"Sazae-san" was the last animated television series to use traditional cel animation, although as of April 2009, the opening credits were digital; the series finally switched to fully digital animation in 2013. Despite the series being a hit, Hasegawa stated that she never wanted any merchandise to be made for it, including home video rights, making availability of past episodes, especially those prior to the introduction of the VCR, very rare. Following her death, her request to prohibit older episodes from being released in home media was honored. Despite this however, Fuji TV made an agreement with Amazon Prime Video in December 2018 to release the 1969 and early-to-mid 1970s episodes available on their streaming service. The episodes from the mid 2000s happened to also be on the service.