Thundercats - Season One, Volume One (1985)
Thundercats DVDs

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Thundercats was one of the best shows to come out of the 80s (Transformers being at the top), and one every fan has been eagerly awaiting to hit DVD.

Months ago, WB finally announced they would be releasing the series in a total of four box sets (33/32/33/32), which had everyone cheering for the return of one of their favories shows, in top notch DVD quality. Most of all, they were given a SRP of $64.99, thus guaranteeing the episodes must be remastered. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

For a SRP of $64.99, you get 33 episodes on six discs, but without any remastering done whatsoever. What was WB thinking? Not only do the episodes look like they were dumped down from VHS tapes (giving it a bootleg quality appearance), but there are a mass amount of errors throughout the episodes themselves. One of the major issues is with the second episode, "Unholy Alliance," which is missing all of the music (sans the opening and closing) during the episodes. However, this is only the case in the English track as both the Spanish and French versions have the music playing. Whatever the reason is, this is totally unacceptable. Hopefully WB will issue a recall and offer replacement discs.

The next negative to this set is that it is definitely no where near woth a SRP of $64.99. Yes, you can buy them cheaper online or at a retail store, but if you pay more than $30-35 for this set, then you were just ripped off. You could buy a DVD-R bootleg (not that you should) off ebay of the entire series in the same quality (if not better) for $15 more.

With other 80's shows, coming out (or have already been released) with a beautiful remastered print, and 5.1 audio, this makes this buy even worse than it seemed before. Why couldn't WB let Rhino handle this? Rhino may have their own faults, but at least they know how to NOT mess up a release THIS bad. Not to mention Rhino would have remastered the prints and mastera a 5.1 track, while this just has a less-than-satisfying-and-boring mono soundtrack.

So if you have not bought this set yet, hold off until WB fixes the set's glitches or lowers the SRP. Also, let's hope they do a much better job with Volume 2 when it comes out in Dec than they did with this. I love Thundercats, I am happy to own it on DVD and replace my tapes from Toonami, however, the price is unacceptable for a crappy release as this.

WB, Thundercats deserves to be treated just with respect as you have done so with Looney Tunes, and as much as Rhino did so with Transformers!