Rescue Our Animated Rangers
| Fan Campaign | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Rescue Our Animated Rangers (R.O.A.R.) |
| Type of Campaign: | webpage, group, message board |
| Aims: | release of the show on home video |
| Participants: | Eddie Baird, The RoboNerd (campaign founders) Matt Plotecher, Julie Bihn (website) |
| Date Started: | March 26th, 1998 (website launch) |
| Fandom: | Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers |
| Campaign Website: | http://juliestudio.com/roar/index.html |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Rescue Our Animated Rangers, also known as R.O.A.R., was a campaign to make Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers available to the general public again. The main demand was for Disney to release the entire series on home video. It was founded by Eddie Baird and The Robo|\|erd in March 1998.
Reasons
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers' syndication run ended on September 3rd, 1993, with Bonkers taking its timeslot afterwards. This was the last time the show had been aired on North American free TV. As only a few select episodes were released on home video over the years, the show itself was out of reach for everyone who didn't have cable and pay TV. Therefore, the Meta Fic The Rangerillion refers to the time from September 4th on as The Dark Age. All that most Rangerphiles had left of the show were memories, fan art and, especially from 1997 on, an increasing number of fan fiction.
Even before the arrival of the DVD, some TV series were released on VHS, often in their entirety. Disney didn't do this with their animated shows, though, so an initiative was started for this to come to pass. The arrival of the DVD provided for an even more convenient medium for home video releases of TV series which gave R.O.A.R. an even better reason to want CDRR to be re-released.
R.O.A.R. Board
Next to a website created by Matt Plotecher and Julie Bihn (the latter would found Rangerphiles Against Gadget Erotica later the same year), R.O.A.R. had its own forum on InsideTheWeb which was launched alongside the Web site itself and affiliated with the Acorn Cafe, the message board of the CDRR fandom.
On Christmas Eve 2000, The Acorn Cafe itself which was hosted on InsideTheWeb, too, irreversibly fell victim to one of InsideTheWeb's increasing frequent crashes. Since there was no way to recover it, Julie Bihn re-branded her R.O.A.R. Board the new Acorn Cafe, thus ending the existence of a R.O.A.R. forum.
The former R.O.A.R. Board itself ceased to exist on March 9th, 2001 when InsideTheWeb shut down altogether. On February 28th already, the Rangerphiles left the sinking ship InsideTheWeb and set up all-new forums, including a new Acorn Cafe, elsewhere in an event now known as The Great Migration.
Relative Success
Starting in 2005, Disney finally released the first two of the three CDRR seasons as DVD boxes in North America with one whole season each. While a much-anticipated general release of season 3 has yet to occur (which would contain "Good Times, Bat Times", one of the most popular episodes), this was seen as a success, and R.O.A.R. wasn't needed anymore.
Independently from R.O.A.R., there was a brief but intense campaign by a Belgian individual from 2006 to 2007 to have the DVD boxes released in Europe as well. Season 1 was released in Europe in 2007; whether or not this was thanks to the campaign is unknown. Season 2 took until 2012.