Tartakovsky's 'Dexter's Laboratory' Animation Coming to DVD

In the dark recesses of one pre-adolescent genius' bedroom rests a secret lab. Deeper yet into this secret lab, behind countless glowing test tubes and around the corner from a stall of service robots, sits a boy in a lab coat. He is Dexter. In Dexter's world, science is the answer for everything. Science, in the mid-1990s animated TV series Dexter's Laboratory, opened the door to the unattainable. Then again, the comical exploits of playing dodgeball in gym class, defending against strange and evil creatures called "cooties," and fighting off the common onslaught of childhood boredom wouldn't be much fun without a gigantic secret lab hidden behind the bookcase, now would it?

Dexter's Laboratory was a compact animated comedy that usually didn't take place too far outside of the walls of one child's secret lab. Dexter is only halfway interested in solving real scientific dilemmas -- such as curing the common cold, or generating a multidimensional vortex -- if only because his hilarious pettiness prevents him from seeing things through to the end. Dexter's flower-child sister, Dee Dee, is his constant tormentor.

Meanwhile, because Dexter hides his genius intellect from his parents, the boy is discreet (or at least, he tries to be). This is easier said than done when a multi-million dollar bill from NASA shows up, or when someone's memory needs erasing. Dexter's Laboratory aired on Cartoon Network with new episodes from the mid 1990s through 2003.

Warner Home Video will release the first thirteen episodes of Dexter's Laboratory onto DVD beginning October 12th ($24.98).

The animated series relies largely on Dexter's imaginative uses and finagling of science, devising, in one way or another, how to get the better of anyone else in the world who doesn't happen to be a genius. Dexter will build a robotic exoskeleton to win at dodgeball, invent his own superhero action figure to get into a neighborhood club, give his mother crime fighting superpowers, and contrive plot after plot to keep his technology safe.... if not from his meddling sister Dee Dee, then from his neighbor and forever-fiend, a bulbous-headed boy named Mandark.

The Cartoon Network original animated series will enter home video as a two-disc DVD Set with twenty-plus a- and b-part episodes, in addition to several of the bumper shorts derived from the Dial M for Monkey and Justice Friends fictional cartoon spoofs.

The animated series Dexter's Laboratory benefits from the clever injection of impractical sci-fi into the everyday life of a kid with little else to do than to tinker with technology. The CN original was the creation of animation director Genndy Tartakovsky (Sym-Bionic Titan).

Previous CN Original Animation News:
"CN Animation Courage the Cowardly Dog on DVD" at AnimationInsider.net (07/2010)
"CN Animation Johnny Bravo on DVD" at AnimationInsider.net (06/2010)