shorts they made after 1960 (The Cat, Honey Half-Witch, Swifty and Shorty, etc.) They haven't been since the days of Nickelodeon's Cartoon Kablooey though.

There were a couple of exceptions there, too... King Features owns the rights to those in the Beetle Bailey series.

~Ben

 

[ThadK]

Best Buy has it available for pre-order, $17.99. With free day-of-release delivery and taxes, it came in a full $10 cheaper than WBShop. It's too bad WB doesn't want to offer any kind of incentive to buy through the site. Or seem interested in advertising it beyond the same "buy it or else" pitch that's become WB's m.o. for the last decade.

 

[Ken_Martinez]

And we haven't seen any screenshots of the cartoons save for phone captures of a handful of title cards.

Side-by-comparisons of the new Blu-Ray and the current salmon-pink Boomerang transfers would say it all. It won't even feel like you're looking at the same cartoons.

 

[Towergrove]

Each set of the Golden and Platinum collections sold fewer than the previous one, so it's no surprise that WB stopped releasing new Looney Tunes. I've worked for three large corporations and I know that everything has to have a return on investment. So if people aren't buying and they can't make a lot of money licensing restored cartoons that they wouldn't have made licensing unrestored cartoons, it's no surprise that they've stopped. Having said that, I don't think those sets, especially the later sets, were marketed well.

On the other hand, there are so many releases of garbage that I see that I think, "who approved the release of this and how do they think it's going to be profitable?" If they can release that other junk, they can release these classic works.

I think one of the problems with these classic cartoons is that while there's a desirable nostalgia factor, these were also cartoons that Baby Boomers watched on TV for free and even beautifully restored, there's the perception that they're not worth much. And for most people (obviously not the completists), one boxed set of 60 cartoons was more than enough. And kids today don't necessarily relate: my grandkids don't want to watch either the Warner nor the Jay Ward cartoons. I guess these cartoons don't look like much to them compared to today's computer animation.

My concern now is the decline of physical media in general and the acquisition of Warner by AT&T. It usually takes an acquirer a year or more to get heavily involved in the details of a business and I have to wonder whether AT&T cares about physical media at all. I believe they bought Warner to provide content for streaming services, but how much they're willing to invest in restoration is a big open question.

As for the video physical media market, it was an $11 billion market in North America in 2009 and it will probably come in at about $3.75 billion this year. It was $4.7 billion last year. I'm a fan of physical media, but I'm also a realist and I have to admit that it's pretty much over for physical media. It's becoming a smaller and smaller niche every year. And I've evolved (or devolved) to a state where unless it's very inexpensive, I only buy physical video if I think I'm going to watch it more than once or twice.

Edit: Recorded music is in no better shape. For the first six months of 2018 in North America, physical media was only 10.3% of industry revenue. Streaming was 77.1% and downloads was 12.6%.

I know what your saying, sales of discs are in decline but they are in the Multi Billions of dollars a year. I'm not a negative Nancy! That's a lot of sell thru and doesnt include EST sales which are also in the billions. Laser disc survived for years with sales in the millions. Collectors purchased and supported that format. Any business catagory that sells in the billions is hardly pocket lint in the corporate pockets. The release of this set is positive news.

Sarah

 

[Ken_Martinez]

Is WAC not sending out review copies? Notably, our own Robert Harris has done reviews of all of WAC's upcoming releases EXCEPT specifically this one.

 

[JoeDoakes]

Is WAC not sending out review copies? Notably, our own Robert Harris has done reviews of all of WAC's upcoming releases EXCEPT specifically this one.

Mr. Harris sometimes waits a while before publishing a review, and I do not recall him ever reviewing a set of cartoon shorts. I wouldn't read anything into this. In terms of technical quality, I am sure that this will be of high quality. Whether you like Popeye or not is a different matter.

 

[bigshot]

I'm sure the restorations will look great. These cartoons had great color and backgrounds.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Again, listen to the Warner Archive podcast's latest episode for details. It includes an interview with animation historian Jerry Beck, and yes, they did go back to the SE negatives and digitally recombine for best results. Looking forward to it.

 

[Timothy E]

Blow me down! This blu-ray arrived early from Best Buy!

These cartoon shorts look amazing! It is wonderful to have the original opening and closing footage rather than the A.A.P. spliced credits.

Great job, Warner Brothers! I had given up on the Famous Studios shorts ever being released. If you keep releasing them, I will continue buying them.

 

[Ken_Martinez]

Amazon is sold out for the second time, and Best Buy and Deep Discount are sold out too.

It would seem as though these big online retailers underestimated demand for this one.

 

[RICK BOND]

I got mine Monday morning ! It looks Fantastic ! I hope they release the rest from the 1940's,and restore the Superman cartoons, so they look like this Quality. I have the WB Superman dvd 2 disc set. Needs much cleaning up. Great cartoons.

 

[ClassicTVMan1981X]

Amazon is sold out for the second time, and Best Buy and Deep Discount are sold out too.

It would seem as though these big online retailers underestimated demand for this one.

I would guess many of us like this title a lot due to the impressive way each of the 14 cartoons on it were restored!

I think this really will be a best-selling classic animation release!

~Ben

 

[Mike Frezon]

Amazon is sold out for the second time, and Best Buy and Deep Discount are sold out too.

It would seem as though these big online retailers underestimated demand for this one.

Huh. I've just gotten word from Amazon telling me to expect my copy sometime between January 9th and February 6th.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I forgot to order this the first go-round and finally placed an order yesterday with the same notice of late arrival.

I don't mind the wait and quite frankly I am happy to see this title selling better than expected. It just means more releases like this one

 

[Robert Crawford]

I received my order today from Deep Discount and watched half of the toons this evening. They brought back some childhood memories for me as I remember every single toon that I viewed today.

 

[BobO'Link]

Huh. I've just gotten word from Amazon telling me to expect my copy sometime between January 9th and February 6th.

I got a similar delay notice. I'm quite happy to wait as I'm pretty tapped out after making up for poor sales of movies/TV shows with some good sales on board games.

 

[Traveling Matt]

Thanks for the report Timothy!

 

[Alan Tully]

I'm definitely buying this set, but it can wait 'till mid-January when the dust has settled & the supply problems are over. I used to see a lot of these on TV way back in the late fifties (in b/w). The only one I can remember is the at the island of the goons, I don't know how old that one is. When I'm watching a Blu-ray feature, I'll start off with a Popeye cartoon.

 

[Dan_Shane]

I'm definitely buying this set, but it can wait 'till mid-January when the dust has settled & the supply problems are over. I used to see a lot of these on TV way back in the late fifties (in b/w). The only one I can remember is the at the island of the goons, I don't know how old that one is. When I'm watching a Blu-ray feature, I'll start off with a Popeye cartoon.

GOONLAND is one of the Fleischer cartoons, already available in the second volume of the DVD sets.