Tuesday, June 19, 2012

actual, bona fide, honest-to-goodness DuckTales news...

This morning, while logging into Yahoo! to check my e-mail, I noticed the headline, "Lost Disney character back". After clicking on the link and quickly skimming the first couple paragraphs of the article, I deducted that -- as I'd suspected -- said headline was misleading, the "lost character" in question being Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Moreover, the headline on the article itself, "EXCLUSIVE: 85-year-old Disney cartoon 'Harem Scarem' unearthed by D23 and Disney archives" contradicts the headline on Yahoo!'s main page, establishing that the story isn't one of the rediscovery of a "lost character" at all, but of the rediscovery of, apparently, an animated short, "Harem Scarem". However, the article includes a "Yahoo! exclusive" video of the short, and it appears to be a pencil test, a distinguishment that Yahoo! hasn't bothered to make.

Not that a Disney pencil test of 1920's vintage isn't a hisorical gem. It's especially a treasure when you consider that "Harem Scarem" is one of the 13 (out of 26) truly "lost" Oswald shorts that it was impossible to include on Walt Disney Treasures -- The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. (Released in 2007, one may note -- "lost character", indeed!) One can't rule out that today, Yahoo! may be letting down of fans once they realize that the lost cartoon isn't the short itself! But, again, in the continued search, this is a priceless ancillary find.

However, the Oswald news isn't even what prompted this writing -- I'm posting because of a tidbit that caused me to do a double-take, found buried deep in the article. The third-to-last paragraph reads, in full (emphasis mine):

"Disney is scheduling more D23 fan events for the rest of the year during which they will show off the Oswald content along with several other properties having anniversaries, including cartoon series DuckTales and characters Goofy and Daisy Duck."

Now, I've never had any interest in attending these D23 things, but a genuine official acknowledgement of DuckTales' 25th anniversary (assuming it pans out) has a very good chance of changing that!




I'm imagining the occassion being celebrated with a cast-and-crew discussion panel and screenings of the long-lost TV movie version of "Treasure of the Golden Suns" and the 1987 behind-the-scenes DuckTales TV special (both of which would subsequently be available on DVD). But, I know, in my dreams, right? ;)

-- Ryan

4 comments:

  1. Ryan,

    <>

    ... the last-named of which I've never seen, BTW. I keep hearing that it's really, truly out there, but like the proverbial Missourian, someone at Disney (or D23) will have to show me.

    I don't have the original "Golden Suns" TV movie version, either, but that's only because I had no VCR in 1987.

    Chris

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  2. The only news *I* want to hear is that the final few episodes will be (at long last) released on DVD.

    Management flips so often that I wonder if, at this point, anyone there EVEN KNOWS that DT is not complete!

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  3. A nice announcement would be that they plan to offer vollume 4 of the series on DVD to complete it - and include extras like "Scrooge Mcduck and Money" and "Sport Goofy:Soccermania".

    I remember having the TV movie version of "Golden Suns" and erasing the second half of it a week later to record "Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series" and regretting it.Tape was expensive then.

    The only difference between the tv movie version and parts 1-5 was that a lot of scenes were edited out to fit 90 minutes and the title "The Treasure of The Golden Suns" - in gold font,of course, appeared instead of the familiar "helvetica white" titles.

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  4. A petition for the last 25 DuckTales episodes on DVD:

    http://www.change.org/petitions/walt-disney-home-entertainment-release-ducktales-volume-4-on-dvd

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