Hello.

Even though this response is years late I'm adding my own thoughts on Craig's Andersen's work and my own small involvement with him. I think it was Fred Ladd who suggested Craig contact me in relation to his search for "variant renditions" of KTWL I may have possessed in my own archive, since any such material would have been of natural interest to Craig. Fred already knew me via the broadcast industry and my own work to preserve the history of many of these old series and their renditions, so my contact with Craig was a natural fit.

During one of our conversations Craig learnt that I had supplied Fred Ladd with a high quality copy of KTWL #36 "The Monster of Petrified Valley", enabling Ladd and licensors "The Right Stuf Intl." to commercially release all 52 episodes onto VHS/DVD which had not been possible until then, (the English language version of #36 had been missing from both NBC Films print library and Mushi Pro's English language soundtracks). Imagine my surprise when I received from Craig a DVD copy of his pilot restoration that he had sent me as a gift upon learning of my very minor role assisting with KTWL's release. Thanks to Peter Mork's fortuitous audio recording and Craig's beautiful work restoring the "lost pilot" DVD, one tiny part of TV history has found itself a welcome home archived safely with my copy of the KTWL commercial set.

In our correspondence Craig was curious to hear that here in Australia back in 1967 ABC-TV had been supplied a list of KTWL episode titles different to their US counterparts, and those same titles had been used to identify the episodes on-air here as late as mid-1986! Sadly, this info never made it to Craig's site prior to his death, keen as he was at the time to complete his "Leo the Lion" DVD restoration project. His enthusiasm and vision for a completed LTL set was enormous, updating me on the progress of each episode and the issues he'd had with the source material, or having to fix the irritating audio issues that plagued the series. We both shared the same vision for a complete LTL set appreciating the amount of work needed to produce a set of such quality, (both of us working at the same time on different Japanese animation restoration projects in our own respective parts of the world).

Sadly, I missed the opportunity to obtain my own set of Craig's LTL restorations. My children were born just after the project was completed, and as is usually the case, growing families become busy families. I fell out of touch with Craig, and began to fall even further behind on my personal restoration projects. At some stage a few years ago, on a whim, I decided to touch base with him only to learn of his early death that I hadn't known about and which upset me greatly.

I have no idea of how many other people may have obtained copies of either the "lost pilot" or Leo project DVDs. If anyone has not been successful in locating a copy of "lost pilot" please feel free to contact me and I will be only too pleased to forward them a duplicate of the DVD Craig kindly sent me. If there is any way of locating a set of Craig's "Leo" restoration DVDs that I can acquire and add to my vintage anime archive for posterity, please let me know. Indeed I would be extremely interested to help revive Craig's projects and making them available again for everyone to enjoy as a tribute to his past efforts.

Finally, if anyone reading this would like to incorporate any of the info I provided to Craig all those years ago into this or their own "Kimba" site I'll be happy to assist with any additional info I can.

My apologies for my long and extremely overdue opportunity to thank Craig Andersen posthumously for his commitment to his passion. His level of devotion to his favourite program only made its history richer for those of us who knew him due to his willingness to share part of that commitment.

Thank you very much!

(Mr) Kelly Patrick Lannan