DuckTales
Walt Disney Television Animation began production on "DuckTales" in 1986, with the intention of having it ready for a premiere in 1987, and its episodes airing within a 4-6 p.m. placement, at a time when more children would be watching television, rather than within a morning timeslot. Seeking to create a cartoon with high quality animation, in comparison with other 1980s cartoons which had much lower budgets, the animation was handled by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, having previously been used on two other Disney cartoons in 1985 – "The Wuzzles" and "Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears" – both of which had demonstrated better quality cartoons on TV than in previous years. Although the Japanese provided them with more available artists for the cartoon, this also increased production costs, due to the currency exchange rates between the yen and the dollar, though Disney intended to invest heavily in its "DuckTales"s production, with plans to recuperate its money by having it syndicated via its syndication unit, Buena Vista Television, with a 2.5/3.5 syndicator/station ad split. While this was a concept that worked well with live-action TV reruns, it had only ever been used with inexpensive cartoon series in the past that either recycled theatrical shorts from decades past or only featured limited, low-budget animation, and thus had never been attempted with a high quality animated series, with the heavy investment considered a risky move.
List of DuckTales episodes
All 100 episodes from all 4 seasons are available on DVD in Region 1. The first twenty individual episodes of season one, numbered 6 to 25 in the list below, are also available on DVD in Region 2.
In the wake of the first season and "DuckTales" first 65 episodes, Disney announced 30 additional episodes. However, during the second season, the only new "DuckTales" episodes to air were two television movie specials: "Time Is Money" in syndication (some stations airing it on November 24, others on December 9,) and "Super DuckTales" on NBC's "The Magical World of Disney". Like "Treasure of the Golden Suns" before them, "Time Is Money" and "Super DuckTales" premiered in the two-hour television movie format, but would repeat in the series' regular rotation as five-part serials. Specifically, "Time Is Money" was first serialized from February 20–24, 1989, and "Super DuckTales" was first serialized from October 9–13, 1989.