My favorite theme is Tygra. I would love the whole thing in good quality http://www.thundercatslair.org/forums/images/smilies/jaw-dropping.gif
Hi Bengali,
I hope Warner Bros. will release it for everyone too! I’ve been dying to share this wonderful music with every Thundercats fan, but, as I said in my long write-up, I signed a contract saying I would NOT distribute what I got from Bernie with anyone because all those cues belong to Warner Bros. :(! I’ve been dreaming of the day that could happen by Warner’s own doing.
Sonia
Never the less, this is and impressive list. One that I would buy in an instant if it became available!
My favourite tracks are the ‘Mutant’ and the Mumm-Ra ones. Just something delightfully evil about them 8) I’ve signed your petition and wish you luck. I really hope it works out.
Hi Nick,
Many thanks for signing ;)! I greatly appreciate it! My favorite ‘evil’ track is for the Lunatacs, but Bernie didn’t have that :(!
Sonia
I wonder, if Bernie is the composer and wrote the music, so it is his music, why cant he put it online, or even create a myspace page and put them there?:?
Just as he had Sonia sign a contract, who’s to say he couldn’t do the same with a number of other people? Its not like if this stuff leaked out I or anyone could make millions of $$$ selling them on the black market.:roll:
Unfortunately I am a realist, and I just don’t think WB is gonna put into production something that is not going to make them much money. (I truly hope I am wrong) It would be a shame if these wonderful pieces of music which we, the hardcore Tcats fan, would truly enjoy, never got to see the light of day due to some media conglomerate and their legalities.
Just my .02 cents.
Hi Alex,
According to Bernie, even though he composed everything, he doesn’t own the distribution rights. Those belong to Warner Bros.. I’m sure Warner would do something if there were a huge profitable black market for Bernie’s tracks though, but then, Bernie would not benefit from any of that. Also, I’m not sure how web savvy Bernie is. I think he only uses the net for e-mail.
Yeah, I know just how bleak the outlook is, but I’m still trying anyway ;(.
Sonia 
And you deserve much merits for trying indeed. (You have my support)
I just hate how these legal issues keep us, the fans, from being able to enjoy something special like the soundtrack behind one of our most beloved shows.
Chris here…
Of course, something else we’re not considering/factoring in is that, with the forthcoming TCats movie, WB may want to revisit some of the soundtrack (if only the original theme) for that project. So, it may be that little tiny bits and pieces of the original score would make it to a ThunderCats movie soundtrack album! 
It sucks though that even though Bernard has this material handy, he’s unable to share it with folks who would love to hear it! 
Take care…
It very much depends on how the film is presented - I have a feeling they’re going to go in a ‘new’ direction with new voice actors etc. Since it’s now back to CGI and the script is set at the beginning, I don’t think they’re going to use the old voice actors (even though alot of them are still around). If that’s the case, they won’t use the same music either. What a shame.. some of that music is brilliant. But I guess there has to be a large demand for it.
While I can understand WB going with a whole new sound track for the new movie (makes sense), I just can’t fathom Lion-o speaking, and not hearing that its Larry as the voice actor.
Still, I am excited about the new movie, and keeping my fingers crossed for new action figures.
Hi Nick,
That was one of the disappoints I had for this year’s Transformers movie: The original theme song wasn’t used whatsoever in the main soundtrack. That surprised me a lot considering Transformers fans have been graciously been allowed access to music tracks from the original Transformers animated movie via Botcon exclusive releases (which I really wish could be done with Thundercats’ music too). There’s supposedly something that resembles the original theme music on the CD soundtrack, but it isn’t heard in the movie at all.
Sonia
There was two others used around the time of Thundercats:HO! - one was the theme used when Mumm-Ra went to open the Talisman and Jaga screamed out “No, Mumm-Ra! You musn’t open the talisman!” and Mumm-Ra responded in a long rant about not telling him what to do. It heightened the tension of what exactly would happen. Wonderful use of music.
Another one is a scary piece used when the aftermath is scene and Mumm-Ra is seen, weak, rising from beneath a rock. It was actually legitimately frightning like “Good grief! He’s alive?!”
I’d love to have those two music pieces just to take me back to my childhood.
Hi guys,
I just wanted to bump up my lowly petition again. Is there any way I can get this stickied/pinned here as well, please? The Larry Kenney petition sort of ‘grew’ from this petition if you check the backlog.
Sonia
Chris here…
Hey Sonia, first of all, thanks for bringing this back to everybody’s attention. Speaking as a fan, I definitely think this, like the Larry Kenney petition, is a worthwhile cause, so I hope that folks will support it!
