This is three-day-old news by now, but I haven’t seen much commentary on this story.  The Adventures of Tintin, a co-production between Canada’s Nelvana and France’s Ellipsanime, will see its 39 episodes released on DVD through Shout! Factory.  This “multi-year agreement” will exploit the upcoming 2011 release of The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson/Weta Digital motion-capture film.

This news is notable for the American company attached to the Adventures of Tintin DVD releases.  Shout! Factory has released Canadian content before, most notably SCTV, ReBoot and Transformers: Beast Wars.

Global Television Network pretty much treated The Adventures of Tintin as weekend filler in the 1990s, on par with C.L.Y.D.E. and Stop the Smoggies!  Frankly, The Adventures of Tintin didn’t deserve that treatment.  It was a very good series, as faithful to the Hergé comics as it could be given the constraints of 1980s/1990s children’s television.

I also remember the voice acting in The Adventures of Tintin.  Colin O’Meara was the voice of Tintin for the English dub, easily his biggest role to date.  David Fox was Captain Haddock, while the late Wayne Robson lent his voice to Professor Calculus.  The show made effective use of its cast, even given that it used Canadian voiceover standbys like John Stocker (Thompson), Dan Hennessey (Thomson) and Susan Roman (Snowy, the dog.)

The Adventures of Tintin is one of Nelvana’s best-ever shows.  This is due to the Hergé Foundation holding Nelvana and Ellipsanime to an exacting standard.  I don’t exactly hold Nelvana in high regard, but the company nailed Tintin.

I’m aware the series minus “Tintin in America” has already been released on DVD in Canada.  The two 2005 sets are titled Les Aventures de Tintin, even though they contain both English and French audio tracks and subtitles.  America had to wait until 2009 for a portover of the 2005 set.

I hope Shout! Factory will deal with Nelvana beyond The Adventures of Tintin.  Something tells me it won’t, given the cynical nature of tie-ins, but there’s a lot to exploit – Eek! the Cat, Beetlejuice, Spliced! and Dog City, among other titles.  I don’t like every business decision S!F makes, like sub-licensing to Mill Creek Entertainment, but it’s one of the few companies giving obscure television titles a chance at this point.  Seriously, I’d like to see an Eek! the Cat set before the Hyperglobalomninet beams that shit into my brain.