If you grew up in the mid ‘90s and had access to a TV, there’s almost no way that you haven’t heard of Dexter’s Laboratory. One of the most successful early Cartoon Network shows, it launched the career of famed Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Primal (Season 2 review here). It’s a quirky show about a boy genius and his sister and the bizarre escapades they manage to get up to in his secret laboratory. Episodes are divided into short segments much like Adventure Time, telling individual unrelated stories in a shared universe.
Dexter’s Laboratory built off of the directions that shows like Ren and Stimpy had created and took them in a new, more wholesome but offbeat direction. You never had any clue what might happen in a Dexter’s Laboratory episode, but the whole family could watch and the content was fun and irreverent. If you only wanted to sit down for a few minutes and watch, you could still get a complete story and if you wanted to zone out, Cartoon Network ran near constant reruns in its early days.
The appeal of Dexter’s Laboratory was wide. Kids watched it. Adults watched it. Teens watched it. The merchandising was pervasive, spawning clothes, toys, and even multiple video games. Running for four seasons (or perhaps six), Dexter’s Laboratory had a significant impact on cartoons in the ‘90s, spawning other similar approaches to animation and helping to start other careers, including that of Seth MacFarlane who worked on the show and others at Cartoon Network.
Tartakovsky ran Dexter’s Laboratory for the first two seasons and intended to end it with a movie, Dexter’s Ego Trip, which is included on this DVD release. However, demand for Dexter’s Laboratory was still high and a couple of years later, the show was back without Tartakovsky’s guiding hand, running for two more seasons. Changes in the cast and style mark this shift but the show is still just as entertaining in the last two seasons.
The DVD release of Dexter’s Laboratory: The Complete Series has been a long time coming but is finally here thanks to Cartoon Network and their parent company Warner Brothers. Previously, you could get a few episodes on VHS and Season 1 on DVD in North America but they’ve been long out of print. Last year the show came to streaming on both Prime and HBO Max, but this is the very first full release of the entire series on physical media. However, there are some changes that may surprise long-time fans.
Chief among these is the reclassification of episodes from 4 seasons to 6 seasons. This new (and apparently official) classification of the seasons splits the original Season 2 midway through to create Season 3, starting with Aye Aye Eyes / Dee Dee and the Man which used to be the midpoint of Season 2. Season 4 also features content from the former Season 2, starting with Dad is Disturbed / Framed / That’s Using Your Head which was originally Season 2, Episode 33. Season 5 was originally Season 3, starting with Streaky Clean and Season 6 starts with the original Season 4, Episode 2 – Sis-Tem Error. Whew.
That’s a lot of changes to the layout of the series but it’s also worth noting that the banned episode of Dexter’s Laboratory, Rude Removal, is not included in this collection, an unfortunate exclusion which likely has to do with the ratings for the set, as the episode contains content that does not match up with the rest of the series, even if it is relatively innocuous. The Dial M For Monkey: Barbequor portion of Season 1, Episode 4 is also missing from this release, understandably as it contained a character that made fun of the LGBTQ2 community. While these two episodes are included on Adult Swim and available for viewing, fans may be disappointed by their absence on this first series collection of Dexter’s Laboratory regardless of their content and how it has aged.
The packaging for Dexter’s Laboratory is standard for Warner Bros. collections, using the large clamshell style we’ve seen in releases like Supergirl the Complete Series (review here) and Babylon 5 The Complete Series (review here). The cardboard slipcase is a clever addition however, with die cut holes for Dexter’s eyes which conceal additional hidden artwork on the clamshell case. Inside is a loose, snapped together series of disc holders, each holding two discs per side. While the clips can come unseated with mishandling, the overall design of the cases is great because it allows for full removal from the clamshell and easy access to any of the discs. Each side of each disc holder holds two overlapping discs so you’ll have to remove the first disc each time to get to the one underneath it. The disc clips tend to hold the discs fairly tightly, especially if you haven’t used them much, so make sure you press in the middle of the disc to loosen them rather than pulling and flexing the discs. Keep in mind these are DVDs, not Blurays too, so they’ll scratch more easily if you’re not careful!
From a technical perspective, this isn’t the fanciest collection we’ve ever seen. With six or seven episodes per disc and no additional content, there are no extras or commentaries to look forward to. Only English and Spanish dialogue are provided for the entire set and only English subtitles, so foreign fans will be left out if they don’t read English or speak Spanish or English. The show is presented in a standard 4 x 3 aspect ratio as it was originally broadcast, but if your DVD or Bluray player has forced perspectives, you can widen the image to 16 x 9 and it still looks surprisingly good. For a 480i transfer, the show looks fairly crisp as well and while it would have been great to have a full HD release, this is near the peak of how good a DVD can look. Audio is limited to Dolby 2.0, so you’re not getting full surround sound here but the show still sounds good and after a couple of episodes, the shift in sound from modern audio encoding becomes less noticeable. Audiophiles might be a bit disappointed but for the average fan, this is a solid release for both audio and video.
It’s been a long wait for a comprehensive Dexter’s Laboratory collection and it’s finally here with Dexter’s Laboratory: The Complete Series. At $69.99 for the set, it isn’t the cheapest DVD set around but it’s fantastic to finally have the whole series available. Hopefully the sales for this set justify an HD remaster because this would be an amazing series to have on Bluray as well! There’s no question that fans of Dexter’s Laboratory are going to be thrilled to finally be able to add Dexter’s Laboratory: The Complete Series to their collections and it’s a set that’s well worth owning.
This review is based on a physical copy of Dexter’s Laboratory: The Complete Series provided by the publisher. It was viewed on a 55” Sony TV using a Sony Bluray player. Dexter’s Laboratory is also available to purchase digitally on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, and other services.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.
