Zara and Erika: The Dawson Gals

*Zara and Erika: The Dawson Gals* is a 2016 American animated series of shorts created by Kyle Rangel.

## History

The production of *Zara and Erika: The Dawson Gals* begins in 2015, when Rangel made his first cartoon featuring the titular Dawson girls; "Bath Buddies". During the time of 2016, Michael Mixer Mason took a break from making his own version of Zara and Erika. Rangel had created "Double Trouble" in an attempt to keep Mixer Mason's series going.

Without involvement of Mixer Mason, the series went through additional makeovers before finalizing it at the end of 2016. Shortly after just 49 shorts, the series stopped production. A new series of episodes was created in 2017 under the *Rangeltoons* billing.

## Chronological number of shorts so far

Main article: *List of Zara and Erika: The Dawson Gals shorts*

Only 49 episodes of the series were ever made. Despite the series being so obscure, 35 of which have been only made available.

## Zara and Erika as the topic of lost media

Starting the end of 2017, almost all the Zara and Erika shorts were deleted from YouTube, making them very hard to find. In 2018, Archiplex Entertainment confirmed that they still have all the original elements of the series, as well as re-released versions. Previously, 35 out of the 49 shorts were found, but 14 more remained lost. An 11-second excerpt of "Zara's Midas Touch" was thought to be lost entirely, but only 7 seconds of footage were only featured on a trailer for the Rangeltoons Volume 2 DVD. Though the full short was never released, an excerpt of "The Orphan" can be seen, albeit in a poorly censored form, in the Kyle and the Gang episode "Liz and the Orphan Kid" as a flashback.

As of July 14th, 2018, most of the cartoons including "Erika and the Hobo", "Zara's the Coy" and the original film elements of 8 cartoons were no longer available, as Mitchy Beanson's old files on his computer were gone. Luckily, the shorts "A Day at the Beach", "The Shrinkray", "Erika Gets Sick", "The Clones" and "Trapped" were all re-discovered on July 22nd, 2018 by Mitchy Beanson after having no luck whatsoever.

On August 15th, 2018, Kyle Rangel managed to have the original copies of two shorts which were re-discovered by Beanson; "Hooting You" and "Babysitting Gals".

About 10 days later, on August 25th, 2018, Rangel found more surviving shorts such as "Seven More Crazy Moments", "The Broken Leg", "Kidnapped!" and an original print of "Truth or Dare" that was once seen. They were then selected for preservation.

## Home media

### **Early days and VHS releases**

The first home video release of the series came in a form of VHS with "The Very Best of Zara and Erika". "More Zara and Erika Favorites" was also released a year later. Today, sales of the latter were discontinued since most shorts are hard to find. Three cartoons were eventually released on Rangeltoons DVD compilations as bonus features; "Double Trouble", "Garbage Day" and "Sweet Dreams". The series later received yet another VHS release entitled "The Best Zara and Erika Video Ever!" with 5 cartoons and *Babysitting Trouble*, though previously-released under *More Zara and Erika Favorites*. Interestingly enough, *The Very Best of Zara and Erika* was reprinted yet again on October 26th, 2018, this time by Beanson Video. In fact, *Zara and Erika: The Lost Episodes* have been released with 4 previously-seen episodes that have been discovered (see "Zara and Erika as the topic of lost media" for details). That same tape came bundled with the official VHS release of *Zara and Erika On Duty* in a limited time offer.

*Zara and Erika: The Classics* was released on November 2nd, 2018 with an expansion of 12 cartoons. In addition, *The Best Zara and Erika Video Ever!* had to be reprinted two days later with updated opening credits for each of the 6 cartoons and an improved title card for the video.

### **Bootleg copies**

The series was notorious for almost entering the public domain; as in the case of some cartoons such as "Zara, Erika and the Wonker" being printed on dupe prints and illegal tapes featuring a few of the pre-August 2017 Rangeltoons.

### **DVD releases and announcements**

In late 2017, the series was announced for release on DVD. Sadly, no word for the series' official home video release has been heard from, though a DVD edition of *The Very Best of Zara and Erika* was released on September 15th, 2018 by Beanson Video under the "Signature Collection" title. This release featured poor quality images, due to the cartoons being sourced from 16mm MBF Films prints.

On October 11th, 2018, Mitchy Beanson announced that a minority of cartoons from the series would be released built in on DVD box sets, likely because of copyright issues regarding the usage of Caillou characters seen in "Garbage Day".