Keep Circulating the Tapes/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


When it comes to these Western Animation works, Keep Circulating the Tapes!

  • Arthur. Although the series lasted 25 seasons (1996-2022), only Season 10 and 11 got season boxset releases. Many of the earlier episodes were released in random volumes by Sony Wonder and are now out of print. However, PBS Kids still airs regular reruns of the series.
  • Chris Colorado aired on Toonami for a while, before it was taken down and forgotten. Why does it matter? Because this French animated TV show was EPIC! materialized, with some of the best-crafted stories on TV at the time, and a soundtrack that will blow your fucking mind. It only ran for a single season and ended in a cliffhanger, and was released to DVD. Practically no copies remain, and the only way you can view it these days is to download it from the single torrent on the whole Internet that contains it.
  • MTV is pretty terrible about this when it comes to its animated shows. The Brothers Grunt has no DVD release in sight, and this is particularly annoying since it didn't even get a VHS release. It took hell and ever for MTV to release The Maxx and The Head, while Aeon Flux (which had a "Best Of" compilation DVD put out at the dawn of the format) only saw the light of day on DVD as a complete series due to the live-action movie.
    • The Aeon Flux series set also doubles as the closet thing we'll ever see to a DVD release of Liquid Television; besides collecting all of the Aeon Flux shorts, MTV dumped the contents of their two Liquid Television VHS tapes onto the set as a "bonus" to fans of the show.
      • MTV is very unlikely to release The Brothers Grunt due to it being Old Shame for the network (ratings were terrible and it was one of the first shows to even have an online campaign to cancel the show). The only person who doesn't feel this way is creator Danny Antonucci (who could always make a deal to buy the show's rights).
      • It doesn't help that on account of MTV originally wanting more shows to ride the success of Beavis and Butthead (along with that show having been on hiatus in light of some incidents they were accused of starting), they tried alternating between airing Beavis and Butthead and The Brothers Grunt which led some fans to think such a popular show was going to be replaced and it's developed a Hatedom from fans of Beavis and Butthead.
  • It seems it'll be a long time before we get beyond the first two volumes of the Woody Woodpecker collections, since we still have over 100 cartoons left to cover and we still haven't seen a U.S. release of The New Woody Woodpecker Show!
  • Almost all of the works of the seminal Czech animator Karel Zeman are unavailable in America, outside of the semi-butchered American version of "Journey to the Beginning of Time" and a terrible dub of "Baron Prasil" on an ancient and long OOP VHS. For the curious, a number of his works are available on YouTube, e.g., [1].
  • Exo Squad ran for two seasons, of which only the first one (1/3 the length of the second) was officially released on VHS. IMDb has cover arts of "second season VHS", but these are merely bootlegs. So it's either them...or BitTorrent.
    • Both seasons are now available legally for streaming on Hulu (minus, strangely enough, Episode 1.11). Season 1 was released on DVD on April 14, 2009; Season 2, however, is still in limbo.
  • Action Man...or at least, the cartoon made by Mainframe Entertainment.
  • Disney is notorious for treating its films (theatrical or otherwise) with reverence and God-like status...and treating their television shows like they need to be moved to a leper colony to die. (Unless the show in question stars a Marvel Comics character with a blockbuster movie, but those are almost always shows Disney happened to own DVD rights to without making themselves.) To wit:
    • While having a few episodes on VHS (no longer sold), not only has Bonkers been out of reruns for years with no plans to re-air it or put it out for DVD, one episode was pulled entirely after its first or second airing due to its villain, Fireball Frank, being a Mad Bomber. (It doesn't help that pulling said episode left a huge plot hole in the series because it's the same one where Miranda replaces Lucky as Bonkers' partner.)
    • Season 1 and the first half of Season 2 of Gargoyles were released on DVD. The other half of Season 2? Disney decided not to release it, allegedly due to "low sales".
      • Similarly, Disney released the vast majority of episodes for DuckTales (1987), Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and Tale Spin—as well as a couple of sets for Darkwing Duck and Adventures of the Gummi Bears—but have yet to offer the complete run of the shows on DVD by releasing further sets for these shows (infuriating fans of the first three, which are one box set away from being completely on DVD). Additionally, Goof Troop and Quack Pack didn't even have any sort of proper DVD release at all—they each got a three-episode "best-of" DVD. And that's not even getting into the Disney Afternoon shows that haven't yet made it to DVD in any way, shape or form. For all that the Disney Afternoon did for the company in the 1990s, they sure don't seem eager to return the love.
