Lone Ranger Makes DVD Comeback
The Lone Ranger is riding again, blazing a new trail with Tonto to prod interest in the release of a 75th anniversary DVD collection of the classic western television series this week.
The first two seasons of the show, comprising 78 episodes that aired in 1949 and 1950, are now available in a collector’s edition box set for $119.93 from Entertainment Rights.
Digital video of some of those early episodes starring Clayton Moore as the Masked Man and Jay Silverheels as the trusty Tonto will appear on several online video sites later this year, in time to excite holiday shopping interest in the DVDs.
Actors reprising the roles of the Lone Ranger and Tonto showed up at the Texas State Fair earlier this year, just in time to save a gold shipment at a historic railroad site and promote the DVD set. The crime-fighting duo will duplicate that feat at locations in Colorado and North Carolina next year.
Entertainment Rights also has been advertising the advent of the Masked Man’s return through print ads in magazines, including the Pro Rodeo Sports News, American Cowboy, True West, Wild West and Cowboys and Indians.
In partnership with Entertainment Rights, Dynamic Forces has released The Lone Ranger #14 comic book with an oversize copy of the cover art, available through Amazon.com and Borders. A reprint of a Lone Ranger graphic novel, commemorative trading cards, resin statues, lithographs and other memorabilia are set for release next year.
“The DNA of the brand still resonates today,” said Nicole Blake, Entertainment Rights senior vice president of marketing. “The superheroes of comics have all come back as complex characters. So it seems like it’s time for the Lone Ranger to come back.”
The brand will probably resonate more loudly with the eventual release of a Lone Ranger feature film currently being developed by Walt Disney Pictures with Johnny Depp to play Tonto.
The DVD audience target includes baby boomers who watched the series on TV and retro TV fans, according to Blake, who figures the box set will be popular with holiday gift givers.
Nearly 2,000 minutes of the early series are in the new box set. And there’s plenty of additional material to work with if it’s a hit: 220 episodes of “The Lone Ranger” exist, going back to its debut on ABC-TV in 1946.
The TV series was preceded by 3,000 radio shows that started airing in 1933 on WXYZ in Detroit. The first of 18 novels followed in 1936. King Features Syndicates started a newspaper comic strip two years later.
Two feature films with Moore and Silverheels were also produced in the late ‘50s. A third film, “The Legend of the Lone Ranger” was released in 1981.
Dell Comics printed the first comic book in 1948. An animated “Lone Ranger” series ran on CBS for two years, starting in 1966. Ten years later, a short-form animated series had a brief run on USA Network.
