Beavis and Butt-head: The Mike Judge Collection - Precursors

Precursors

The first Beavis and Butt-head release on DVD was entitled Beavis and Butt-head: The Final Judgement. It was released in the USA on July 2, 1997. The running time was 43 minutes, and the program included:

1. Program Start
2. "No Laughing"
3. "Scared Straight"
4. "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Huh-Huh"
5. "Manners Suck"
6. "Liar! Liar!"
7. "The Great Cornholio"
8. "The Final Judgement"

A second DVD release was attempted in September 2002. Paramount announced the release of a two-disc DVD release set titled The History of Beavis and Butt-head, but the set was canceled shortly prior to release. Some copies of the set were mistakenly put on store shelves, only to be immediately recalled. The set promptly became a highly-prized item on eBay, selling there for prices up to US$300. The reason for the recall of the set was not immediately known, but it was later revealed that Mike Judge (who holds approval rights for video releases of Beavis and Butt-head) had the set recalled at his demand. Judge stated that the History set contained episodes he had previously rejected for home video release, and was prepared without his consent of knowledge, leading to the recall. In all, half of the 32 episodes on The History of Beavis and Butt-head weren't included on The Mike Judge Collections, including all but two episodes on the first disc.

The third DVD release of Beavis and Butt-head was two series of three-disc sets released by Time-Life in December 2002. The first set in the series contained the same program content of six of the Beavis and Butt-head VHS compilations previously released by Sony Music Video from 1994 to 1999: Butt-O-Ween, Beavis and Butt-head Do Christmas, Innocence Lost, Chicks 'n' Stuff, Feel Our Pain, and Troubled Youth, with two VHS compilations combined into a single disc. The set was advertised considerably on networks such as Comedy Central and on the Time-Life website.

Sometime after the first release, a second set of Time-Life Beavis and Butt-head DVDs was released. This set contained the programs of the remaining SMV VHS compilations: Work Sucks, There Goes the Neighborhood, The Final Judgement, Law-Abiding Citizens, and Hard Cash. Two of the discs in the set once again contained the program content of two of the VHS tapes, while the last disc (Hard Cash) contained only the content of the final VHS program, but did additionally include 4 of the music video segments from the original broadcasts with Beavis and Butt-head commentating. The second Time-Life set was not advertised, and subsequently became rarer.