Promo for the '90s Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew shows!

[MacGyver]

I just ran across this promo for the 1990s series The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew on Youtube.
Cool!

[Lungbarrow]

Saturdays at noon? Killer time slot!   

[MacGyver]

It seems like it would be great for the older kids and teenage audience the shows were mostly going for...at that age, I most likely would've been home watching Saturday morning cartoons still through noon.

[MacGyver]

Here's a nice banner someone put together for this show too.

[MacGyver]

And since both The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew shows from the 1990s were quite short-lived, there isn't a huge amount of merchandise that turns up for these shows- still, there are a few cool things. Like this shirt I found at The Unofficial Hardy Boys Homepage.

[MacGyver]

I ran across this listing on Amazon and thought it was interesting- it looks like a DVD release of a single episode from the Nancy Drew series- "The Long Journey Home" episode. Perhaps this was a promotional sampler release before the full series got released to DVD? (Also, it's apparently only a Region 2 [i.e. European] DVD release.)

[MacGyver]

By the way, this release is dated April 7, 2008, according to the Amazon.co.uk listing. So that blows my earlier theory about it being a promotional release, since the full series for both The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew shows were released to DVD in 2006.

[MacGyver]

Here's an alternate cover as well- possibly from an Australian release.

[MacGyver]

Okay- here's the description I found on Amazon.co.uk -
"Four episodes of the US television series based on the books by Carolyn Keene. Tracy Ryan stars as Nancy Drew, a fiercely independent 20-year-old university student whose passion is solving mysteries. In this installment, Nancy tackles criminals, stalkers and even 'ghosts'..."

So, it's four episodes then. Okay- I wonder if maybe they were edited together to make it like a movie or something? (And it does carry the title of one of the episodes of the show, as I pointed out before.)

I've looked around on Amazon.co.uk, but I can't seem to find an equivalent release for The Hardy Boys series. Anyway, it doesn't look like it's anything much to get too excited about, but it is interesting in any case. I suppose Nelvana may have just been trying to do a cheaper DVD with just a handful of episodes for casual fans who just wanted a sampling of Nancy Drew.

[MacGyver]

Tower.com's listing says the distributor is Maverick Entertainment, rather than Nelvana directly. I suppose Nelvana may have licensed the show to them though.

[tomswift2002]

You have to remember that the Complete Series for both has only been released in Canada; there never was nor has there been a Complete Series or even Best Of release in the US.  And the Canadian release (which is no longer available) was released by kaboom/Peace Arch Entertainment; of course that doesn't mean that kaboom had exclusive worldwide rights, they only had Canadian rights.  Think of how "Wolverine & The X-Men" was released by multiple companies all around the globe, which led to situations where  the series had DVD-only releases in certain countries, within the same DVD region (Canada), while other countries got DVD and Blu-Ray releases (U.S.), due to different companies owning the licenses. 
But that 3-D view of he box set makes me question the 4 episode thing, since it looks like the case is as big as the double Amaray that was used here in Canada for each series.  If it was just a four episode release, why use two discs?  4 episodes would only total about an hour and a half (with commercials removed, and with the slight time differential that would come with PAL), so they'd be able to fit all 4 on 1 DVD-9 at a good bit rate speed (8-9 Mbps which is right at the high end of DVD bit rates).

[MacGyver]

I keep forgetting that neither series got a US DVD release. However, since Canada is also Region 1, maybe that's why I forget about it- there is a Region 1 release so Americans can watch the shows too- you just have to get it imported from Canada. I'm glad I did that when these series were first released so I've got a copy of them. Well, I gguess Region 2 probably hasn't gotten a full release either then...it's probably smart they went with the last few episodes in order to feature the France episode(s) for the European market.

[MacGyver]

I just ran across an interesting article from The Chicago Tribune about the 1990s shows.

[MacGyver]

Well, I posted a picture of The Hardy Boys from the '90s show on here, so I thought it'd be good to have a picture of Nancy Drew, Bess and George from Nancy's '90s show too.

[tomswift2002]

Well, I posted a picture of The Hardy Boys from the '90s show on here, so I thought it'd be good to have a picture of Nancy Drew, Bess and George from Nancy's '90s show too.

That image was actually used on one of the Files covers (#119 I believe).