In today's crowded marketplace, studios looking to find traction for their latest releases are faced with increasingly stiff competition. Just consider the dilemma faced by Shout! Factory as they try to figure out the best opportunity to get episodes of 'Small Wonder' into the hands of the fans who have been waiting decades for the series to be released on DVD. Sure, the story of a little girl who is actually a robot continues to resonate today. But how do you keep it from being overshadowed by bigger, flashier releases like, say, the complete works of 'Punky Brewster?'

Well, luckily for Shout! Factory, it has decided to release 'Small Wonder: The Complete First Season' this week, where there is surprisingly little competition. Perhaps studios assume everyone will be busy watching the Olympics, but whatever the reason, 'Small Wonder' is the beneficiary of a relatively weak field of releases. Score one for the good guys.

Do you remember the day you first watched an entire episode of Small Wonder? Do you have friends who didn't get to experience the pain and hell you did on that day? Why should you be the only one who has to suffer? Now you can help burn a "day of pain" in their own brain.

The first full season of Small Wonder, the Troll 2 of 80's sitcoms, is coming to DVD this February. This television crapgasm is about an electronics expert father who tries to build a daughter for his family, but ends up creating the creepiest child star of all time. The clip below should explain the show for you, both the plot and the blindness it spread through televisions across America.

It goes without saying that television from the 80's - as a decade - tends to stand on its own as having provided some of the oddest junk we may ever see: the glorification of cat-fights (see: Dynasty), the existence of Twin Peaks, and an alien as the star of his own sitcom (see: Tony Danza Alf).

Of course, classically cheesy schmaltz like Dancing With The Stars and American Idol continues to thrive, keeping viewers fastened to their couches amid every note sung or dance move executed by someone in a fedora or boa, respectively.

I spent about 15 minutes last night reading a ridiculously detailed summary of the 8(!?) separate timelines that spring into and out of existence throughout the course of the three Back To The Future movies. It just so happened that during my study of "timeline 1985(a)" that my wife happened into my office to ask me what I was up to. When I told her, she sorta sadly shook her head and left muttering something about me "having no life."

Okay, I admit, trolling Wikipedia for the latest breakdown of a 19-year-old movie franchise ain't exactly what Henry David Thoreau meant when he spoke about "sucking the marrow out of life", but there's at least one person in the world who has even less of a life than I do: the guy who wrote the friggin' article in the first place.

And you know what? Thank God for that guy...