So I’ve been working for a little while on color correction, as it seems the picture is in dire need of ‘de-purpling’ much akin to the 2004 Star Wars masters. I theorize that an original master was made to show once to Nick in '97, and once following the KCA’s to debut the show’s first episode.

After the remainder of Season One was completed, with a cemented introduction song, however, the original 35mm elements were remastered to remove the original intro and replace it with a bubble transition two years later, in order to fit with the remainder of the show. The master was definitely done incorrectly for whatever reason, as evident when comparing the contrast-corrected VHS recording of the original master, to the current master used for all subsequent reruns and home video releases.

I also believe in the recent HD releases, there was a considerable amount of noise removal to remove the film grain from the 35mm elements (35mm elements meaning most everything you see, save for a few post-animation alterations that bring a considerable amount of motion smearing and interlacing with them).

Using mainly correctly photographed animation cels from the first season as a reference, as well as the VHS Pilot, I’ve begun with a single LUT to serve as a correction across the entire episode. Then just to see how much detail I could pull out of the iTunes master, I upscaled three corrected frames to 4k and added grain to combat the waxy appearance, then downscaled them back to their original size:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/161283
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/161282
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/161281

I think this correction (especially the last one) may be a tad contrast-heavy, but all of this is still a work in progress.