Customer Reviews

Inspector Gadget: The Original Series

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was an adult when Inspector Gadget: The Original Series first appeared on the air and I loved the show from the start! I am autistic, I loved plain old animated TV stuff long after most older folk have moved on. I just liked Gadget because, he was different and trying to do good for others in the world despite it all. I like anyone who is different struggling to meet the life's challenges as they come with a smile and an indomitable spirit hence Gadget proved to be my kind of people :).

Gadget was also fun because, he was a technical person but kind of scatter brained like me. Gadget was misunderstood by most people and had only a few close but good friends making him very easy for me to like. Gadget had a good heart always filled with love and hope despite it all and that means something awesome in my book too. Maybe caring about things on TV is an autistic thing if so I do like such nice gentle themed television shows an aweful lot! For me good characters on TV shows are like pleasant friends you visit with for a time. I am not good at the complexity of real social skills so I watch lots of TV study the characters to see what makes them good.

Watching Inspector Gadget: The Original Series is fun, because he brings back so many good memories that are not filled with mean inhumanity or confusion. Buy Inspector Gadget: The Original Series and let him bring back some good memories for you or make some new awesome memories for members of your family.

I was glad I got this DVD set. It was a big improvement over the cheap Sterling/UAV Gadget DVDs "The Gadget Files" and "Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas." The first 22 episodes are there, including the original pilot, with Gadget's mustache! Like I did with the Sterling DVDs, it's time to give it my "Gadget Factors..."

PROS
The original episodes are there, of course.
There is some cool special features, such as the interview with the show's creators and the original art gallery!
The pilot has its original dialogue (since reruns of this episode had badly-done new voiceovers explaining Gadget's mustache was a fake.) Plus, the pilot episode has its original opening and closing titles, featuring Gadget's mustache throughout them!

CONS
There's some noticable DVNR on some episodes.
And of course, like the other Gadget DVDs, there's the following edits...

EDITS
The title of an episode is electronically added at the start of most episodes during the beginning of the first scene. When these cartoons originally aired, including their Nickelodeon reruns, they had no episode titles! This probably wasn't really needed.
The original DiC logo featuring Inspector Gadget dotting the "i" was cut. It was replaced with the "Incredible World of DiC" logo on most episodes, though a couple of episodes have the famous 1990s "Kid in Bed" DiC logo tacked onto it. This was quite unneccesary. However, the original late-70s/early-80s LBS logo is intact on all episodes, which you might remember if you saw this show on Nickelodeon back in the 90s.


I have been waiting for quite some time ever since I got my "Gadget Files" DVD for a company to release a box set of Gadget episodes, and it's finally happened!
All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend it to those who are big fans of the show, or those who are dying to see this classic cartoon again!

You really have to embrace the kid in you to enjoy this wacky series. I had to be in the mood to watch these before I could get into them, something I normally don't have to do with cartoons from my childhood. So yes, these have aged. That said, they're STILL better than %99 of the trash on TV today & deserves to have the rest of the episodes on DVD. The cartoons in this set are:

Disc One
#01. Winter Olympics (1982 pilot, AKA Gadget In Winterland)
#02. Monster Lake
#03. Down On the Farm
#04. Gadget at the Circus
#05. The Amazon

Disc Two
#06. Health Spa
#07. The Boat
#08. Haunted Castle
#09. Race To the Finish
#10. The Ruby
#11. A Star Is Lost

Disc Three
#12. All That Glitters
#13. Movie Set
#14. Amusement Park
#15. Art Heist
#16. Volcano Island
#17. The Invasion

Disc Four
#18. The Infiltration
#19. The Curse of the Pharaoh
#20. M.A.D. Trap
#21. Basic Training
#22. Sleeping Gas

Like many viewers I've been waiting for the real thing on DVD--and here it is! Don Adams (Get Smart, Tennessee Tuxedo) did a great job on this series. It's a smart, action-packed limited animation cartoon that draws you in. As many reviewers have commented, this is DIC's motherlode. But it's not the only DIC 'toon I'd like to see on DVD. I watched Dennis the Menace every day and there was a great one called Little Shop spun off of Little Shop of Horrors. Also Sabrina from Savage Steve Holland (and where's Eek the Cat from the FOX network?)

I think Shout Factory does a quite good job with their releases that I'm familiar with, especially Home Movies from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block (except for a video game ad at the beginning that I found inappropriate). Anyone doing cartoons without cable will want to add Inspector Gadget to the daily or weekly mix (play one episode daily or weekly as if it were on a network).

Eventually educational blurbs were added at the end of the later episodes. They were brief spots and well-done, but we already got the message that there's little a hi-tech girl with a brainy dog (Brain) can't do--a theme that would resonate again in Disney's Kim Possible. But Inspector Gadget was so not the drama and all about the comedy. Wowsers!

Who other than me remembers the good old days when Inspector Gadget was on Nickelodeon every stinkin' morning? It's about time this came to DVD. Every morning Nickelodeon would show Inspector Gadget along with Double Dare, You Can't Do That on Television and the Black and Wite Lassie and Denis the Mennace.
I Remember Everything, The Gadget Mobile, Dr. Claw and his gang of "MAD" goons, his niece Penny with her computer book foiling Claw's plans while her uncle was being danger proned, always throwing the mission messages where Cheif Quimby was and they explode. If you watched Nickelodeon from 1985-90 and remembered this cartoon gem of the 80's than BUY THIS DVD SET!

I just picked up my copy of the first Inspector Gadget episodes, and they are such a great investment to my collection! What Gen-Xer didn't love this series when it first aired from 1983-86?!

