File under "What Did I Expect?"

§ September 16th, 2004 § Filed under cartoons, swamp thing Comments Off on File under "What Did I Expect?"

I finally got it in my hot little hands, and believe you me, it’s only because I’m The World’s Biggest Swamp Thing Fan™ that I ordered this DVD in the first place. The cartoon is not good by any measure…well, it’s colorfu…no, no, there’s nothing good about it. And God help you if you hear the theme song, done to the tune of “Wild Thing.” (“Swamp Thing / You are amazing” is the opening, and it doesn’t get any better than that.)

The video quality is about as good as you can stand, given that the preferred alternative would be no picture at all. The color does seem to be a little washed out, but I don’t think that’s a problem with the transfer…I think that’s how the cartoon originally looked. The cartoons themselves were created solely to sell toys, so the characters tool around in vehicles with grasping claws, and Swamp Thing regularly performs actions that could be duplicated in the various Swampy figures from the toy line, and so on…they might as well have shown giant animated kids’ arms moving the vehicles and characters around.

Another thing with this DVD is how they padded out the description of what you get on the disc. Okay, there were only five episodes of this cartoon produced. And yet, this is how they indicated the DVD’s contents on the back of the package:

Three regular episodes, and two bonus episodes? In what way are they “bonus?” I’m pretty sure all the episodes actually aired, so it’s not like these are previously unseen shows (well, aside from no one watching them when they aired in the first place). Besides, it’s not as if they were originally planning on holding back those extra two episodes for a second DVD of this turkey, then decided, as a special gift to all of us loyal Swamp Thing fans, to somehow find the space to squeeze on these “bonuses” at no extra cost to us.

And here’s something else that’s always bothered me about DVD feature listings:

“Interactive menus?” If you couldn’t interact with the menu, what good is it? Okay, I’m sure what they mean is that the DVD actually has a menu, as opposed to some older DVDs that don’t (like my Aeon Flux DVD, where you have to manually skip ahead to any episode you’d like to watch, or some of those no-frills Universal DVDs that only had a scene-select function, like the 1980 Flash Gordon or Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Movie).

And I don’t know what they mean by “BONUS EPISODE,” unless they mean “BONUS EPISODES,” which I’ve already discussed above. Unless there’s some kind of Easter egg on here, and a sixth episode is hidden somewhere on the disc. Oh, the humanity.

There are also previews for other cartoon DVDs, totalling about 13 minutes, and none of these cartoons are any good either, except maybe the ones on the Tex Avery disc.

I really have no idea why this disc was produced…there can’t possibly be anyone else out there who wanted this…er, aside from me, that is.

 
 
(post updated 7/2016)

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