Fox Home Entertainment and series creator Seth MacFarlane are hoping the DVD market is as kind to American Dad as it has been to Family Guy. American Dad Volume One arrives on home video today as a three-disc set offering 13 episodes from the FOX primetime toon series. Meanwhile, fans of 1980s animation can get their claws on Inspector Gadget: The Original Series.
Co-created by MacFarlane and Family Guy scribes Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman, American Dad revolves around Stan Smith (voiced by MacFarlane), a CIA agent and proud family man based in Langley Falls, Virginia. Stan’s seemingly conservative wife, Francine (Wendy Schaal), is a closeted party girl and his 18-year-old daughter, Hayley (Rachael MacFarlane), is always at odds with her 13-year-old brother, Steve (Scott Grimes), a hapless geek. Sharing the Smith household are Roger (MacFarlane), a sarcastic space alien rescued from Area 51, and Klaus (Dee Bradley Baker), a German-speaking goldfish born of a botched CIA experiment.
MacFarlane, Barker, Weitzman and others provide commentary tracks on 12 of the episodes. Other DVD extras include 42 deleted scenes, an animatic-to-episode comparison, a table read with animatic and two featurettes titled All in the Family: Creating American Dad and Secrets of the Glass Booth: Behind the Voices of American Dad.’ The set carries a suggested retail price of $39.98.
By now, everyone knows the story of how DVD sales prompted FOX to bring Family Guy back from cancellation. And while American Dad has continued to pull solid ratings with the Family Guy lead-in on Sunday nights, moving a good number of discs will help ensure that the show stays on the air. American Dad is now in its second season.
Bumbling Inspector Gadget (voiced by the late Don Adams) battles the forces of M.A.D. with the aid of the various gadgets, his niece, Penny, and her dog, Brain, in a new four-disc set containing 22 episodes of the 1983 DIC series. Extra features include a “Wowsers” retrospective featurette with co-creators Andy Heyward and Mike Maliani, an original art gallery and results of an Inspector Gadget fan art contest. Released by Shout Factory, the DVD set lists for $34.98.
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