      • For the record, the Disney Afternoon series that were fortunate enough to get a DVD set release got 20+ episodes and nothing else beyond feature content, with the exceptions of trailers, subtitles and languages. No TV spots, commentaries, commericals, music videos, nothing. And these series are still quite popular amongst Disney fans; not to mention the purpose of DVD is to be able to see the episodes in their uncut form. It doesn't help that, with the exception of DuckTales (1987), these episodes released on DVD remain in their Toon Disney syndication format -- you would almost expect to see the Toon Disney logo in the lower-left corner of the screen. With all that they put into a re-release of one of their animated films, compare the original VHS version of the Darkwing Duck episode "Darkly Dawns the Duck" with the first DVD set version. If the company is complaining about "low sales", this shoddy DVD treatment is probably why. To make things worse, the classic Disney Afternoon shows have not been aired on American free TV since 2006, so it's hard at least to even get a copy recorded from TV.
      • All this makes one question even more why Disney would recently license out their more popular Disney Afternoon titles in comic book form through Boom Kids. The comics - especially Darkwing Duck - essentially continue where the shows left off and are heavy on Continuity Porn, meaning they'll only make sense to people who have watched the shows. The only people these comics would cater to are 30-year-olds with no problem grabbing comics off the kiddie racks.
      • Although there is a VHS and DVD release of Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse and Mickey's House of Villains, as well as the show's pilot episode as a DVD bonus of the former, there is actually no release of House of Mouse anywhere. However, many of the show's episodes and shorts have been uploaded onto YouTube, but still, there is now online video for "Minnie Takes Care of Pluto."
    • Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! had a few Season 1 episodes released on DVDs that came with the short-lived toy line, but these are now impossible to find since the only ones you could possibly get would be second/third/fourth/etc hand and which fan in their right mind would be willing to give those up? Since then the show has had its fifth and final season canceled (on a Cliff Hanger) and recently stopped airing in the US (It had stopped showing up in other countries such as England a while ago) so now episodes are literally impossible to find though any legal means. At all.
    • Fillmore!: There were a good number of episodes on YouTube, but they were all removed except a few episodes subbed from German and the like.
    • PB and J Otter is another show on Disney Channel which had become a cult classic, but instead of seeing home video and DVD releases, was sent off to said leper colony to die. Someone has uploaded Season 3 somewhere on the internets but there is no official home video release for it.
    • The Weekenders has yet to have either a DVD or VHS release of any sort. Odd considering its popularity and genre. Thankfully, the whole series can be found on Youtube.
    • Nightmare Ned got one season (it was pulled too quick due to Disney getting endless complaints from parents saying it was scaring their children, similar to how Invader Zim ended up). And there's currently little on Youtube and it was apparently only ever reran in Canada on Family.
    • Pepper Ann had a great premise and characters just like The Weekenders, but it hasn't had any VHS/DVD releases. Thankfully, most of the episodes have been uploaded onto YouTube though.
    • The Proud Family has the first 15 episodes available on iTunes, and the Big Damn Movie on DVD. The remaining 40 episodes inbetween? Yeah, good luck with that.
    • Recess has a few DVD releases...the movie, the direct-to-DVD specials (which also include episodes of the series as bonus features), and a Christmas DVD that's an episode compliation. The show hasn't gotten any season sets, instead, Disney prefers to rerun the show to the ground on Disney Channel and Disney XD, and reruns have recently been removed. While the entire series is on YouTube now, wouldn't it be easier if Disney released DVD sets?
    • Disney's version of Doug had a few VHS releases in the `90s, and the movie was ONLY released to VHS (although it has been added to iTunes). There were various VideoCD releases of the movie in other countries, but they've all gone out of print. The internet only has a handful of episodes up, unlike the Nick series, which has every episode availible.
    • 101 Dalmatians: The Series had one VHS release (101 Dalmatians Christmas, which also contained the episode "Coup DeVil") and one very quiet VideoCD release (Dalmatian Vacation) (and on video outside the US) back in the `90s. That was it. The entire series has been uploaded to YouTube, however.
  • Season 3 of The Tick (animation) has still not seen a Region 1 release; with no indication from Buena Vista Entertainment when it might be available. On top of that, Seasons 1-2 are missing one episode each, and have been consistently criticized for their dismal production quality.
    • There is a full, three-season box set available in the United Kingdom (Region 2 PAL), which includes all of the episodes for all three seasons, and a higher production quality than the U.S. release. However, there is still a comparitively minor flaw with this release as well, since it uses a considerably shortened version of the opening credit sequence and its frenetic jazz theme music.
