my favorite kinds of lost media are stuff that is only "lost" to the public because some copyright holder sat their fat ass on it for decades and didn't know it was considered lost, and media that we didn't even know existed until someone 20 or 30 years later stumbled into it and put it on the internet. neither are lost media by the strictest definition but they do represent to me the two most interesting ways you could potentially lose media forever
case 1, the media definitely exists but is so wildly inaccessible and basic facts of it so obscure that it's nearly impossible to track down unless the right person contacts the right people at the right time and finally gets permission to redistribute the thing. This one's fairly common for lost media tied to much more famous properties like Saban Sailor Moon
case 2, literally nobody was looking for this piece of media, it might've never been posted about online, it's old, it wasn't popular or even known about beyond a really small group. Someone stumbled into it by complete accident. By some miracle someone cared enough to digitize it. give it a listen.
For thirty years, I had half-complete memories of a cartoon show from my childhood featuring a man with magical shoes that turn him into a superhero, but all I could remember about it was that at one point one of the shoes gets stolen.
It haunted me for literal decades. No one had any idea what this show was, and eventually I gave up hope of ever identifying it.
Then, one day, I happened to stumble onto a YouTube video that used a bit of it for a reference or a joke. I don't even remember what the topic of the video was. But there it was.
The show's called Hammerman. It was a superhero cartoon starring MC Hammer that only lasted one season, and it didn't remain on TV for very long.
