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Great, little-remembered cartoon gets new life on DVD.

It’s been a while since I gushed over BCI’s Ink & Paint label, so forgive me for a brief second while I gush. Hooray Ink & Paint!

There, now that I have that out of my system, let me ‘splain why. I will always geek out over their releases of the old Filmation properties, and while I was saddened when I didn’t get volume one of this series in to review, I’m ecstatic to have found the new volume of The New Adventures of the Lone Ranger and Zorro come my way.

This was originally a three-hero show but the rights to Tarzan prevented his segments from being included on this set. However, we do get the funtastic adventures of the two coolest masked men in the old west. Sure, both have seen many live-action incarnations over the years, but these cartoons were what I grew up on.

A 2-disc set, the first disc contains 17 of the Lone Ranger episodes, as the masked man and his faithful companion Tonto meet the likes of outlaw Jesse James and even Alfred Nobel.

Alfred Nobel in a children’s Saturday morning cartoon featuring masked gunslingers? Think about that one for a minute.

Disc two includes seven Zorro episodes as well as the bonus features. Zorro was brought into the series with the second season, and thus had fewer episodes.

Now granted, even by Filmation’s standards the animation is a little shoddy, but there’s still a lot of excitement and fun in these shows. The music, for one, is some of the best to come out of the studio and truly enhances the shows.

Special features are limited to four interviews with key creators, notably Lou Scheimer, who by this point has become a lot more casual for BCI’s camera. The most intriguing one, though, is with Ted Field III, NBC’s head of childrens programming at the time. It’s so rare to see the network suits’ views on this sort of thing, it’s pretty neat.

The lack of Tarzan is a little disheartening, but that’s an egg to scramble another day. As it is, The New Adventures of the Lone Ranger and Zorro is perfectly fine in and of itself. It’s one of those shows that’s often overlooked, but it was great to this fan when he was a tyke and it’s just as great now.

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