If you were to venture past a Wal-Mart in Quebec in the wee hours of Nov. 21, you might have guessed that Sony had airdropped replenishments of the PS3 gaming console. But these midnight lineups skewed slightly older, towards the 30-35-year-old bracket. And they weren’t gamers, but nostalgia-seekers waiting for the DVD release of their favorite Quebec preschool TV show, Passe-Partout (whose counterpart in English Canada would be a hybrid of Mr. Dressup and Sharon, Lois & Bram).

‘It was complete pandemonium,’ says Noah Segal, senior VP of home entertainment at Alliance Atlantis, of the rush that scooped up a full third of stock in the first hour alone. ‘We knew we had a bit of Quebec media history, and there was a kitsch value for people who knew the show when they were younger. But the lightning in a bottle that it’s become is beyond our wildest expectations.’

In Quebec, they’re called the Passe-Partout Generation, and they carry formative childhood memories of the show that starred the trio of Claire Pimparé, Marie Eykel and Jacques L’Heureux. It aired on Radio-Canada and Télé-Québec for 20 years from 1977 and traveled around the province. Until this release, fans had fed their PP addiction through pirated versions that have circulated around the Internet.

‘It’s really unique in the sense that if you talk to these people, many of them remember the dialogue of the shows – and all the songs as well,’ says Patrick Roy, president of Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm. ‘It was so important in their life.’

It’s such a Quebec cultural phenom that one of the most popular groups in Quebec, Les Cowboys Fringants (The Frisky Cowboys), sang Passe-Partout songs during the DVD launch. Preorders eclipsed those of the first season of Seinfeld.

‘We did a huge press relations operation [in Quebec],’ explains Roy. ‘The three main stars hadn’t appeared together for 15 years. So it was a big deal for all the media,’ who, Roy says, were revisiting their childhood.

The five-disc DVD includes 25 episodes, part of the so-called ‘first series’ of 125 shows which are considered by fans to be the cream of the crop, as well as behind-the-scenes featurettes made by L’Heureuex’s daughter.

A website has launched to gather material from fans to be included with future releases of the rest of the first series episodes.

‘We don’t want to put out [the next DVD] without appropriate special features,’ says Segal, ‘which would differentiate it from the really bad pirated copies [fans are] getting off the Internet. That’s why we’re taking our time to do it right.’

Also…

* Quebec family drama Le secret de ma mère, written and directed by Ghyslaine Côté and starring Ginette Reno, hit the streets Nov. 21 from Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm. Supplements include a making-of special that aired on TV featuring Côté and her mother, on whom Reno’s character is based.

* Albert Nerenberg’s feature-length doc which tries to define stupidity in society, aptly titled Stupidity, has landed a U.S. distrib, The Disinformation Company, and a rerelease on DVD Dec. 5 in North America in a 50% More Stupidity edition.

Says Nerenberg: ‘We felt a terrible pressure to cover incredible amounts of terrain. That’s why we’ve made several different versions as we try to get it right. Stupidity is an enormous topic, and sometimes I think we were only scratching the surface.’

The DVD is also tied to the annual World Stupidity Awards, which were inspired by the film.

* Investigative filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici presents his own theory on Biblical events in feature doc Exodus Decoded, which originally aired on the Discovery Channel. Executive produced by James Cameron, 2,000 units of the DVD debuted exclusively through Indigo in-store and online in Canada Nov. 13. New Video distributes in the U.S.