  • Except for the occasional showing on TeleToon, Cybersix is like this. Shame.
  • Muppet Babies, with its use of actual TV and movie clips from various sources, would be near impossible to re-release without major butchering.
  • The Twins of Destiny, a French anime/cartoon about two kids who had special powers bestowed upon them, has never been released on VHS or DVD, as far as internet searching can tell.
  • TUGS, the sister series to the Thomas the Tank Engine television series made in 1986. The only place you can watch it is on video tapes which are gradually wearing thin and illegally over the internet. It does not help that the rights for the programme are tied up with at least two different companies.
  • Fox's Peter Pan and The Pirates. Despite it being one of the (if not the) most faithful adaptions of the original play/story, not to mention being a show Tim Curry won an award for, there is no box set yet — because it probably was just not considered financially viable. But you can preorder it from Amazon UK. Which will be selling it in January 2020. Eight years from now. There is also the slight matter of Disney selling the series to TMS Entertainment.
  • If you liked the show Wild West Cowboys of Moo Mesa and wanted to see it again, good luck. It got a couple of VHS releases that are long since out of print.
  • Almost anything made by Marathon, especially Totally Spies! Hell, the final season hasn't even aired in America, so we can probably write the movie off, too. Or just import it from Canada when it comes out on DVD.
  • Static Shock has had only one volume containing six episodes, though all of the others are easily found online. The Zeta Project has the entire first season out, but not season 2, as the episodes are almost impossible to find online.
    • The entire first season of Static Shock is actually available on iTunes—and the entire series is beyond easy to find on YouTube.
  • Hanna-Barbera's animated version of The Little Rascals wasn't even shown on the USA Cartoon Express. Presumably this is due not only to the fragmented ownership of the Our Gang properties, but also to a lawsuit in which Gordon "Porky" Lee accused Hanna-Barbera of unauthorized use of his likeness. It has, however, been shown on Cartoon Network UK and Ireland, and on Australia's Seven Network.
  • Beverly Hills Teens
  • Goldie Gold and Action Jack
  • Danny Phantom got the same vanilla treatment (which left the fans cold), and so did Hey Arnold!. And so will The Fairly OddParents, the first two Nickelodeon Doug seasons (we bet that Disney will still be sitting on their episodes, as noted above), and a selection of Jimmy Neutron episodes (luckily, the entire series is downloadable from...uh...the only notable JN fan site).
    • Danny Phantom, at least, is on Netflix.
    • Hey Arnold! is on Netflix now as well.
  • Other Nicktoons have been screwed mightily:
    • Only two As Told by Ginger specials have been released on DVD.
    • Likewise, Catscratch. Besides getting the shaft during its original run, only two episodes have been put on DVD ("Nick Picks", Volumes 3 and 5). It's possible to find them on the internet, but it's no picnic.
    • For a long time, an even worse case than the above two was ChalkZone, which didn't exist on the internet. Anywhere. It's only been recently the whole series has been available for download, and it takes quite a lot of digging to find.
    • The Brothers Flub got two four-episode VHS releases and that was it. However, it's easily the most obscure Nicktoon ever — almost nobody remembers it, and its IMDb listing is almost completely blank; it didn't even have a Wikipedia article until January 2008. The only trace of it online is a very low quality recording of the intro.
    • Butt Ugly Martians at least got a bit more recognition, but it's very hard to find unless you come across one of its three VHS releases.
    • The Xs — the show was maligned during its original run, has vanished from all of Nickelodeon's networks and websites, and only had three official releases: Two episodes on two "Nick Pick" DVDs, and 13 episodes on iTunes. It doesn't help that the show's title is impossible to enter into an internet search engine; if any episodes were leaked onto the internet, good luck finding them!
    • My Life as a Teenage Robot has become quite easy to find. The entire series is available on DVD, but only at Amazon. The first season is on iTunes and Amazon's online video service. Plus, it's easily found on Nicktoons channel and torrents.
      • The 3 seasons finally got a DVD release... but they're also getting the vanilla treatment.
    • The Fairly OddParents is getting an official release, but only the first half of Season 6 has a retail release. The rest of them have to be bought on Amazon.
    • Despite the two seasons being available on iTunes, only 3 episodes of Kappa Mikey were ever released on DVD in North America. With Nicktoons now replacing it with newer shows, good luck trying to find it elsewhere.
    • Nicktoons (before it was called Nicktoons Network) once had a slew of original cartoon programming that all seemed produced at a portion of the budget of a regular Nicktoon, and they are all unavailable from DVD releases except for Kappa Mikey and Corneil and Bernie.
