Shout! Factory’s ‘Young Hercules’ Complete DVD Set Coming June, Cover Released!

Long before he captured your girlfriend’s/boyfriend’s heart in The Notebook and gave L.A.’s criminals joyrides in the critically-acclaimed neo-noir Drive, Ryan Gosling kicked ass on Saturday mornings as a young Hercules in, well, Young Hercules.

This morning, the wonderful purveyors of nostalgia known as Shout! Factory announced they will be releasing Young Hercules, the for-kids spin-off of the cult Hercules and Xena franchises that aired from 1998 to 1999 in a complete DVD set.

From the Shout! Factory official Tumblr:

Aired on the FOX Kids Network from September 1998 until May 1999 with a whopping fifty episodes of a sword-wielding Gosling, this cheesy delight of a fantasy series baffles me because Gosling’s rabid fanbase rarely talks about it. Ever.

But besides starring the number one choice of your significant other’s cheat list, the series was produced by The Evil Dead and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi (appropriate, since he was also behind Xena and Hercules) with special effects work done by the future Oscar-winner Weta Workshop. Alongside Gosling, the show also starred Dean O’Gorman (The Hobbit series) and Chris Conrad, who I think edits his own Wikipedia page.

Despite the outstanding lineage of the series, it often was second in the ratings to, believe it or not, Power Rangers.

Kudos to Shout! Factory for obtaining this series for release. I didn’t watch it too much as a kid, but I enjoyed it enough to might actually make a purchase. For my sister, at least. See this FOX Kids Magazine cover below? She tore it from my issue and hung it up on her locker when I was 8.

Young Hercules: The Complete Series will be released June 23, 2015 on DVD for $24.99 from Shout! Factory. You can preorder it here.