I agree that this thread appearing sparked a lot of the flame for setting up the Larry petition, although in fairness I do have to say that my recollection is that the first suggestion of setting up a petition about Larry as Lion-O occured in a post from Tygra-Wan, dated two days before this thread was started! At the risk of sounding like I’m passing the buck, my best suggestion if you want this thread “stickied” would be that you send a private message to my good friend and colleague MannysCollectibles - even though I’m one of the Mods for this Board, he’s kind-of like the “top man” when it comes to stuff pertaining to the forums here and so on this I’ll defer to his judgement.
Like I say, good luck with the petition, I’d love to see the TCats Soundtrack officially released!
Take care…
Thanks for letting us know…i think its more than fair to give it more exposure
Chris here…
thumbs up I heartily endorse this decision - many thanks, MannyC!
Take care…
Hi Manny,
THANK YOU :cheetaraveryhappy:!
Sonia
slai, if you are still in contact with Bernie, would you be able to point him in the direction of my ThunderCats medley? I would be honoured to hear what the man himself has to say about my effort.
I see that the petition link is currently down. Purrsia, any idea how many total signatures the petition received?
Even though the petition was down, I was keen on reading that backstory; now after some searching I found the page where Sonia explained her long backstory. I have pasted the story below, just in case the original page gets lost in the future.
I guess many of you have already read it last year. For those who haven’t, well it’s a great read about Sonia’s efforts to get the Thundercats music out of the depths of WB archives. Contacting Rhino Records (part of AOL-Time Warner), the webmaster of Rankin/Bass website, presenting the idea to Wildstorm division president Jim Lee via one of the comic artists, lending the Bernard tapes to a friend who knew the VP at DC Comics, getting in contact with the guy who once interviewed Bernard, who also later got in touch with Warner archives, which lead to the offer they proposed for $14,000 just to recover the tracks, not for distribution but only for Bernard’s personal collection since he didn’t have the complete collection.
Of course it didn’t end there, after posting her story on the soundtrackcollector site, many users there suggested various record labels (Intrada, Perseverance), some of which Sonia had already approached and they weren’t interested. Many fans would have given up after couple of attempts, but Sonia kept going and her persistence is commendable. Although now the petition won’t really bring immediate results, fans still need to keep this in the spotlight. Along with Purssia’s site and Eyeofthundera.net, TLC should be able to get WB or a record company’s attention.
I have been a huge fan of Thundercats since my childhood days in the late 80s and the show’s music still resonates with me, even today when I listen to some of those cues, I get goosebumps :). Bernard Hoffer’s remarkable music deserves a worthy release.
- Vivek Bhat
http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/forum/displayquestion.php?topicid=10190
(continue to read the comments section, to catch up with Sonia’s progress with the various record labels)
Dear fellow soundtrack fans,
I’m getting desperate, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to post this here for some help. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions in how one can get an official soundtrack released? There’s a LONG backstory that goes with this, so you may want to skip reading the following.
This all started back in 1998 when Cartoon Network was showing re-runs of Thundercats. The one thing I loved most about the show was the background music, composed by Bernard Hoffer. Each Thundercat, vehicle, bad guy, etc. had his or her own special theme song associated with his or her appearance on the screen. The themes were short, but catchy and addictive. I always suspected there was more to each theme, but the series never showcased more than maybe a 30 second snippet of each. There was ONE episode that hinted that each theme was longer than what we were used to hearing. It was the episode where each Thundercat had a portable camera to showcase each of their talents. Instead of looping the usual 30 second snippet, we got to hear more of each theme music Bernie had composed. I’ve been in love with that music since I first heard it when the show was new back in the 80s.
One day in 1998 or 1999, on a whim, I try to see if I can located Bernie himself via the net. I found an address and wrote to him a typical fan letter about his music and asked if he had copies of the complete music tracks which I could obtain from him. A few months later, I get a reply from Bernie himself saying he would be more than happy to make a copy of what he had for me after he was done touring and producing his latest CD. 2-3 years later, he finally found the cues he had available and gave me a copy. I was pretty ecstatic to get what the tapes he sent me. Each complete music theme brought tears to my eyes. Yeah, I know it sounds sappy, but I had been waiting for 2 decades to hear them in their complete form ;b.
Anyway, I wanted to share this with every Thundercat fan in the world, legally, licensed, and profitable for Bernie X)! Before Bernie gave me the copies though, I signed an agreement that stated I would NOT share or distribute copies of what he gave me since he was NOT the owner of the music which belonged to AOL/Time Warner. I started by contacting via e-mail Rhino Records, one of Warner’s record divisions, to see if they would be interested in producing a CD soundtrack, and I got the usual, “Thanks for your suggestion. We’ll look into it,” replies. I tried contacting the webmaster of the official Rankin/Bass website, Rick Goldschmidt, who is also the author of The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass book. I had bought a few Rankin/Bass soundtrack CDs from him on eBay, so I asked if he could help. Rick told me that he was in fact working with Rhino Records in trying to re-issue some Rankin/Bass soundtracks, so he said he would try to pass along the Thundercats soundtrack idea to the people he was working with. I even asked my sound engineer friend, who had worked with Bernie on several projects, for help via Rhino Records.
