Well, it may be a dying medium, but for those few licenses that are still tightly controlled by the Japanese companies, some of us are still jonesing for a lot of the great kaiju and tokusatsu shows and movies to come to DVD (or Blu-ray), in a non-bootlegged format.

We have been lucky with a couple recent ones, but there are still so many more to do, and I don't really feel like paying 600+ dollars to get a full series, only to have it be in Region 2 and Japanese language only.

Anyways, just saw that the complete Johnny Sokko was released this week from Shout! Factory, so I thought I would share that for anyone who might be interested.

What I know of so far, available for the region 1 market:

- Ultraman
- Ultraseven
- Iron King
- Super Robot Red Baron
- Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot

Which, given the amount of shows out there, is still not a lot. Hopefully many more to come. (Q I am looking in your direction )

Over at www.generationkikaida.com they have a few more series for sale. Not as cheap as the others listed.

I saw the Red Baron set at Half Price Books this weekend for $3 (new - multiple copies). Thought it was a steal when it first came out at $15 or whatever.

The only problem is Mill Creek re-releases of the BCI sets are the subtitles are off just a bit. Enough to annoy you though.

Yeah, unforuntely both the Mill Creek versions of Red Baron and Iron King are done terribly, probably compressed versions of earlier releases. I think this is what has completely thrown off the subtitles. It is probably also why they are constantly available at next-to-nothing prices, since the production quality is so poor. It's unfortunate, especially give how we would like to point to previous success models to encourage the release of other series here, but garbage like that is what explains poor sales and has turned off the consumer who might not know any better.

Incidentally, the loss of BCI and the license was discussed previously on here if anyone is interested, as already when these were being made, it seems the company was having difficulty.

I thought I heard Shoutbox was coming out with Ultra Q, heard it some time ago though, so maybe theres been changes or a delay.

The BCI was 4 discs so yeah compressed onto 3 discs really screwed it up. I really miss BCI. At least we got those kick ass Naschy films before they folded.