(fwd) Re: Hi! President here!
From: chance_at_unix.infoserve.net (Chance)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.swatkats
Subject: Re: Hi! President here!
Date: 31 Jul 1995 16:04:55 GMT
Marsha Morman (XXRJ13C_at_prodigy.com) wrote:
: Yo! This is the Pres. of the SKC over on P*, and I guess if no one has a
: club over here I'll branch mine out. If I wasn't stuck on my other book
: (a seaQuest story) at the moment, I would gladly post a SK story. Oh,
: well. If anyone else has any ideas, it'd like to hear it! See ya.
Hmmm. We should pool our resources. Currently, there is a 33 member
"SwatKats" mailing list created by Dana Uehara and implemented by Paul
Hurley. Yours truly set up the newsgroup with support from most of the
list members and a bunch of fellow net-'Kats.
We have an FTP site set up with a bunch of frame-grabs and other
art (both colour and B&W), and have access to a _TON_ of unreleased 'Kat
stuff including unreleased/unused scripts, tons of unreleased colour and
B&W Kats artwork, pictures of what the licensed products _would_ have
looked like if someone competent had been steering, and a whole whack of
other stuff.
Contacts and fan-club wise, a couple of us talk to the Tremblay
brothers from time to time, some people at Hanna-Barbera quite
irregularly, and even some of the Kats design team (sadly, mostly "ex-HB"
now) help us out with info occasionally. Dana Uehara and Walt Koziol Jr.
from the mailing list came up with the idea for a fan-club before there
even _was_ a mailing list, but have run up against a bulkhead at H-B
because Turner Entertainment insists on pointing out at every opportunity
that "it's not a current property that we're promoting".
Fan-mail. FYI, everything I see on the Net concerning SwatKats gets
downloaded by me and sent to the Tremblay brothers. I don't have any
hangups doing it simply because they'd read it all themselves anyway if
they had net access and the time to keep up. FYI, at the moment they're
pursuing two other projects at another studio, and appear to have dropped
ties to H-B altogether (hardly surprising considering Turner
Entertainment's treatment of artists/fans alike). Hanna-Barbera intends
to take its fan-mail seriously once things get organized over there, and
the current arrangements allow for a copy of each Kats fan
letter/comments to be forwarded to the Tremblay bros as well as being
entered into Hanna-Barbera's computer which keeps track of demographic stuff.
I _strongly_ encourage everyone to write Hanna-Barbera and complain about
the cancellation/support the show at the address I'll give at the
bottom of this - they've had the proposal of outside financing for a
"SwatKats Movie", but _still_ won't do anything with it, nor will they
evidently shop the show around to networks other than the Turner-owned
ones of TBS and TCN.
Merchandise. Everyone on Prodigy probably already knows, but here's
the synopsis again in case you missed it. Currently there are "SwatKats"
posters (which are outstanding, BTW) at certain K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and
evidently Target stores. There will _not_ be another print run and the
manufacturer has already shipped all that were produced, so act now if
you want one. If none are available in your geographic area, e-mail me,
and we might be able to work something out.
1) Home Videos: There are currently three video cassettes released
to stores containing two first season episodes each, themed around
one villian for each cassette. "Deadly Dr. Viper" has "Katastrophe"
and "Destructive Nature"; "Strike of Dark Kat" has "Wrath of Dark
Kat" and "Night of the Dark Kat"; and "Metallikats Attack" has
"The Metallikats" and "Metal Urgency". Despite Turner promises
of a heavy ad-campaign, the only stores that so far have the
cassettes spotted are Suncoast, Reel Collections, and Tower
Records in the USA, Rogers and Mega Movies in Canada. The US
outlets currently only have them for sale, the Canadian outlets
only for rental. Call your local Blockbuster to get them in
the store.
2) Video Game
Hudson Soft has come out with an SNES "SwatKats" game which just
shipped to stores and should be available right now. The distributor
"Astral" reports that the vid-game is currently "No. 5" in terms
of retail orders, so there is considerable interest, and should be
considerable market penetration throught the CONUS and Canada.
3) Action Figures.
The action figure manufacturer is Remco, and the Kats line represents
their re-entry into the action-figure arena after a multi-year
absence. Originally, they were to produce Razor, T-Bone, the
Metallikats, DarkKat, the PastMaster and the Turbokat, with plans
for many of the Enforcer vehicles and other cast members. All you
will see in the stores is the Kat-guys, Dr. Viper and DarkKat, with
no immediate plans for followup releases. Christian Tremblay and
another list-member report seeing the toys already in various K-Mart
stores in the US, though my info says that Target and Toys R Us
aren't scheduled to get them in until the 8th. Remco's Canadian
distributor "Playtoy" reports that the line will not be carried
north of the 49th.
4) T-Shirts and other paraphrenalia. Originally, some really cool
Kats T-Shirts were created for the H-B "Employees Store", but
were soon sold out (great feat for something "unpopular", huh?).
Someone in H-B told me that they have aspirations of making certain
items like this available from the fan-relations aspect of H-B, but
"everything is up in the air right now". Currently, aside from the
items mentioned in 1-3, there are only a handful of Taiwanese
Trinkets from the likes of Gordy Toy, such as a SwatKats one-cell
"Flash Gun", and some other things like rumoured keychains and
watches. Again, market penetration varies _greatly_ with geography.
(So far, mainly mid-west, Illinois, Iowa etc.).
****Write Hanna-Barbera!
Hanna-Barbera Cartoons
3400 Cahuenga Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90068
Attn: Fred Seibert
Received on Mon Jul 31 1995 - 12:19:10 PDT
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