A combination series of a post-Golden Age cartoon and a few related bonus shorts, this marked the first widespread home media release of a handful of newly produced post-Golden Age shorts primarily produced by Chuck Jones Enterprises. It also marked the debut of the restored 1998 dubbed versions of shorts on home media in the United States.
During the late 1980s, Warner Bros. began to create new cartoons to release in theaters after the original series ended in 1969. By 1988, "The Duxorcist" saw release as the first post-Golden Age short intended to be released to movie theaters. By the 1990s, a handful of new shorts had already aired in theaters, but there was a small audience willing to obtain these new additions to their library.
The first wave of shorts was first released in August 1996, which featured "Carrotblanca" and "Chariots of Fur", which both had recently aired in theaters up to two years prior. Also included were five additional bonus shorts, of which many were double dips from previous VHS or LaserDisc series at the time. In spite of that, a good portion of the shorts were given new transfers, usually off-the-shelf copies made during the studio's new process of restoring the shorts to be as close to the theatrical release as possible. On PAL versions, the shorts used 1997 dubbed versions when possible, which are LaserDisc transfers and thus unrestored.
The second wave of shorts was released in July 1998, consisting of "From Hare to Eternity" and "Superior Duck". It marked the first time anyone in the US saw the 1998 dubbed versions of the shorts on home media. You can learn more about the 1998 dubbed versions on the history page, and they were a massive improvement to previous prints. Had they not been released on an analog tape format, it would mark the earliest that restored versions of the shorts were ever made available. The 1998 dubbed notices were removed for the home media releases such as this one. The series ended rather quickly after the second wave came out, as the catalog of newly produced cartoons was running dry.
All classic shorts included in this series have since been restored on DVD or Blu-ray in recent years, leaving only a small fraction of post-Golden Age shorts awaiting a restored release.
