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Surprisingly, no one seems to have started a thread on this topic that I can see, so here we go ...
Say what you will about DuckTales, but there's no doubt it represented a milestone in Duck history. A lot of eventual Barks fans only learned about his work through this series. There is absolutely no way to reconcile the DuckTales universe with Barks' ... Boom's failed attempt to do that during their recent short-lived comic series notwithstanding. Fans who admired Barks' works before DuckTales came out ... myself included ... would be frustrated by the incompatibilities. No Donald, dissimilar Beagle Boys, Magica's accent, Gyro's redesign, and Webby ... can't help but gripe about how wonderful it would be if they just stuck to Barks' script.
But I've learned the best way to appreciate the series ... consider it an alternate universe. In the DuckTales world, Donald and Scrooge never really went on adventures together with the boys, and Scrooge hardly knew them when he took over their care; his distaste for that responsibility is evident in the introductory episode. That doesn't gel with Scrooge's respect for the nephews in Barks' world. And the events of Barks-inspired stories like "Back to the Klondike" and "Land Beneath the Ground" happened differently in the Barks universe and the Ducktales one. St. Canard, Darkwing Duck and Launchpad exist in Ducktales-land, but not Barks-land. Barks' Donald never serves in the navy, but Ducktales Donald does. He then returns to Duckburg and reclaims the boys as teenagers ... something we never see in Barks' universe. In other words, seeing DuckTales-Darkwing-Quack Pack as one continuity and Barks (and if you're so inclined, Rosa) as a separate, distinct continuity makes it easier to actually enjoy DuckTales. It's like "Flintstone Kids" rewriting the history of the Flintstones, or what Archie attempted to do with "The New Archies". Or the 1980s He-Man vs. the 2002 He-Man. These "retcons" tend to die out while the original universe endures ... I can't think of a single example where the rewritten universe erased the original. DuckTales is essentially of historic interest now, and Barks' version of events remain the canon.

Quote from user: Baar Baar JinxSurprisingly, no one seems to have started a thread on this topic that I can see, so here we go ...
Some of us DT "sourdoughs" are actually doing full-blown retrospectives of the series this Fall. I will be starting one myself soon, at my blog site.

Quote from user: Baar Baar JinxI've learned the best way to appreciate the series ... consider it an alternate universe. In the DuckTales world, Donald and Scrooge never really went on adventures together with the boys, and Scrooge hardly knew them when he took over their care; his distaste for that responsibility is evident in the introductory episode. That doesn't gel with Scrooge's respect for the nephews in Barks' world. And the events of Barks-inspired stories like "Back to the Klondike" and "Land Beneath the Ground" happened differently in the Barks universe and the Ducktales one. St. Canard, Darkwing Duck and Launchpad exist in Ducktales-land, but not Barks-land. Barks' Donald never serves in the navy, but Ducktales Donald does. He then returns to Duckburg and reclaims the boys as teenagers ... something we never see in Barks' universe. In other words, seeing DuckTales-Darkwing-Quack Pack as one continuity and Barks (and if you're so inclined, Rosa) as a separate, distinct continuity makes it easier to actually enjoy DuckTales. It's like "Flintstone Kids" rewriting the history of the Flintstones, or what Archie attempted to do with "The New Archies". Or the 1980s He-Man vs. the 2002 He-Man. These "retcons" tend to die out while the original universe endures ... I can't think of a single example where the rewritten universe erased the original. DuckTales is essentially of historic interest now, and Barks' version of events remain the canon.
As someone who had just started getting into Barks/Disney comics when the DT wave hit, I can appreciate the "alternate universe" argument. It was obvious from "ep one" that DT had a different take on Barks' world. But, considered as an entity in a completely different medium, was DT a successful take on Barks? Certainly, yes. I can hold both versions of the Duck universe in my mind and enjoy both with no difficulties, just as I can appreciate completely different comics versions of the classic Barks world (Italian, Brazilian, you name it).

Your analogies to "Flintstones" vs. "Flintstone Kids" (and all the other post-"Flintstones" series that PRECEDED "Flintstone Kids," all of which tweaked the world of Bedrock in their own way) and the two "He-Man" series are interesting, but you're comparing apples to oranges when you do that. With DT, we saw a transformation of a comics franchise to an animated franchise. Different versions of a single animated franchise aren't the same thing. Given the limitations of the TV-ep format and the difference in potential audience, what DT did well, it did VERY well.

Quote from user: MatildaIsn't it Rosa's conceit that DuckTales is a TV show and comic book franchise in Duckburg that is "inspired by" the true stories of McDuck's life? (But inaccurate in lots of ways, as such things are.) So, Scrooge has a DuckTales comic in the bathroom, discovered by a Beagle in "The Beagle Boys vs. The Money Bin." Personally, I really like that way of thinking about it. DuckTales is the fiction produced in a fictional world!
If that's the case, then there seems to have been at least some osmosis between the DT world and the Rosa world. (Cf. "On Stolen Time.")

