Woody Woodpecker - VHS and DVD Releases

VHS and DVD Releases

A handful of non-comprehensive Woody Woodpecker VHS tapes were issued by Universal in the 1980s and 1990s, usually including Andy Panda and Chilly Willy cartoons as bonuses. A few were widely released on VHS in the mid-1980s by Kid Pics Video, an American company of dubious legality, which packaged the Woody cartoons with bootlegged Disney cartoons. In the early 2000s, a series of mail-order Woody Woodpecker Show VHS tapes and DVDs were made available by mail order through Columbia House. However, following complaints about censorship (the cartoons included featured varying amounts of censorship, from restored and intact prints to severely cut TV edits), the series ended after fifteen volumes rather than the planned twenty.

In 2007, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection, a three-disc DVD boxed set compilation of Walter Lantz "Cartunes". The first forty-five Woody Woodpecker shorts—from Knock Knock to The Great Who-Dood-It—were presented on the box set in chronological order of release, with various Chilly Willy, Andy Panda, Swing Symphonies, and other Lantz shorts also included. The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection: Volume 2, including the next forty-five Woody cartoons—Termites from Mars through Jittery Jester—was released in 2008. A plain-vanilla best-of release, titled Woody Woodpecker Favorites, was released in 2009, which contained no new-to-DVD material. Plans for further releases, as well as a region-1 DVD release of The New Woody Woodpecker Show, are currently on hold, although the 1999 series has received VHS and DVD releases outside of North America and is available for viewing on Hulu.

Apart from authorized releases, the Woody Woodpecker cartoon most widely available on legal home video is Pantry Panic, as that cartoon has fallen into the public domain.