    • Yakkity Yak is super hard to find too.
    • KaBlam! never got any VHS or DVD releases, most likely due to the very fractured rights situation the show suffers (almost everything involved is owned by its creators and not Nickelodeon). A huge boom of the show was put up on YouTube in late 2009, along with torrent downloads, so the show became viewable again (but not every episode). And the Fandom Rejoiced.
  • What a Cartoon Show and other animation compilation shows, such as MTV's Cartoon Sushi. This is because that, after a number of years, the rights to the short revert back to the creator if it wasn't picked up for a series. So even if a network did want to make a DVD, getting all the creators to agree to it would be more trouble than it's worth. (Incidentally, this is how Adventure Time became a Cartoon Network show.)
  • Mighty Max came out in the precious early-1990s, before DVDs but after VHS. The series was made only to push the (unsuccessful) toy line, so they probably didn't consider a cult following that demanded the show's rerelease.
  • Kidd Video would be possible if released in its most recent syndicated form (1990s on WGN, with no original music or music videos). But it wouldn't be the same.
  • Speaking of Nintendo and DiC: King Koopa's Kool Kartoons, a show related to The Super Mario Bros Super Show that occasionally aired (but only in southern California!). Of course, considering the show barely seems to have existed as it is...
    • There's also the Club Mario segments of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show; one was available when the show was on Yahooligans! TV.
  • Saturday Supercade will probably never see the light of day due to the rights to Mario and Donkey Kong being nearly impossible to secure, not to mention all the other video game properties used on the show.
  • On the other hand, the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon only had about 24 of its 65 episodes avaliable on DVD, and completely out-of-order (they were mostly collections of mini-arcs, such as the Venom Saga and the Daredevil cross-over). Season 1 became avaliable through iTunes (and Xbox Live), but a complete release is yet to be seen in America; this, while the UK got all five seasons on DVD.
    • All of the episodes are now available on the official Marvel website, along with X-Men, Fantastic Four, Japanese Spider-Man, Spider-Man 1967, and others.
  • The last 24 episodes of Animaniacs aren't yet available on DVD, but this is due to Warner Bros putting the series on hiatus to produce Tiny Toon Adventures and Freakazoid!! DVDs (the former has 65 episodes available across two volumes, and the latter is available in its entirety across two volumes). There's no word yet on DVD releases for the Animaniacs movie Wakkos Wish, or the final set for Animaniacs.
    • While spinoff series Pinky and The Brain was released in its entirety on DVD, Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain has yet to see a DVD release...but considering that series came about because of Executive Meddling and is widely something most fans would rather forget, this could be a blessing in disguise. (The only drawback to this is not getting the remaining "Elmyra defines" gags in the episode credits.)
    • On the subject of the 1990s Warner Bros. comedies, nothing has yet been said about DVDs for Road Rovers and Histeria!! (the latter of which was made available for viewing on the In2TV website until AOL took it off for reasons unknown); Taz-Mania saw only a few limited-edition DVDs with some scenes edited out.
    • On the topic of the movies, it may be worth noting that Wakkos Wish has been released on the iTunes Movie Store, but not Vacation.
    • Sadly, during the 2010 Warner home video chat, it was announced that WB has no plans to release seasons 2 and 3 of Tiny Toons. One can only hope this will change.
  • Many of the Rankin Bass animated shows and specials are not available on DVD. Only grainy, fading VHS made 20 years ago. While the popular Christmas stories (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, etc.) are available, others will be lost forever when the tapes inevitably wear out and VCRs break.
    • Most notably, Wind In The Willows (the one with the theme song sung by Judy Collins), which has quite a few grateful comments over on YouTube where some amazing person has uploaded a marginal-quality copy in several parts, for those whose VCRs have already broken.
    • Luckily, some of the Rankin/Bass shows have appeared on DVD in the last few years, such as Mad Monster Party, The Daydreamer, and The Little Drummer Boy. Even the more obscure ones like Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey and Frostys Winter Wonderland can be found in collections.
    • It's worth noting that Warner Archive, a service that presses DVDs of Warner Bros. library titles that wouldn't warrant mass production of discs but are frequently requested nevertheless, has added both The Flight of Dragons and The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (the latter on a double-bill disc with Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey) to the list of available titles for purchase. Could more Rankin-Bass shows be added? We can only hope.