If you thought that Duck Tales had no staying power then why did they make 100 episodes? Not to mention two spinoffs and a feature film? Despite the fact that it was different from the Uncle Scrooge comics Duck Tales was quite popular when it was on the air. In fact if it wasn't for Duck Tales I never would started reading Disney Comics to begin with. It's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since Duck Tales first aired.

Attempts at unifying the Barks and DuckTales universes also can be found in the "Down, But Not Out" chapter of "Scrooge's Quest" in Scrooge's "fever dream" sequence, but the real problem is that they don't fit together well, much like BOOM's attempts to link the DuckTales and Darkwing Duck universes. None of these were written with a strict continuity in mind.
Did DuckTales have a long term effect on the Duck universe? That's hard to say. But I think DuckTales certainly helped to bring Uncle Scrooge to a larger audience than just comics fans.

Quote from user: Baar Baar JinxQuote from user: kimba_1962Your analogies to "Flintstones" vs. "Flintstone Kids" (and all the other post-"Flintstones" series that PRECEDED "Flintstone Kids," all of which tweaked the world of Bedrock in their own way) and the two "He-Man" series are interesting, but you're comparing apples to oranges when you do that. With DT, we saw a transformation of a comics franchise to an animated franchise. Different versions of a single animated franchise aren't the same thing. Given the limitations of the TV-ep format and the difference in potential audience, what DT did well, it did VERY well.
While I see your argument, the point I was trying to make was that at some point during the series' conception, DuckTales writers sat down and said, "We're going to do a series based on Barks comics, but we think we should write Donald out, and have the nephews live with Scrooge, and have Gyro and the Beagle Boys look different, and create all these new characters." I understand how some of those decisions could have been necessitated by the fact that they were adapting the series from one medium (comics) to another (television). (Although honestly I see no reason why the Beagle Boys couldn't have all been similar-looking clones or why Gyro couldn't have looked like he did in the comics ... it worked fine in "Soccermania". The Donald issue is a discussion all its own). Maybe the Archies vs. New Archies comparison would apply better? They completely redesigned their comic book characters for a TV audience around the same time DuckTales debuted. While I doubt DuckTales/New Archies writers anticipated that their continuities would supplant the ones they were rewriting, the ultimate result was that these "new versions" of classic universes (New Archies for Archie, DuckTales for Barks) had no staying power, and the original versions remain the definitive ones.
"Archie" vs. "New Archies" doesn't strike me as the best analogy to use here, either. Among other things, you also have to consider the OLDER "Archies" TV series. Archie is perpetually trying to redesign, "reimagine," etc. their characters in an effort to keep up with their audience, and "New Archies" was just another example of that. By contrast, DT was a first-off attempt to ADAPT the world of the Duck comics to that of animation.

One thing that has complicated DT's "staying power" is the simple fact that, once the TV series went out of production, all that Duck fans had to do to get their subsequent Duck fixes was to go back to the world of the comics. It's pretty natural to expect that there would be a DT "washout effect" as a result of that. Even so, the positive reactions to Boom!'s use of DT material in UNCLE $CROOGE and the announcement of the new DT title -- as inconsistent as the former could be and as disappointing as the latter turned out to be -- suggest that there is a good deal of residual affection for the DT concept. It is simply too bad that the DT comics material that we got (in the US, at least) was not all that it could have been.

Quote from user: Lars JensenQuote from user: Baar Baar JinxIf Scrooge is still relatively unknown, then I'm not sure what lasting impact the series really had. The fact that we haven't had a Duck comics publisher in the US for a year now is a sad testament to that fact.
I'm not sure I understand the last sentence. Do you mean: "If DuckTales had had a lasting impact, by now there would've been a new American publisher of Duck comics"?
What I meant was DuckTales doesn't seem to have raised Scrooge awareness enough to the point where it has been sustained, and that the lack of Duck comics in the US now possibly reflects that. Of course, I do acknowledge that we still don't know the exact details of the demise of Boom Disney line.

I've said this before, but I think the problem with Ducktales is not that it made alterations to Barks for the change in medium--that was inevitable--but that it changed the tone, to something that, in spite of the initial inspiration, is less Barks and more the sort of careless, juvenile stuff that Western was putting out in the seventies. This is hardly a blanket condemnation; there are some good Ducktales episodes, and a few that are truly exceptional. But to the extent that the show failed to live up to its promise--which I think, ultimately, it kinda did--it's because of this.

Quote from user: GeoXI've said this before, but I think the problem with Ducktales is not that it made alterations to Barks for the change in medium--that was inevitable--
Just something I'd like to note here.

Other comic-to-animation adaptations, like the original Lucky Luke series went ahead and even included the original dialogue into the script. The results of that are mostly subpar, it's true. Comic book dialogue doesn't transfer too well to any medium.

The funny thing is, that even those adaptations that try to stick to the original product so much, tend to still fall flat on their faces in that attempt, as they somehow still manage to change their style.