According to the typically authoritative and always reliable TV Shows on DVD Website, industry sources have revealed that the original Ultraman TV series will be coming to DVD in the U.S. sometime later this year, the fortieth anniversary of its American debut.  The 40-episode series (if you count the special) was the first Japanese giant-robo science fiction TV show to air in the U.S.  Ultraman creator Eiji Tsuburaya refashioned and refitted the classic Toho Studios monsters such as Baragon, and even Godzilla himself with the result that the Ultraman series became a sort of kaiju compendium, a sublimely surreal salute to the men-in-rubber-suits monsters from an era when the special effects may have been cheesy, but were nevertheless a lot more fun today's computer-generated hordes.

Stay tuned for more details on this DVD series, which will likely be overlooked by the mass market (already filled to the gills with TV on DVD releases), but which will have a strong nostalgic appeal to anyone who remembers the seriously wacked out delights of the original Ultraman series from the 1960s.