  • Max Steel has almost completely disappeared. There is only one fansite with any episodes available for download, and most of them are low-quality, aim-the-videocamera-at-the-TV clips where the dialogue is nearly incomprehensible. One episode in particular, the Season 2 premiere, has vanished completely without even a transcript to mark its passing. Oddly, the company who bought the franchise is still producing movies that are very loosely based on the original show in Latin America, but there are no English dubs or subs.
    • Series 1-3 are available to watch on Hulu.com...which (currently) doesn't help anyone viewing outside the United States.
  • Biker Mice From Mars has Season 1, but good luck trying to find Seasons 2 and 3 anywhere.
  • Paw Paw Bears
  • Challenge of the Go Bots: The cartoon was made by Hanna-Barbera, so it's now owned by Warner Bros. The toys were made by Bandai, who still owns the designs (and thus the look of the characters). The character names were devised by Tonka, which was bought by Hasbro, who therefore own the names. Getting rival international toy companies to agree to cooperate is a significant hurdle.
  • To this day, Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders is lost to the murky mists of some lost archive, frustratingly getting only the briefest of DVD releases that vanished almost as soon as it was announced.
  • The English-language Nickelodeon release of Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea.
  • The Earthworm Jim two-season cartoon series has so far seen only a partial VHS release of eight (out of 13) Season 1 episodes, presented in random order. Word of God is that it will never be released on DVD, due to the creators considering it an Old Shame they were coerced into creating to support the games. So it's... um... sabotaged by someone other than the network?
  • Clone High nearly qualifies, with a full series collection that was released in incredibly limited numbers...and only in Canada.
  • Seven Little Monsters only had a very rare DVD release of a few episodes.
  • The 30-minute animated Little Engine that Could feature from The Nineties only exists in the VHS tapes that remain and an upload on YouTube every now and then. Despite being such a famous story, whoever owns it doesn't seem to hold any interest in it.
  • Monster Farm is an incredibly obscure show that was on Fox Family. The only episode anywhere online is the premiere...in Polish (it's on YouTube). What makes it even more infuriating to try and find anything about this show is the fact that it shares its name with Monster Rancher (in Japanese). It's as if it never even existed, seriously.
  • Of the six original Strawberry Shortcake animated specials from The Eighties, only the first two (The World of... and ...in Big Apple City) are available on DVD, leaving only the mid-1980s VHS releases of all six as official sources.
    • Subverted with the 2003–2007 series- the final unreleased episode came out in March 2012.
  • The animated movie Animalympics. Though it has had a few VHS releases, most of those were a while ago, and its only DVD release was in German. While the German version had the original English language track attached, good luck hunting it down!
  • Fievel's American Tails had some of the episodes released on VHS back in the day, but no DVD releases in America. (There have been DVD releases in Europe, though.)
  • For that matter, this trope covers any instance in western animation that could be considered remotely racist, as a lot of cartoons from The Golden Age of Animation loved their blackface gags. Native Americans are still Acceptable Targets though, apparently.
  • Attack of the Killer Tomatoes also partially suffers from this, as the films have been released on DVD but the Animated Adaptation has not.
  • Toad Patrol has never been fully released on DVD. Some episodes of Season 1 were made available, but that's it.
  • Rhino planned on releasing the entire Crusader Rabbit series. After the first two volumes were released (on VHS, this was pre-DVD), they found that the people they had bought the release rights from no longer actually held those rights. There apparently was a lot of confusion over who did hold the rights, with the result being that Rhino could sell the copies they had already made but could not make any more.
  • The Magi Nation animated series. Only two DVDs, containing four episodes each, have been released out of the 26-episode run.
    • As of March 2012, the complete series is now on Netflix for instant streaming.
  • Cartoon Planet will probably never see an uncut DVD release due to its heavy use of Stock Footage.
  • Captain Star, a quirky English cartoon parody of Star Trek, ran for only 13 episodes. Rumor has it that the first three episodes were released on VHS, but nothing more.
  • The Legends Of Treasure Island. VHS tapes of Season 1 exist, as does a movie VHS comprising of Episodes 1-3 of Season 1 and the final two episodes of Season 2, though they will be all but impossible to find (one VHS was reported to be found in a Salvation Army shop). 7Two in Australia is currently showing episodes at 9:30 a.m. every Sunday.
  • Mutant League, a forty episode series which is based on the video games "Mutant League Football" & "Mutant League Hockey", has never been released on DVD. The only release of it was a VHS was merely a 69-minute mish-mash of segments of episodes edited together. It is also impossible to find online, not even poor quality copies. Here's hoping someone changes this.
