Bob’s Burgers Creator Is Serious About Getting Better DVD Releases For The Series

Just in case “Emmy winning show” wasn’t working well enough.

Today, Bob’s Burgers DVD releases are typically manufactured-on-demand via Amazon but show creator Loren Bouchard is serious about changing that. That’s right, special features, full seasons of episodes, THE WORKS. Loren wants it all. But he also wants a pitch to give to his higher-ups to convince them that, in an era of streaming, why DVDs make sense. Similarly, The Simpsons JUST resumed releasing DVDs with last year’s release of S18, this after years of no more DVDs coming. But, if that release showed anything, it showed just how killer a home release could really be.

Nowhere else are you going to get episode commentaries or deleted scenes and animatics or in the case of the Bob’s Burgers Season One DVD, the freaking alternate episode pilot! Wanna see Dan Mintz’s character before he was “Tina”? DVD. Wanna get behind-the-scenes featurettes about some of the special episodes? DVD all day long. Today, streaming doesn’t do this well, and even when it’s done well, that type of stuff collects digital dust after a while and becomes so far back in the archives of saying Youtube, it’s almost an eyesore. The point WE made when Loren was tweeting about the DVD future of Bob’s Burgers, archives always work best on tangible media. Free from “streaming rights”(fans are already pissed about the mass exodus of FOX animation from Netflix), DVDs are a dream come true for the die-hard fans and completionists.

We also have to remember that in the United States of America 30% of the country’s population is devoid of a high-bandwidth internet or in some cases, any internet at all. Essentially, FOX (or Disney) could be leaving dollars on the table. If the 20th Century FOX buy via Disney goes through, the company that Walt Disney built knows the value of physical media. Today, all of Disney’s home releases get a lot of marketing when they release, especially as it pertains to the “major” Disney brands like Marvel and Star Wars.

The biggest reason why FOX should start producing Bob’s Burgers DVDs? 20th Century FOX knows that the way to make money in animation is merchandise. And for the most part,  Bob’s Burgers has a bunch of merch. T-shirts, Funko toys, all sorts of swag. More often than not, when a network screws up making money on an animated series, it’s because they don’t see the “big picture” like FOX does as it pertains to selling merchandise, see: Comedy Central. Chances are if a fan of Bob’s Burgers is going out of their way for Bob’s Burgers keychains, there is a very good chance that same fan is gonna want to get a DVD. With FOX announcing recently that they want to have fewer ads on all of their networks, DVDs could help the company make dollars that it’s not making elsewhere.

Case closed..get on it FOX!