In 2009, Time-Life licensed The Real Ghostbusters from Sony and put out one of the most elaborate DVD sets devoted to a cartoon show ever created. With several documentaries, dozens of commentaries(in VIDEO form!), scripts, series bibles and isolated soundtracks, it was truly a work of art. Now, thanks to the upcoming Ghostbusters movie, Sony has seen the opportunity to re-release The Real Ghostbusters themselves….but the bad news is, it’s not going to be the same release.
TVshowsonDVD reports that on July 5, five volumes of the Real Ghostbusters TV series will hit retailers…but these five will be different from Time-Life’s five. For one thing, they’ll only hold 11 or 12 episodes per volume, while the average Time-Life volume held 30 or so. They’ll also contain none of the bonus features from the previous release, so if you want to hear J. Michael Straczynski mouth off about how much he hates network censors, you’ll be out of luck.
We don’t know yet if these are 1-disc or 2-disc releases (if they’re 1, that’s another strike against them; Time-Life crammed just eight episodes into each disc). The only improvement the Sony versions offer over the Time-Life versions is that they offer subtitles, something the previous release lacked. But it’s hardly an equal trade!
Moral of the story: if you can still find the Time-Life set, go for that instead. Here are the other four covers:
