The 90s Are All That

[Kiddington]

I know this is gonna sound stupid, but... uh, could you provide a link? 

Thing is, I hardly ever use Facebook, and I'm finding that there are too many people named Joe Murray to narrow it down to his. I've looked through about 10 accounts already, and none belong to him (and since you already have his on file, I was hoping you could post it here). For whatever reason, his blog also appears to be down right now, so I'm not getting through on that end either.

...anyway, awesome news, if it's really true. Is Nick finally ready to give the fans what they truly want, when it comes to these DVD sets? One can only hope.

[Commode]

https://www.facebook.com/JoeMurrayStudio?sk=wall

Interesting, while there are a lot of Joe Murrays on FB, his was the first hit for me(although I think having Avaitor and Jerry Beck as mutual friends had something to do with it).

Do you even have a FB account?  Not sure if you can even view his wall if you don't.

[Daxdiv]

Do you even have a FB account?  Not sure if you can even view his wall if you don't.

I don't think you can view the wall when you're signed out. I can view it on the browser I'm signed into FaceBook, but not the one I'm not signed in with.

[Kiddington]

Do you even have a FB account?  Not sure if you can even view his wall if you don't.

Nope. 

Well, that's not entirely true; I did make an account way back in 2009. Added a couple of friends, posted some stuff... then forgot about it. Haven't logged on in over two years or so. If I could find/remember the password (provided that the account even still exists; again, it's been over two years since I've last looked at it), I might decide to update it again and maybe add some of you guys for the heck of it... but honestly, I just don't like Facebook. Twitter is fun for me in posting random nonsense and what not, but I never really caught onto to its "other half", so to speak.

...anyway, for this purpose, I'll just log in with my brother's account (which, is usually what I do if I *need* to look at something news-related on Facebook). It'll work just as well.

[Avaitor]

Yeah, if I was on, I would have linked to it myself. But I do follow Joe, and he did indeed say that.

[Mr. Big]

Here's his blog entry confirming that he is indeed working on the season 2 set.

http://joemurraystudio.com/518/august-25-2011/

[Kiddington]

Sounds great!

The cover art from the Season 1 set (which was just a transfer of the same art from the "Best of Volume 1" MOD set) is pretty lame, so I can't wait to see what he comes up with himself. The fact that they're also discussing special features is definitely excellent news in itself. A featurette/behind the scenes or two would suffice for me, but if we also get episode commentaries on top of all that (I'm thinking with Joe, Steve Hillenberg, couple of the other writers, and maybe Carlos Alazraqui or Tom Kenny), that'd be more than awesome.

Can't wait. Hopefully, we get a release date sometime soon. There was a six-month gap between the two Wild Thornberrys releases, so I'm thinking if that trend holds up here, we should get Season 2 of Rocko by December/January-ish.

[Kiddington]

A Rugrats DVD set is, in fact, on the way... but it's not what you thiiiiink!

Goddammit, Nick. Stop getting my hopes up for nothing.

[Avaitor]

What the fuck.

The movie set they put out made sense. This does not.

[Kiddington]

Optimistically, I'd like to believe that this is Nick's way of "testing the market", so to speak, in seeing how a new Rugrats DVD release would sell. Perhaps if this does well, they will be so inclined to give us bigger and better things.

...of course, I honestly can't imagine a set like this is really going to fly off the shelves, unless it's being targeted as just another "moms on the run" deal (like they've been doing with Spongebob releases for the past 10 or so years). The price is what really gets me here; $15, for what can't possibly be more than 5-6 episodes. Any way you slice it, that's a horrible value.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, that same $15 will buy you the entire 1st season of Rocko's Modern Life. You tell me which is the better deal.

[Avaitor]

Well, that's just MSRP. It'll probably be only $10 or so at most retailers. That's a little better.

But I don't see this working out. Rugrats is all but a dead property to kids and soccer moms at this point, which is what discs like these are aimed for. Long-time fans, who would be more interested in buying the show, would much prefer season sets, or even the movies, which again, were recently rereleased in an affordable set.

Nick is probably going to be  disappointed with the sales, and you'll end up seeing this in the $5 bins by next year.

[Kiddington]

So according to Leviathan in this thread on TZ, Season 3 of Rugrats on DVD is on the way... via Amazon's MOD program.

Well shit. I guess it's something, but why do they INSIST on toying with us when it comes to this show? Every other old Nicktoon (sans Doug) is getting fair retail treatment from Shout, so why does Rugrats keep getting the short end of the stick?

Sucks, man. I really want this show on DVD, but I'm not paying that much for something so cheap and bare-bones. For $20? Yeah, I'd go for it. $40? Absolutely not.

[Spark Of Spirit]

It really is totally weird that they aren't giving their old cash cow proper respect. It's the only one of the "big" Nicktoons from the 90s not getting a real DVD release despite being so huge on such an international scale.

I just don't understand it.

[Avaitor]

You mean besides Doug.

And I don't get it either. The soccer mom approach won't work if the franchise is as dormant as it is.

[Kiddington]

Here's the official press release for the two new Rugrats sets, if anyone cares.

I guess if nothing else, they've at least got every season that's worth owning now available on some form of DVD (Season 3 was long overdue). Still highly disappointing, though.