The Lost Canadian Dub...

[Fauna]

...Is driving me crazy. Has anyone caught word of it being released on DVD or anything? I know there were some tapes released in Australia or Europe, but I'd have to risk it on eBay.

I truly wish Mom had saved some of those master reels at the TV station. The thought of something so rare being thrown out and recycled makes me want to cry.

The thing is, I just had a really weird dream last night where I was watching the American version of "Robio & Robiette" (or "Light Ray Robot", I can't recall) when I paused, zoomed in, scrolled into the side of the picture and did the frame-by-frame thing for a few seconds. Suddenly, the screen changed, and I was taken to a new opening menu that had the episodes in their Canadian version! I watched some of them (probably recalling every clip I had hidden in my mind from over ten years ago) but to my horror, the dream changed, and I knew the DVD trick wouldn't work.

Mom, who works at a TV station that used to run the dub, says the dub belonged to Nelvana Inc, and possibly dubbed by Ocean Group (they did a REALLY good dub of Dragonball & Dragonball Z that ran only here on YTV; you can find clips on YouTube.), so I'll have so ask Nelvana or something. Because really, I miss the whole gang and their crazy dub names...Dr. Balfus, Professor Peabody, Max McNugget, Sarah, Bruiser, Slippery and them all.

[mr skunk]

You know Jay Rath came to this forum a few years ago and said something very interesting. Dr Frag asked if they ever dubbed the first two episodes and amazingly, Jay said they did. I guess it would make sense. I mean even in the dub there's that flash-back of Skunk and little Atlas.

Unfortunetly, he doesn't know what happened to them. It's a shame. Anyway, I wasn't a member yet when he made his grand appearance. Maybe jeffbert is a better person to talk to.

[mr skunk]

oh woops! we're talking about something different aren't we...

[Astro Forever]

oh woops! we're talking about something different aren't we...

Yes. There was a Canadian dub. My guess is they had to produce their own dub because, although there was an existing English dub, they removed about 4 to 5 minutes of each episodes, often changing the storyline and ending.

[Fauna]

Yeah, there was a weird little bit at the end of the episode where Astro would report the episode's events to a computer, the show would go to commercial, and you had to find the one mistake he made in the report. I think a lot of deaths were taken out, too, and Light Ray was turned into a girl. I remember only few things, since I was three or four around the time.

BTW, shortly after starting this topic, I started talking about the dub on the way to school. My dad said that the master tapes that were thrown out weren't really the masters, just copies off a film reel. Like tapes recorded off the radio! The film reels would have either gone back to Nelvana, or stored safely in the TV station's archives.

The names I DID remember messed me up later on, as I still thought Uran was Sarah (which was kind of fitting), Ochanimizu was Peabody and Skunk was still Slippery (I'm serious. Even though it was supposed to coincide with the term "slippery criminal", something about it seemed wrong to me.)

[Ninjatron]

This is also the version of the show that I watched as a kid. I have vague memories of the "Geronimo" computer sequence in every episode. It would be interesting to see an example of that again, but I'm not really fussed about it. The DVDs that Manga Entertainment released are good enough for me.

I would imagine the reason why there is a different dub for Canada has to do with the length of the show and the difference between time alloted for advertising on kid's programing in Canada compared to elsewhere. That's got to be why they added the Geronimo sequence; to fill time.

Sayonara.

[Astro Forever]

This is also the version of the show that I watched as a kid. I have vague memories of the "Geronimo" computer sequence in every episode. It would be interesting to see an example of that again, but I'm not really fussed about it. The DVDs that Manga Entertainment released are good enough for me.

I would imagine the reason why there is a different dub for Canada has to do with the length of the show and the difference between time alloted for advertising on kid's programing in Canada compared to elsewhere. That's got to be why they added the Geronimo sequence; to fill time.

Sayonara.

I believe the show would have been the right lenght if they had not cut out so much footage. It seems to me that they added the game to compensate. The most frustrating thing is that episodes that weren't violent (not that I thought they really were, but let's say some were more than others) had to get cut so all the episodes would be the same length.

BTW, Light Ray and Goliath never died, and Bruton didn't destroy any robot: they were just put to sleep or something like that. Others here remember it more than I do though. We had the luxury of getting the French dub, which was made from the English Canadian dub.

[Fauna]

I'm just going bats over the Canadian dub because the voices were said to be much better than the usual American version.
And the heavy nostalgia factor; that too. (At three, I pretended Astro was my older brother!)

[mr skunk]

This is really intense. I get excited about new voices for my favorite characters, and new lines or words they might use.

[tonigirl1000]

Would love to see those Canadian versions of Astroboy.