Info: 'Iznogoud' (1995 animated series) English audio preservation (ongoing)

Okay, this is a bit of a stretch since Americans almost certainly won’t have heard of this character at all, but people in the rest of the world (particularly Europe) may have…

Iznogoud is a character created by French comic strip writer René Goscinny (he wrote the Asterix comics!) along with artist Jean Tabary. The character himself is a wicked Grand Vizier anti-hero trying to depose the good Caliph so he can become Caliph himself, but every cunning plan he hatches backfires on him - think Wile E. Coyote set in Arabian Nights-style magical Baghdad. His stories were chronicled in strip form in the pages of French magazines in the 60s and 70s, and then were later released in separate comic book albums. There are about 30 of these albums currently, but Goscinny only contributed to about 14 of those before he died in 1977, and Tabary himself died in 2011 leaving his children to carry on the work after album 28.

Anyway, in 1995 Saban released an animated series based on many of the early stories, 52 13-minute episodes in total. The series was shown in a number of different countries and had unique language tracks for many of them. However, release on video has been very spotty at best. A few countries (Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Spain) have had a number of episodes released on VHS and/or DVD, but no country has had a complete run released apart from France, who only got the full series on a limited edition VHS box set. The series ran in English on the BBC, but apart from 3 DVDs containing a total of 12 episodes, no others have been officially released. At some point quite a lot of the episodes were available with English audio (but Croation subtitles) from a torrent that has long ago vanished.

This thread is an attempt to explore the preservation of the Iznogoud series, particularly the English audio version. The goal is to try and preserve all 52 episodes in English.

My website containing info on everything Iznogoud can be found here.

Here is a listing of all 52 English-language Iznogoud episodes, which are usually shown in pairs:

1. The Hideaway Bed
2. Hats Off!
3. The Magic Catalogue
4. Hopping Back To The Future
5. Iznogoud’s Unlucky Star
6. Iznogoud’s Student
7. Big Eyes
8. The Time Machine
9. Croaking the Night Away
10. One For The Road
11. State Visit
12. The Mysterious Poster Hanger
13. The Pic-Nic
14. The Sultan’s Double
15. The Western Potion
16. The Genie
17. Goldfingers
18. Incognito
19. It’s a Dog’s Tune
20. A Wonderful Machine
21. The Curse of the Diamond
22. Close Encounters of an Odd Kind
23. The Challenge
24. Slip Sliding in the Sultanate
25. The Crazy Cruise
26. Watch Out! There’s a Fly About
27. Giant’s Island
28. Tall Tales
29. Elections in the Sultanate
30. The Wax Museum
31. The Genie of the Mirror
32. The Memory Potion
33. Sweet Dreams
34. A Fairy Tale
35. Musical Chairs
36. The Magic Puzzle
37. In The Summertime
38. The Sultan’s Sceptre
39. The Sheik’s Potion
40. Nut’s Day
41. The Sultan’s Portrait
42. The Mysterious Ointment
43. Iznogoud’s Nest Egg
44. The Road to Nowhere
45. The Invisible Thread
46. The Magic Carpet
47. Magic Memories
48. Souvenir’s Island
49. The Maze
50. Mean Genie
51. The Tiger Hunt
52. A Hairy Statuette

I was pretty sure when I posted this that there would be few, if any, who knew about the character Iznogoud…and few to none who knew anything about the animated series. Oh well, it was worth a shot!

–SKot

My extent of knowledge was that I’d heard of Iznogoud in passing, that’s all. 😦

SkinnyV said:

I do know Iznogoud, I’m pretty sure it used to play on Canadian-French tv when I was a kid. Didn’t really comment since I didn’t really sense any question in your original post.

If this is true, what I wouldn’t give to find someone who managed to record all the episodes there. Although I’m not sure whether they’d have English audio or French - most likely French, I’m guessing.

–SKot

KeatontheKoopaTroopa said:

Does Dargaud or Disney own currently own the rights to the show?

That, I don’t know. It was always Saban I think who owned the rights to the cartoon originally, and then Jetix I believe had it or licensed it. Where it sits now is anybody’s guess.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if a channel like Disney+ was actively showing them again?

–SKot