Okay, we're big enough here to admit when we've been upstaged! An Australian DVD News Site, DVDBits.com (which posts news about both Region 4/Australia and Region 1/North America DVD releases), has somehow obtained a look at the next five packages for DVD season sets of The Simpsons.
We know that the pic above is a mighty small shot of the group...well, that's all you're going to get from us! We don't want to steal their thunder, of course; that wouldn't be right. But we DO want to pass along to our readers that this is available to see. You can check out a much larger group shot of the five packages at the DVDBits website.
Is this final art? Maybe not. Our first e-mail tipping us off to this story came today from Adam Wolf of SimpsonsChannel.com (thanks, Adam!), who nots that these are "early drafts, possibly just a design given to Fox Home Entertainment to show that five heads could be accomplished. Homer's head is longer, his pupils are different, and the thick black line doesn't appear at the bottom of his mouth." Good analysis, and we agree with it.
Since the "Homer" (The Simpsons - The Complete 6th Season) artwork is otherwise so very similar to what we're seeing here in Region 1, then we conclude that this is very likely what we're going to see here in the states...it's pretty much what we were told by Fox a little over a month ago. It seems like we can expect the remaining "head case" sets of the family members to come in this order: Homer, Marge, Lisa, Maggie, and then Bart for the 10th season. What will they do after that? Well, the production team is currently in the process of creating episodes for the debut of the 17th season this Fall, so they need at least seven more sets after that. Will they continue with character-based case, or go back to the box? Or will the entire thing be academic soon as DVD is phased out in favor of a newer format? Your guess is as good as ours...stay tuned!
