When will The "complete" Archie Show from 1968 be released on DVD? (1 Viewer)

[Carlos Garcia]

So far Nostalgia Ventures released a 4 disc set of various episodes called: The Archie Show/Sabrina the Teenage Witch/Archies TV Funnies and Archies Classic Cartoons which feature some episodes from the original "Archie Show" from 1968 as well as other incarnations of the show. However, no one has released a DVD set featuring all 32 episodes of the original 1968 "Archie Show". This show had alot of great songs from the Archies, several that went on to become hits, and of course the #1 song of 1969, "Sugar, Sugar". I grew up watching this cartoon, and seeing the Nostalgia Ventures discs just whet my appetite to want to see and enjoy them all again. I know the British company "Entertainment Rights" holds the rights to many Filmation cartoons, like Fat Albert, and the recently released Groovie Goolies. I was wondering if eventually they, or someone else will get the rights to The Archies and possibly release the entire series on DVD. Anyone?

 

[Mark Edward Heuck]

I'll bet a stack of back issues of "Archie's Pals and Gals" that our old nemesis music rights are preventing any sort of release of the Filmation Archies series.

Don Kirshner was deeply involved in creating the music and likely owns the masters, and he has been rather inconsistent in revisiting any of his material for the digital medium, be it CDs of his classic albums or DVDs of his visual holdings.

 

[Carlos Garcia]

Then why did he allow Nostalgia Ventures to release those 4 DVDs a few yrs ago, which contained a handfull of Archie episodes with the music performances intact?

 

[Mark Y]

I am not sure who actually owns the Archies records. I know in the last few years a few CDs have come out with the RKO Records name. They re-released two original Archies albums, "Everything's Archie" (retitled "The Archies," which also happens to be the name of a completely different original album) and "Jingle Jangle" (retitled "Archies Party"). Neither one has the original album graphics, just a contemporay photo of Ron Dante and it says "Featuring Ron Dante / Original Artist / Original Recordings." They've released a third CD which is a compilation. When I first saw them, I looked at them and thought they were some cheap CDs with re-recordings on them or something, then realized these actually are a couple of the original albums. I e-mailed Ron Dante about this and he said they could not use the original artwork because of rights to the characters belonging to Archie Comics (even though most of the original albums didn't use illustrations of the characters in the first place). I always thought the original "Jingle Jangle" album cover was really cool in a weird way.

I do know Rhino tried to do some kind of "Archies Anthology" back in the 1980s but they gave up on it for some reason. I seem to remember that it had to do with getting decent masters for the songs, but I wonder if licensing would have been an issue.

On the RKO CDs it says:

"NOTICE / The Archies (TM) is licensed from Archie Comic Publications, Inc., Mamaroneck, NY 10543. Any use of The Archies (TM) without this notice means that the use of the recordings is unauthorized and unlawful."

That would seem to indicate that Archie Comics owns the recordings. Don Kirshner's name is not mentioned anywhere on the CDs.