Cartoon series DVD Box?

that is true, however it can be overcome by buying rights to the music and charging a higher rate for the set.

At this point, I'm worried that even if this series does get released in season sets, it will be butchered beyond belief.

For one thing, most of the episodes that have been released on individual DVDs have no title cards whatsoever. some of them even lack both/or either opening and closing credits. They may not be reinstated for the season DVDs at all.

Secondly, at least two episodes have had songs replaced on DVD: "The Curse of Lontiki" and "Theodore and Juliet". Both episodes originally featured "Surfin' U.S.A." and "Love Potion No. 9" respectively. There's a good chance that they will never go back to the original songs for those two episodes.

Finally, for no reason some episodes have scenes missing on DVDs at least. So far, I've discovered at least 3 episodes that are missing scenes ("Maids in Japan", "A Chip off the Old Tooth" and "Babysitter Fright Night"). I'm worried that the missing scenes for those individual episodes will NEVER be reinstated.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. In American copyright laws, if you don't defend your copyright, you lose it. A lot of record companies would stand to lose the rights of their music if they simply let them get by without paying royalties. It sucks, but da law's da law.

Technically, it could be argued in court that the music is a parody of the original, like Weird Al. But it wouldn't be a strong case because the lyrics are almost identical, with the only changes being the pitch of the vocals and some wording (Example: the song "The Gambler" in the episode dealing with Miss Miller's gambling addiction has a few entire lines omitted from both the verses and chorus, in order to make it shorter for the short running time of the toon).

I think the copyright laws need to be ignored for this particular instance, but if they do it will create a potentially dangerous precedent.

It's too bad that the songwriters and record companies can't simply give their permission; this is one of the few shows that was able to teach kids (like me) good morals while still maintaining their entertainment value. I guess for now we will have to rely on YouTube.