In 2008, Ron Howard, Henry Winkler and Andy Griffith reprised iconic roles of their past in a Funny or Die video that, despite any controversy, was undoubtedly epic ... and now it's seemingly gone forever.

Let me state right up front that I have no opinion one way or another with regards to the reasoning behind the video Ron Howard did for Funny Or Die some four years ago. It was very clearly stated up front that the video was made in order to garner support for the election of our now-President, Barack Obama. Despite my stating that up front, it’s likely we’ll have people comment here to state how much they love/hate Howard’s message. But … let’s put that aside for the moment, if we can.

The 2008 video Ron Howard did with Henry Winkler and Andy Griffith was undoubtedly one of the most memorable from the past ten years or more. Maybe it was because I grew up watching Happy Days reruns … I don’t know. To be honest, despite what message Ron Howard and his guests were trying to get across, my mind was reeling at what I was looking at, not necessarily what I was hearing. The fact that these three guys not only reprised their old roles as Richie Cunningham, Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli and Andy Taylor — but dressed, looked and acted near perfectly to those roles — had my jaw on the floor. This was freakin’ awesome, plain and simple.

Sadly, though, this bit of history will likely never be seen again, at least in its original form. As I went about searching FunnyOrDie.com and YouTube, I found out the sad reality of the situation: the video is gone forever. I contacted someone at Funny Or Die to get the scoop on the video’s removal:

“Sadly enough it is gone forever. Ron wanted to do the video and revive for the first time ever all the iconic characters of the past to support Obama but with the stipulation that it be taken off line after a couple of months. We just have to live through Happy Day re-runs still.”

The closest thing I could find was some strange “edited” version of the video, oddly enough on Funny Or Die’s site. While I again don’t give a crap about what message they are trying to get across, it at least has some form of the video to see, even if it’s crappy quality — the screenshot above gives you some idea.

I still wish there was some sort of archive for these things, because it’s sad to think other iconic videos may some day be simply removed from the Internet, to eventually be forgotten by future generations. What’s next: Numa Numa and Star Wars Kid?

Photo Credit: FunnyOrDie.com