G.I. Joe - Shout! Factory Message Board Clarifies and Expands Info about their Upcoming DVDs

We've posted a lot of news recently about Shout! Factory's upcoming releases of G.I. Joe on DVD. And, now that Shout! and Hasbro have issued a press release confirming the deal which allows these releases to happen, Shout! is starting to open up with additional information.

The Shout! Factory official message boards have opened up an official discussion thread for fans to ask about, comment on, or make suggestions regarding this release. This "Definitive G.I. Joe Thread" begun the other day, and going through the posts made up until this point in time, we've learned a few things about the upcoming titles. We'll briefly cover them in the below list of bullet points, but we encourage everyone to go read the original postings in the thread, to get the complete information and context straight from the source. Most of what is written below is quoted from, or paraphrased from, the message board posts (even when it's not obviously so, but we want to make sure all the credit for the wording goes to the original posts over there):

• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero - Season 1.1 will include both original miniseries
• Brian Ward, Shout!'s DVD producer on these releases, comments that "the original masters looked considerably better than those of Transformers" (NOTE: see our separate news post today for Transformers, including Ward's comments about the 1-inch digibeta masters)
• The Joe releases will only consist of the Sunbow-produced series, not the later DiC-produced series or any others. Since DiC was acquired by Cookie Jar Group, Shout! has no existing agreement with the new company. CLARIFICATION: in a more recent post at the thread, Ward clarifies the status of the relationship: "We still hold the rights to the DiC series we've released (and then some) and must continue any work through Cookie Jar, if we intend to continue to release titles like the third volume of Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog, the second volume of Jayce & The Wheeled Warriors, etc. The contract is still there and valid."
• Ward says they "will have featurettes, like the ones on Transformers. We will have the designers, the producers, the writers, the voice cast, PSAs, toy commercials and more."
• As with Transformers, commercial bumpers will be included as part of the episodes. In both cases, some of the audio from the episodes will, at times, bleed into the bumper, so Ward decided it was best to leave the bumpers where they are.
• Ward is working to ensure that the correct opening title sequence is used for each episode, and for each of the original miniseries.
• Those two original miniseries will be the first two discs in the Season 1.1 release. Ward is not yet able to speak to whether or not the animated theatrical Joe film will be included on any of the releases, but hopes to be able to speak about it "soon".