Shout! Factory and 4Kids Entertainment have announced an agreement to bring the Dinosaur King anime series to DVD.  The multi-year deal makes Shout! Factory the exclusive U.S. home entertainment distributor for the 49-episode series produced by Sunrise (and localized by 4Kids) that combines traditional anime style animation with CG animated dinosaurs. 

The Dinosaur King anime, which is based on an arcade and collectible card game hybrid created in Japan by Sega, has been getting solid ratings for 4Kids on its Saturday morning animation block and was recently renewed for a second season in Japan (see “Second Dinosaur King Season”).

The Dinosaur King series is targeted at the 6-11 year-old demographic and features a trio of young heroes, Max, Rex and Zoe, who are known as the “D-Team,” and who race around the world to uncover secrets that bring dinosaurs back to life.  The show features over 100 different dinosaurs.

Shout! Factory will release the first five-episode Dinosaur King DVD, Dinosaur King: The Adventure Begins ($14.99) on September 23rd.  Shout! Factory, which was formed by a group of former Rhino Records executives in 2001, has also recently released the underrated French/Japanese co-production Oban Star Racers anime TV series (which currently airs on Toon Disney) in two reasonably-priced DVD sets as well as the South Korean-produced Pucca cartoons (see “Pucca DVDs in March”).