Around this time as well, DC Comics’ Wildstorm division was working on the new Thundercats comic book miniseries due for release soon. I found an artist that worked on some preliminary art for the comic book and e-mailed him with this very long story, asking if he would pass along the idea for a soundtrack to Wildstorm division president, Jim Lee, hoping he might have some influence and that it would also help with sales of the comic book. He thought it was great idea and said he would pass along the idea to Lee.
Of course, NOTHING came from any of this --;. Desperate, I asked a friend over at Source Comic Books and Games for help as well. Supposedly, he knows a VP over at DC Comics, so I lent him my tapes to play for the VP. Unfortunately, DC was in a financial crisis at the moment due to AOHELL, so new projects would be out of the question for awhile. After that fiasco was over, my friend from Source and the DC Comics VP went to look up the all important licensing rights for Thundercats on the AOL/Time Warner computers. According to the records, the Thundercats license is actually divided up among several owners including AOL/Time Warner (Please note this was before the Thundercats DVD sets were released!). DC Comics Wildstorm could NOT obtain the rights to publish a Thundercats comic book through their own PARENT COMPANY o-O! Wildstorm had to go through 4Kids Entertainment, who had some partial rights to the property, for the permission to even create the comic miniseries! Needless to say, everything just looked hopeless at this point.
Fast forward 1 year, Warner Bros. announces they plan on releasing the entire Thundercats series to DVD 8}! My hopes were sparked again for an official soundtrack! I passed along the news to Bernie and started going through all my old channels again to see if I could get the idea through to anyone with power in the AOL/Time Warner empire. My channels were still mostly dead-ended though, including my friend at Source who had tried other venues in the hope of getting someone interested in doing such a thing.
In the meantime, another Thundercat fan got me in touch with another fan in the UK who also LOVED Bernie’s music. I told him of my efforts, and he told me of his. Apparently he has been trying to do the same thing from the UK as I was o-O, except he was having a little more success than me in some areas. He did an interview with Bernie for his website, which I have no idea if he has put up or not. He also has an all important CONTACT within Warner’s archive division. He ASKED Warner archives whether or not it would be possible to obtain Bernie’s music cues for Thundercats, and possibly his other Rankin/Bass works, for Bernie’s sake since Bernie himself does not have a complete copy of what he had composed. Warner archives told him that, sadly, all the music cues Bernie had composed are scattered throughout several RANDOM unlabeled tapes in the archives O~O! Since Bernie was the composer though, they’re willing to recover his music cues for a mere $14,000.00. This was 2-3 years ago, so the price may have gone up since then. The last I heard from my UK counterpart was that he was trying to figure out a way to raise that amount to pay for the recovery of Bernie’s music. I passed this along to my Source friend who seemed very interested in the prospect that it would ‘only’ cost $14,000.00 to recover Bernie’s music. He has tried some other outlets for me with no results. Moreover, as I said before, my Source friend is a tough guy to pin down to discuss updates --;.
Anyway, still, I was excited when the part 1 of the first season DVD set hit the shelves. I WAS hoping Warner Bros. would actually do some cool extras for the DVD sets, like MAYBE compiling a soundtrack of themes or anything. That would be close if not exactly what I had been dreaming of these past couple of decades or so. Unfortunately, the geniuses who produced the DVD thought it would be cooler to have interviews with super Thundercat fans like Wil Wheaton saying just how sexy Cheetara looks XP! Okay, I thought maybe Warner would do better for the second DVD set release since Bernie told me he was flown to CA for an INTERVIEW extra on the second set 8D! Things were looking up again until I actually saw what they did with Bernie’s interview. In fact, ALL the extras on each DVD set were lackluster to say the least.
The entire series has finished its run on DVD as of last last year if I remember correctly. The Wildstorm comic book series finished off its run around the time the first DVD set came out. The window when Warner could have profited the most from such an idea is long gone and over.
I’ve run out of ideas and venues to try, so I asked the editor of Previews, the company that distributes comic book related merchandise for comic book stores, for some advice. He suggested an online website or petition about this, but I doubt that would work plus I have no means of setting such a thing up anyway. He did offer to feature it in Previews if I ever did set one up though ;b.
I was wondering if anyone has anymore ideas for this? I’ve been quietly passionate about this project, so ANY help or ideas would be greatly appreciated 8(! Heck, if anyone actually READS the above and comments, I would be thrilled!
Sincerely,
Sonia Lai
slai, July 17, 2007; 11:16 AM