So great to see "The Pharoah" episode again, which had the most eerie score of the first season! But each episode carries so many memories as Gadget, Penny & Brain trek through Metro City and across the globe in stopping Dr. Claw's nefarious crimes and plots for world domination! My sister & I became quite the geography gurus in grammar school as an upshot of regular viewings of Gadget's adventures...something positive and sorely lacking from today's animated tripe!

While this box set is indeed an auspicious start, I would be most eager to see the second season ('85-'86) come to DVD from DIC. What made those episodes even better were the newly automated Gadget house and having the episodes grouped into three's...namely, Gadget faced off against the same MAD agent(s) in different perilous traps/crimes. Dr. Spectrum was the Mac-Daddy agent of them all with his ghost pellets ("Ghost Catchers"), de-materializing phone gun ("Busy Signal"), and his most diabolical invention...his nightmare wave generator ("Bad Dreams Are Made of These", hands-down the best Gadget epsiode ever made...the story, MAD hideout, weapons, score, sound F/X just ALL perfectly came together in this one!!!)

GO, GADGET, GO!!!!!

I have been an avid fan of "Inspector Gadget" since first seeing it in 1983 (when I was in Kindergarten). The series is classic, and Shout! Factory's 22-episode release is much better than the previous five-episode release nearly two years ago. The episodes are just as fun as they ever were and kids today as well as Generation X-ers would find the set well worth their money.

Normally, I have been impressed with Shout! Factory's releases such as "Heathcliff", "C.O.P.S.", "Super Mario Bros. Super Show", and various SCTV volumes, but I believe their release of "Inspector Gadget: The Original Series, Vol. 1" did not get the proper treatment it deserved. Gadget is DiC Animation's evergreen property; he's used for much of their marketing and publicity, yet there were only three features on the dvd? The interview with Andy Heyward and Mike Maliani is informative and interesting, although a bit short. The character sketch section is fun to watch for any Gadget fan, but the contest winner "extra" should not even be counted as such. If they were going to include the contest winner, they could have at least shown the viewers through a gallery of some of the best submissions before coming to the winning picture.

I don't know about other Gadget fans, but I think they could have packed this dvd with at least a few more extras, including but not limited to:

1.) Interviews with cast and crew, most of whom are still alive. Having interviewed Lou Albano for the Super Mario Bros. set, many would agree that an interview with Cree Summer, Don Franks (Cree's father and additional voice for many characters), Frank Welker (a voice acting super-star) or even an old interview with Don Adams would have been a nice touch. Except for the late Don Adams, most of the cast from the first season of "Inspector Gadget" is very much alive and working in the voice-over world.

Also, inverviews with character designers, directors and even Haim Saban or Shuki Levy (who provided the classic musical scoring) could provide fans with a bit more insight into the series. Also, why is there never any mention of Jean Chalopin? He was a pivotal part of the series' first and second seasons even receiving co-writing credits for the first episode, various responsibilites for the first and second seasons and acted as the story editor for the second season. I think it would have been nice to at least mention his involvement with Gadget (although Mike Maliani DOES mention his name once when speaking with Andy Heyward in the interview).

2) A biography or tribute to the late Don Adams, who recently passed away, and without him, the series would not have been the same.

3) A look at some gadget merchandise

4) Original Gadget commercials

5) A spotlight on the music. In 1983, Saban Entertainment even released a soundtrack album for the series, which is excellent.

These are just some of the many ideas that could have been included.

Also, the packaging for the dvd set was a let-down. It seems that whenever any Gadget products are release, they insist on using the save few Gadget pictures all over the product. (This dvd set used most of the same pictures as the past dvd set, and these pictures have been seen many times themselves.) It also would have been nice if the episode list in the packaging had gotten the episode list right; each disc is off by an episode, which is just careless to me. As for the disc art, the same story prevails. Would it have been too much trouble to find scene captures of Gadget, Penny, Brain, and Dr. Claw with MAD Cat to put on each of the four discs?

Despite my review, I do enjoy the original series of "Inspector Gadget," and these first 22 episodes are classic Gadget. I know I am not the only fan who bought the dvd set scratching his head and asking, "Is that all they could do?" Hopefully, DiC will release the next three volumes (which, if released at the current rate, this would be correct) with more extras. Hopefully, they will realize that their products aren't just for today's kids--the kids of 20 years ago are probably their biggest consumers with products like "Inspector Gadget", "Heathcliff", "C.O.P.S", "Super Mario Bros.", "The Legend of Zelda" and even future releases such as "Captain N: The Game Master".

Overall, if you liked the show, you should pick this up, especially if you're not too concerned about extra features.

As a post script, I think it should be clarified that in the Hanna-Barbera series "Dynomutt, Dog Wonder," it was Dynomutt who was the bumbler and Blue Falcon who was the straight-man. I'm not sure what Andy Heyward's job was with that series, but this is the second interview where he made that mistake.

It was finally about time they released Inspector Gadget on DVD. As a child of the 80s, I used to watch nothing but Inspector Gadget. This DVD is a must have for any fan of Inspector Gadget.

I am hoping they will release more DVD sets in the near future!

-M
SF, CA

Great DVD! I loved this show as a child and now I can share it with my son. There just aren't good cartoons on TV anymore like this one. Lots of episodes, too!

My autistic son just went over the moon when we received the dvd in the mail. It came on time the packaging was great and the dvd was perfect. It was a pleasure doing business with the seller. I always know that anything I purchase at amazon will be worth the price and the quality from the sellers has been excellent i have never been misleaded by anyone on the amazon web site. Marie Zarnowski