Something I had just taken for granted but never really thought about…are the RGB dvds that TimeLife sold set up so the network episodes are in one volume and the other syndicated ones are all together on the other volumes? I ask because after I found out in the interviews about the network and syndicated deal that was unusual at the time, I thought I could just look at an episode and tell the difference. But I can't. Granted, the only real difference I've noticed is just in some of the Lorenzo/Laura/Arsenio episodes the animation is almost 2 steps above Inspector Gadget anime (ie Dairy Farm to name one)compared to some of the others (ie Masqurade or Janines Day Off) where the animation seems smoother and more refined. But I still don't know which is which. Course, you could chalk up to the animation getting more…refined i guess you could say with the passage of time.

It's a little complicated, yeah, but it sorta works like this:

Episodes 1-13 on Vol. 1 were aired by ABC in the fall of 1986

Episodes 14-79, except for 72 (“Slimer, Is That You?”) were aired in syndication starting in the fall of 1987. This finishes off Vol.1, is all of Vol.2, and gets us well into Vol. 3.

Episodes 80-91, and the “missing” 72, aired on ABC in the fall of 1987, at the same time the syndicated episodes were airing. In the fall of 1987, for three glorious months, we were getting six new episodes a week.

Episode 72 was originally supposed to be in the syndicated package–it has Lorenzo Music and Laura Summer as Venkman and Janine. Episode 79 (“Transylvania Homesick Blues”), on the other hand, was supposed to be an ABC episode as it has Dave Coulier and Kath Soucie in it (though they still used Janine's first character model in her brief appearance). If they ever explained why those two episodes got “swapped”, it's on a special feature I haven't watched yet.:-)

So starting with episode 80, on Vol. 3, it's all ABC network.

The Slimer episodes on Vol.5 actually aired along side episodes 92 (Vol.3) and 93-99 (Vol.4) in the fall of 1988.

As for animation quality, it does vary greatly. Asian cartoon studios often subcontract out individual episodes, especially when deadline pressure mounts. I gather some of the shakier episodes were actually animated in Korea, but I can't swear to that in a court of law or anything.

I've always held the Network episodes had more “polish” than the majority of syndicated episodes. That said, some of the syndies looked great, others it was like they didn't bother to try. Some had good animation, but it looked like the master was bad, with ghost images (no pun) carrying over into the next frame.

In DIC's defense, they had 2 months to make 60+ episodes, so be happy they weren't stick figures on notebook paper.