  • The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, a 1990s show about Felix participating in various bizarre adventures or situations, is remarkably hard to find - a few episodes were released on VHS way back when, and only a handful of them have ever even existed on the internet. It's true that they did put out a few DVD releases for some episodes as well, but they were only released in Hong Kong, despite the show itself having been created in the United States.
  • Phantom 2040 has yet to see a release of the complete series. A few episodes were made available on VHS in the late 90s, and a Compilation Movie of the first four episodes was released on DVD in 2004. However, torrents and streams of the full series occasionally pop up, as do bootleg DVD sets.
  • The Raccoons. Some scattered box sets here and there, but nothing close to a full release. Luckily, almost all of the series is available through YouTube and torrents, thanks in part to repeats on Teletoon Retro.
  • Calvin and the Colonel, a 1960s prime-time cartoon, will never get a legit DVD release. About one-third of the episodes (most in black and white despite being made in color) are in collectors' hands, some of which ended up in public domain cartoon compilations even though the show is still copyrighted.
  • The Where's Wally?/Where's Waldo? cartoon. Five VHS tapes were released in the United Kingdom and that was it.
  • The British/Canadian cartoon The Baskervilles. Possibly because of the Hell-like setting, which is much more obvious than Miseryville. The only surviving footage online is the opening, which can be found on YouTube.
  • FUNimation released the first season of Braceface and then stopped because it didn't sell well. All three seasons have been uploaded to YouTube however (with a few missing episodes of seasons 3.).
  • The Get Along Gang. While on 2007 a DVD release was announced, American Greetings (owner of the franchise), pulled the plug in it for no reasons known, though it could be due to the (later shelved) revival of the characters going on at the time. The original pilot and a few episodes were released on VHS and can be found online. However, a small "best-of" DVD release was announced by Mill Creek Entertainment and released on April 2011, it includes 15 out of the 26 individual episodes (or 10 of 13 half-hour episodes). Of the nine individual episodes not included on the set, two were released on VHS in the 1980s and another can be found at YouTube, leaving only six episodes for keeping the tapes moving. The original pilot, by the way, is unlikely to be released on DVD due to royalty issues with Nelvana and John Sebastian's singing on the episode.
    • The series did recieve a DVD release in Brazil.
  • The Mask: The Animated Series had four VHS tapes with some episodes (with two more in Australia), and only one DVD (the pilot, released on Wal-Mart on a Son of the Mask special edition).
  • The first nine episodes of the ALF animated series were released on DVD. "Poor sales" killed all plans to release the remaining episodes.
  • Skunk Fu!. Three compilations exist, but they don't comprise the entire series.
  • Some Cartoon Network shows haven't fared too well:
    • The Life and Times of Juniper Lee: There was said to be a Season 1 DVD at the start of 2009...that never showed. And good luck trying to find any trace of episodes. CN Video, which was where the final episodes played? Nope. YouTube? Unless you like Abridged Series and some promos, nope. Your best best is a torrent.
    • Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?: All 13 episodes were available on Cartoon Network Video back in 2008, but have since disappeared and will probably never return again...unless the channel feels generous and puts it on Boomerang in a few years. So now the question is, "Whatever happened to Whatever Happened to… Robot Jones?"
    • Sheep in The Big City. Yeah, Season 1 was on iTunes for a time, but it was removed for reasons unknown.
    • Mike Lu and Og. Only the intro is on YouTube, but some episodes are on CN Video (for now).
    • Squirrel Boy. Literally the only place you can find it is on iTunes.
    • Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy. Yes, they occasionally show episodes on Cartoon Network, and Seasons 1 and 2 are out, but Season 3 probably won't be coming for a while.
    • Anything by Maxwell Atoms. Well, there are Billy and Mandy movies and the Season one set of the show. Evil Con Carne, however, has only a small handfull of episodes available on the aforementioned set. Nothing's been said about Underfist yet.
    • Time Squad. Two words. You Tube.
    • Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. YouTube is also your only bet with this one.
  • Street Sharks has three VHS releases which fetch a pretty penny.
  • The Cosgrove Hall stop-motion adaption of Truckers was released on VHS by Thames Television back in the early 1990s, but ITV Plc. (the current owners of Cosgrove-Hall and successors to Thames Television) has never released it on DVD. This is presumably due to the same issues that caused the adaptions of the two other books to be shelved.
