Lost dubs of cartoons

[5YearsOnEastCoast]

A lot of cartoons are made in English speaking countries and by nature they are in English language. A lot of these cartoons air in other countries and a lot of them get dubbed in corresponding country's language. Like in France they got dubbed in French language with different voice actors from that country.

But there is a catch, there is a chance that dub of the cartoon gets potentially lost. You can't find them anywhere. Not on TV. Not on any of the streaming services. And not even on pirated sites. They are lost and only thing that you will have is memories of them if you watched them. This is especially true for cartoons that haven't been aired since early 2000s. At most maybe few episodes re-surface and that is it. Reasons for this are uncertain. Maybe the show was unpopular. Maybe it was licensing issues. Or that they didn't care too much about the show.

There is a few examples of this that I have. Here in Serbia, a channel B92 used to air few Nick shows like Rugrats, CatDog, Hey Arnold and As Told by Ginger. While I have never seen the latter two in Serbian language, I have for first two. But it is impossible to find Serbian dubbed versions of those cartoons. The only thing that was found was Catdog's theme song in Serbian. Now I am not sure if Serbian dubs of this cartoons will ever re-surface, but it would be cool to see a light of the day again.

Do you have any examples of cartoons that got dubbed but are now considered lost media?

 

[Classic Speedy]

Up until a few years ago, the U.S. version of Stressed Eric was considered lost, the one where Hank Azaria dubbed the titular character's voice and the story was retconned to an American living abroad. They were never re-aired so unless you taped them from back in 1998, there was no way to see them. Luckily someone finally uploaded all three episodes that aired on NBC.

While Azaria was a great choice for the main character, the show really should be watched in its original U.K. form- for one thing, the U.S. version was heavily edited to allow room for more commercials. But also, Mark Heap was the O.G. so he wins by default.

(side note: I often wonder if the remaining three season 1 episodes were dubbed and ready to go, but just didn't air. It'd be interesting to see if they're in a vault somewhere)

 

[E-Scope]

Pretty much a lot of the Quebec-produced French dubs of Canadian cartoons are considered lost media (bar several exceptions). As for the Quebec French dub of Total Drama (while changing the show’s location from Muskoka, Ontario to Remote Quebec), many of the post-Island episode are either lost, partially available or only available in camcorder-rips.

 

[FirePuppy]

All of Hasbro's pre-2021 shows in languages like French, Spanish and Portuguese are gone, with the only exception being My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on Netflix.

These include Pound Puppies, Littlest Pet Shop, along with its next series, A World of Our Own, and ALL of the Transformers shows produced to that time, like Prime, Rescue Bots, Rescue Bots Academy, Robots in Disguise, and Cyberverse.

Trust me, Chris C**ks is treating those shows like unwanted, useless, deserved-to-be-forgotten trash (at least outside of the US).

 

[Red Arrow]

Some cartoons are partially lost in English, such as Codename: The Boy and Spaced Out.

Most cartoons are partially or completely lost in Dutch. For example, every pre-2010 Cartoon Network cartoon except for Ben 10 and maybe Samurai Jack.

I would love to hear Jonny Quest's Dutch voice from The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest.

 

[RandomMe]

Dozens if not hundreds of European Portuguese dubs are lost too

 

[PrevueLovesAnimeTV]

Some Nelvana Shows in other languages other than English (When will we see Les Zybrides again?)

 

[FirePuppy]

Dozens if not hundreds of European Portuguese dubs are lost too

Makes sense since Portugal clearly prefers subtitles over dubs of American films and TV shows.

 

[E-Scope]

A lot of the international dubs of Total Drama in its entirely, aside from European French, Latin American Spanish and Italian, especially after their removals from Netflix in February 2021. Even the Polish dub is partially lost.

 

[RandomMe]

Makes sense since Portugal clearly prefers subtitles over dubs of American films and TV shows.

More than that, these dubs tend to be lost because of contractual issues, channels are obliged to withdraw the tapes of the recordings of the dubbed series (and even subtitled cartoons) when the contract expires.

 

[Muppetman2003]

Nickelodeon seems to have alot of lost dubs

Some notable ones I can think of:

Prior to the CNBC-e era, Nickelodeon existed in Turkey from 1997-2000 and had dubs made for the network that weren't related to the later iterations of Nick
Shows were
- Rugrats (redubbed by NTV)
- Hey Arnold (redubbed by NTV)
- Kablam (redubbed by NTV)
- Ahh Real Monsters (redubbed by NTV)
- Rocko's Modern Life (redubbed by NTV)
- Angry Beavers (redubbed by NTV)
- Rocko's Modern Life (redubbed by NTV)
- Blue's Clues (redubbed by NTV, then redubbed again by Aton)

For some reason Blue's Clues and Little Bill received Romanian dubs but they never aired
Only reason we know about Little Bill is because it was listed on the dubbing studios site
With Blue's Clues, eight episodes of the dub were released on Noggin before being taken down alongside Hungarian which was also unreleased

Abformentioned, B92 dubs, Blue's Clues and Rugrats being the ones that are still lost at the moment
Should also mention that Ginger was aired subtitled

European Portuguese and Hungarian Catscratch which aired from 2007 to 2008 on the CEE feed

Nick on TV5 is another good example as most of the dubs that aired on that block is lost media, with only fragments of certain shows being found

 

[RandomMe]

European Portuguese and Hungarian Catscratch which aired from 2007 to 2008 on the CEE feed

By the time I started watching Nick CEE before becoming Nick Iberia here, Catscratch was long gone.

Wayside has a mostly lost dub, it was great though

 

[Spongybobchum]

The Dutch dub of Codename Kids Next Door is also lost ever since it's last airing in the mid-2010s. Though i suspect it's a terrible dub after reading the voice cast they chose for the main 5 operatives.

BTW, can someone make a full list of lost dubs of classic Cartoon Network shows? (Only include dubs that are 100% lost)

 

[E-Scope]

A lot of the British English dubs of American/Canadian preschool shows are now lost media, with the only for many of these are through VHS and DVD releases. PAW Patrol is one of the lucky exceptions, as the dub still airs on Channel 5 and Nick Jr., as well as being available on Paramount+.
There’s far too many lost Welsh and Scottish Gaelic dubs to cover (with the Scottish Gaelic dubs being even harder to find), due to the fact that S4C and BBC Alba doesn’t often air double bills of the dubs they air. This extends to the Welsh dub of SpongeBob (which only cover seasons 4-6).

 

[Spongybobchum]

Also, the French dub of the 2003 series of Postman Pat is lost too.

 

[Red Arrow]

The Dutch dub of Codename Kids Next Door is also lost ever since it's last airing in the mid-2010s. Though i suspect it's a terrible dub after reading the voice cast they chose for the main 5 operatives.

There was nothing wrong with it, in my opinion.

 

[Checkerboard]

English dubs of...
Thw Sneezing Magician
Hobbery Dick
Dinky Di's
are still lost to this day pretty much.

 

[RandomMe]

18 out of 26 episodes of Spaced Out.

 

[Spongybobchum]

The original 1990s European Portuguese dub of Thomas & Friends that aired on RTP.
Not to be confused with the current European Portuguese dub.

 

[RandomMe]

The original 1997 European Portuguese dub of Thomas & Friends that aired on RTP.
Not to be confused with the current European Portuguese dub.

Actually the series (I'm not into that though) first aired before 1997, back when RTP 2 was named TV2, near the mid-90s