Old cartoons never die, they just wait for their original core demo to grow up, suffer the pangs of nostalgia, then, presto, before you know it some enterprising vidco has released all the episodes on home video. That's the phenomenon that's playing out at video retailers these days. As Gen-X and Gen-Y settle into early adulthood, they're seeking out the cartoons of their youth on home video, and in turn, breathing new life into properties once thought to be long dead.

Transformers, the good-bot versus bad-bot sci-fi cartoon from the mid `80s, is one such example. California-based Rhino Video, which began releasing eps of the show on video and DVD last summer, has been caught off guard by the demand for the series, based on the Hasbro toy line of the same name.

"It's exceeded our wildest expectations. It just kept selling, and selling, and selling," says Arny Schorr, senior VP of Rhino Video. All tolled, the 12 eps the company has released have sold through 500,000 to 800,000 units, according to Schorr. A DVD feature, Transformers: The Movie, reached gold sales status (100,000 units) in late November and also cracked Billboard magazine's list of top-15 DVD sales for the same month.

Rhino's success has not gone unnoticed. Hasbro recently awarded the company home entertainment rights to the series' offspring, Transformers: Beast Wars, which aired in syndication from `96 to '99, and Transformers: Beast Machines, which continues to show on Fox Kids Network, a run that will end this spring or summer. In August, Hasbro will relaunch the original Transformers property with the release of a new toy line and a show that will air three times a week on Fox Kids. Rhino plans to start releasing the entire catalog on VHS and DVD in Q3 or Q4 of this year. Schorr says the company has also talked with Hasbro about building toys based on the original series, which it would distribute as a possible on-pack premium with the videos. Fellow `80s alum G.I. Joe (based on another Hasbro toy line) also sold a respectable number of units for Rhino last year-in the 100,000 to 200,000 range, according to Schorr.

"If we didn't have Transformers as a yardstick, we would have been blown away by what we did on G.I. Joe," says Schorr.

While the retail performance of Rhino's old toons is impressive, they're not close to invading Lion King sales territory, and as a result, mass retailers have overlooked them. Most of its titles are sold at music and video specialty chains such as Tower Records, Blockbuster Video and Musicland. Schorr doesn't expect the Wal-Marts and Targets to come on-board either, even as it plans to increase its classic toons releases. Included on Rhino's sked for this year is the girl-skewing My Little Pony. Starting in June, Rhino will release two half-hour episodes of the show, and will follow up with an MLP feature later in the summer. Rhino has also picked up the catalogs to boys actioners Inhumanoids, Visionairies and Robotics, all Sunbow-produced titles that it will begin releasing as dual-ep tapes in Q2 or Q3. In August, the company plans to distribute anime cult fave Battle of the Planets. Rhino will release multiple ep tapes of BOTP, which U.S. prodco Sandy Frank Films adapted from the Japanime classic Gatchaman, about a squad of fighter pilots that protects the galaxy from ne'er-do-well alien invaders.

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