  • The Star Wars animated canon from the 1980s, including Droids (and its follow-up special, The Great Heep) and Ewoks (which lasted two seasons. The two series were released on DVD as part of an "Animated Adventures" series - the only problem? The releases are simply two sets of six episodes edited into mini-features - more than half the run of Droids is still unavailable, and more than an entire season of Ewoks is also unaccounted for. Even though the two series have both been referenced in various Star Wars-related material over the years, neither have been released as a complete series. Lucasfilm has said a DVD release is "possible" - meaning you're better off scrounging for the old VHS releases of the series, which had all the episodes.
  • The 1940s Columbia Cartoons series of short The Fox and the Crow was off the air for decades until 1999, when it was included in the Totally Tooned In series - and even then the series was only aired in Latin America. U.S. television audiences finally got to see them in 2011 on Antenna TV. A DVD release for these cartoons is not yet in the works.
  • The Bluffers. Its VHS prints went out in the late 1980s. The only trace of it on YouTube, at least for the English dub, is a single episode lifted from a Betamax by someone who just managed to catch it somehow.
  • Code Lyoko's first season is on DVD...with all but the last two episodes completely out of order (the episode number actually appears in the title screen, rare for a Western cartoon to do). Don't hold your breath for the other three seasons, though...
    • The DVD is also out-of-print and can be quite pricey (over $100 is the typical price). Random dubbed episodes are on DVD, but they're just random episodes and not complete seasons.
  • The third season of Transformers Animated was only release on DVD in Japan (the Japanese dub, obviously), and Hasbro has stated they have no plans to release it.
  • The rights to Transformers: Robots in Disguise were sold to Disney as part of the acquisition of the Saban assets. Since Disney couldn't care less about Transformers, it has only been released in the United Kingdom. With the current release of Headmasters and future releases of Victory and Masterforce, this remains the only Transformers yet to see a stateside DVD set.
  • Only a handful of the music video segments from Beavis and Butthead are on the show's "official" DVD releases. Also, Mike Judge hates about a third of the episodes, and has refused to license them to DVD.
  • The Pink Panther is an interesting example of this trope, as all the original 1960s-1970s shorts are on DVD, but its companion shorts The Texas/Tijuana Toads, Roland and Rattfink, Hoot Kloot, etc. are not.
    • Roland and Rattfink was released on DVD, but only as part of a multi-disc set that includes the Panther, The Inspector, and The Ant and the Aardvark.
    • But fans want the full 1993-1995 series, as only Series 1 (1993-1994) exists on DVD.
      • Episodes like "7 Manly Men" (which has slight Ho Yay), "Voodoo Man" and "Hamm-N-Eggz" from the 1994-1996 series are missing off the DVD; basically, no full 1993-1996 series exists on DVD. You can get them all, but as torrents, and even then, the quality is variable. Lapache.info does have them.
  • The Legend of Calamity Jane, a 13-episode series, has no oficial VHS or DVD release, but somebody uploaded most of the episodes into YouTube, except episodes 10 and 11. However a certain somebody watched episode 11, got it burned into his brain, and gave a summary of it with crude drawings in a video.
  • Donald and the Wheel is the lesser-known follow-up to Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land and has thus far been on a single limited-edition and rare Donald Duck DVD collection that has since gone out of print. This collection makes no indication on the case that it has Donald and the Wheel, so unless you found out from an outside source and were deliberately looking for it, or you're a total Donald Duck fan and bought every DVD set, chances are you don't have it.
  • Twice Upon a Time was a George Lucas-backed animated production in The Eighties made by the risk-taking Alan Ladd Studios (Body Heat, Blade Runner, etc.). It popularized improvisation and adult themes in comedy voice-acting, launched the career of Henry Selick (who would go on to make The Nightmare Before Christmas), and fostered or influenced a number of Pixar people. It has all the traits of a classic of monumental cultural impact (and in an indirect way, it has), yet got a minor VHS and laserdisc release in the early 1990s and then aired twice on Cartoon Network, and that was it. Due to disputes between its writers, it's unlikely it will ever get a public showing again outside of blurry uploads onto Google Video. The naughtier Bill Couterie cut, in particular, only had a one-time showing on HBO before the aforementioned disputes occurred and has never been officially shown anywhere else.
  • Birdz, one of the last things on CBS' Saturday Morning lineup in 1998. In the late 2010's, the series was finally re-released on the free streaming service Tubi. Before then, one had to rely on reruns on KidsCo in Australia, before that channel shut down.
