I've recently acquired an edition of the Raccoons DVDs that were released last month. Expect a full review shortly! In a nutshell, though, they certainly deserve a place in every Raccoons collection. Also, Mark Wiesner writes:

I just wanted to announce to you that a new Raccoons mailing list has been set up. The old one was full of spammers and had no moderators. In response, I finally set up a group and am going to be filtering messages. I'm looking to recruit other mods too.

The URL for our new list is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/thenewraccoons

The Raccoons on DVD. Yes, the time is finally upon us. Select episodes of the Raccoons are being released on DVD on 28 October. Sarah was the first to email with the news, and a link to the DVDs on Amazon.com here. Maxim Artemev sends along a link to the description, and Timothy Fay and Rocky Raccoon chime in with a link to the announcement. Fantastic. Let's hope we eventually see the entire series, and the specials soon. Great news all around. I'll save my rant about region coding for later, and bask in the glory for now. This is a great opportunity to show our support for the Raccoons to Catalyst, so let's make the most of it. Slainte!

Added a sketch of Lisa Raccoon by Carl Sessler.

Also, from Maxim Artemev: The official UnOfficial Russian Raccoons site is now located at http://theraccoons.ru/.

Cory Carlick writes:

Some sad news. The Raccoons no longer appears to be playing on A-Channel Saturday mornings. I hope I'm wrong but it wasn't on the last time I checked.

Some more juicy tidbits: Sheldon Wiseman's studio Amberwood is working on two new animated series: The Secret World of Benjamin Bear (based on Lacewood's the Teddy Bear Picnic specials of the 80s) and an all-new action series for kids, ZeroMan, starring Leslie Neilsen. Quite a few Raccoons vets will be helming these productions, offhand Ron Black, Chris Schouten. There are probably more than I can remember.

I've removed the A-Channel listing from Now Playing. That leaves just Ren-TV in Russia... Anyone care to check and see if it's still on over there?

Al Miskell writes:

Hello, my name is Allan Miskell, and I am a big Raccoons fan. [...] However, I have some bad news. As of Sunday the 2nd of February, APTN has stopped playing the Raccoons, and I am quite disappointed, as this show means a lot to me, and there are no other stations that play the Raccoons. So I went to the APTN page, and sent them a message telling them how much I love the Raccoons, and that I would appreciate it if they continued playing it. I thought that if we could get as many Raccoons fans as possible to send more messages to APTN and ask them to continue playing the Raccoons, that APTN may start playing the raccoons again (if we're lucky); I was thinking that maybe you could put a message on your web page suggesting for fellow Raccoons fans to write to APTN. I'm not sure what the APTN e-mail address is, but to send them a message, all you have to do is go to the feedback section of their page, and fill out a form type thing.

I hope that getting the Raccoons back on the air will be a success!

Yeah, so it took me a while to post it. APTN's feedback form is here. Let's let them know that the Raccoons are a phenomenon not to be taken lightly, shall we?

Rocky Raccoon writes:

Was messing around on the internet, when I found this.

http://yerf.com/amberljc/nnraccoon.jpg

Just thought I'd make a note of it. The artist does some really nice wildlife art I'd seen on display, and sure enough she had a link to her cartoon artwork as well on her webpage, as well as on an online forum for funny animal cartoons.

Added transcription of Here I Go Again from Patrick Helleouet.

Added some voices updates from Archie Leach and Duy Cuong Nguyen.

Now that the Episode Guide is nice and database-driven, I went ahead and put up some of the episode synopses that have been sitting around for a couple of years, from Maxim Artemev, Michael Howe, and Will Smith.

I finally decided to get off my duff and get some dynamic content up in here. Thus, I put the Episode Guide into a database and wrote the necessary scripts to access it. You may also notice the quotes on the main page are ever-amorphous, as are the mists of Ireland. Enjoy.

Cory Carlick writes:

Hi there,

I'm doing a co-op at Amberwood Animation Studios (www.amberwoodanimation.com) because I'm going to take pre-animation at Algonquin. Here's a few tidbits you might find interesting.

• Gerald Tripp, the voice director of "The Raccoons", is the creator of Hoze Houndz, a children's cartoon show on the Family Channel (and which I'm working on! :)
• Gerry Paquette, one of the key animators on The Raccoons is a Professor of Animation at Algonquin College in Ottawa.
• James McGregor, a layout artist on The Raccoons created the vast majority of clipart included with Microsoft packages such as Word, Publisher, et al.
• Chris Schouten is a character designer at Amberwood
• Ron Black, who worked on 53 episodes of the Raccoons at Hinton (and the features at Crawley's) also worked on the 1960s television series "Tales of the Wizard of Oz", "Care Bears", and is working on various animated series at Amberwood, notably Hoze Houndz.

Chris C. has sent me some updated information on the company that holds the rights to the Raccoons (formerly Catalyst Entertainment, now Cambium Catalyst International, Ltd). I've made the requisite changes to the company information page.

Cory Carlick has sent me a link to Gerry Paquette's Raccoons animation retrospective, The Raccoons - An Animator's Tail. Well done, and highly recommended.

Mark Wiesner and the Raccoons Mailing List have started a petition to bring the specials and the series to DVD. So head on over and sign it.

Posted corrections to the songwriter credits of all of the songs, thanks to Jon Stroll (yes, Jon Stroll).