  • Bionic Six has never seen a VHS release, let alone a DVD one. Considering it was one of the best animated series of the eighties, notably due to Osamu Dezaki as animation director (he of Lupin III and Golgo 13 fame) the tapes keep circulating from the old Syfy airing of them.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. There's a two-episode DVD release that's an extreme case of No Export for You (think it's bad enough that Target's website won't ship out of the United States? Try swallowing the fact that Target now blocks many non-US IP addresses from its site, and doesn't even offer the DVD on its website anyway, and only sells them at certain brick-and-mortar stores participating in the Canterlot promotion) as well as a three-episode DVD release that isn't Target-exclusive but is surprisingly hard to find (meaning it's also an extreme case of No Export for You), and the promotional DVDs that ship with some toys aren't available in all markets. iTunes will not sell videos to the remaining two thirds of the world, and Cartoon Network has the rights to the series in most markets outside the US, but airs it on Boomerang instead, which isn't available in all countries. Nickelodeon has the rights to air the show only in certain Eastern European countries. And in some countries, the local TV stations refuse to carry the show due to lack of sponsors, lack of available slots, not being worthy of their attention, or all three. A DVD/Blu-Ray box set was hinted at at one point, but as of right now, it's only getting a regular, by-volume, single-disc DVD release, with random "themed" episodes on each disc.
    • For that matter, the episode "The Last Roundup" was pulled from iTunes and had its slot skipped during early reruns. It was eventually reuploaded, albeit with Memetic Bystander Derpy Hooves' scene completely redubbed. Fortunately, the first DVD from the aforementioned "themed" volumes includes it, completely unaltered (its episode selection was chosen before the episode in question was even known about by the public).
    • You like My Little Pony Tales? Want it to be on DVD? Well, too bad, because it probably never will be. Hasbro has never been very good with its TV series being added onto DVD and the series is a Cult Classic. However, if you're willing to import, it did get a few episodes on DVD out in Europe, and all 26 episodes were released across four DVD volumes in Australia (albeit with misleading MLP G2 cover art).
    • The MLP shorts from My Little Pony and Friends have been released and are at least available via Netflix; however, the same can't be said for the Potato Head Kids, Glo Friends and Moon Dreamers shorts that accompanied them on the show's original run.
  • You like Duck Dodgers? Too bad. While the far worse received Loonatics Unleashed has been released in seasons, Duck Dodgers has yet to have any DVD release.
    • The Green Loontern was released on a Green Lantern DVD and The Essential Daffy Duck DVD, and that's the only episode available on DVD.
  • Jana of the Jungle hasn't been shown on Cartoon Network or Boomerang in the United States. One episode, "The Cordillera Volcano", was on Warner Bros.' Saturday Morning Forever site.
  • The Australian series Arthur! and the Square Knights of the Round Table has only had one DVD release, not in Australia but the United Kingdom, and that contains only eight episodes.
  • The Franco-American series Space Strikers only evidence of existence is the introductory theme tune, and its page on IMDB. There hasn't even been either tapes with the series in it or even any official release from the distributors. Seems it has been forgotten except for those few who got to watch it.
  • While you can technically get almost of all of the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series on DVD in the United States—assuming you're willing to buy multiple sets with a handful of out-of-order episodes for seasons 3 and 4--the last season of the series, Back to the Sewer, was never released in that manner. Similarly, getting a legal version of the complete Turtles Forever is currently impossible without importing from abroad.
  • The full DC Nation shorts have thus far seen no other distribution than the original television broadcasting, so tough luck if you miss one.
  • Late in its life, mall owners Mills Corporation created a kids' club called Muggsy's Meadow, which provided activities for kids and parents to do while at the mall. They also commissioned Flying Rhino Junior High creator Ray Nelson and his studio to create a Too Smart for Strangers animated short called Get Muggsy, which included the club's four mascots. Since the club itself was only around for three years, and closed when Simon Property Group bought out Mills, the DVD is extremely hard to find. Nevertheless, it is on YouTube.
  • Good luck trying to find Wapos Bay: Long Goodbyes on DVD or online! It can't be found on Amazon or anywhere else. This also goes for the series itself
  • Lady Lovely Locks, and how. Two episodes are missing from the U.S. and British VHS and DVD releases of the series, and only came to Australia.
  • Early-2000s Canadian Animated Sitcom Odd Job Jack has an entire missing season. While the 2nd had a DVD release (available wherever not-so-fine DVDs are liquidated) and seasons 3 and 4 are viewable on Hulu (ironically, not viewable in Canada) Season 1 does not seem to exist in viewable format outside of a single Google Video copy of Season 1 ep 13.
  • Fangface hasn't aired on television since Boomerang stopped its reruns in the mid 2000's, and the VHS tapes are long out of print.
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