What? Why are we talking about ancient public domain cartoon VHS tapes? He's finally lost it, hasn't he?
No, friends, at least not yet, anyhow. That's indeed what we are talking about, and from the long-ago year of 1989. This is the part where I say that I miss these sorts of things existing. I miss the Wild West atmosphere that VHS tapes existed in. Godzilla movie collecting even got me to miss VHS in general, and I often have to fight my hoarding impulses when I go to Goodwill...BUT, sometimes they win out, as in the case of this strange tape.
There's nothing earth-shattering on it; two Warner Bros. cartoons (both directed by Bob Clampett), and one Fleischer color Popeye two-reeler. As classic animation goes, they are all great, and all share another thing in common: they were widely bootlegged for years, along with many other cartoons. So what's the big deal?
I will admit, I owned endless dozens of these types of tapes back in the day, and when I pull one from the shelf while shopping, it's usually to see if I can find one of those hilarious front covers with delightfully off-model artwork of Bugs Bunny or Superman, and share it here.
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| Like these sorts of monstrosities... |
On this particular day, the tape slid out, and lo and behold, something I've never exactly seen before.
We are all familiar with tapes that have colored shells (DESTROY ALL MONSTERS comes in both white and black, for example), but I've never, in the many thousands of tapes that have passed through my hands over the last decades, seen a tape like this. A green translucent shell, yellow guard panel door, blue lenses...
But it doesn't end there. The sprocketed "reel hubs" are pink and red, respectively! I have to tell you, I'm still kind of amazed at this tape. It couldn't have been cheap to do, especially back then. I have searched for examples of other titles in the line*, and they are all plain-jane, black videotapes like you'd expect. Even other copies of this same title are normal. Here are just a couple of the many that I saw:
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There was one, however, with blacked-out windows (the mafia edition?)
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None of the other titles in the line (and there were LOTS) seemed to come in crazy colors, either. Was the manufacturer (which is a kind word for some of these companies) just getting rid of parts? Was it a one-off? Did I find the Golden Ticket of public domain VHS cartoons? Either way, I wanted to do a post on it here, to see if anyone could add anything to this bizarre discovery. I'd be interested to hear what your strangest PD VHS find is, too!
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*Babbling Footnote: We could talk about this all day, but this particular tape was made by "Unicon Communications." However, you might have noticed the "JFK" on the yellow door part, which isn't the President at all, or the dreary Oliver Stone movie, but "Just For Kids." In looking at other editions of this tape, I noticed that the later ones had were attributed to "Celebrity Home Entertainment," which makes perfect sense, as Celebrity were they purveyors of the "Just For Kids" line, which, if it sounds familiar, issued the Gamera tapes back in the day that mostly involved Sandy Frank versions...you learn quickly that public domain VHS is a rather inbred subject matter.
Public domain distributors had a tendency to reuse discarded or overstock tapes. Basically whatever they could get their hands on for cheap, or nothing. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were fewer than ten like yours, or even this being the last one. As for the windowless tape, that was usually used for tapes that were sent out for or included with a product as instructional videos. There were no windows because it was cheaper to have one piece of plastic, rather than have cutouts for clear ones. There have even been instances where these tapes would end, and whatever used to be on them would show up for a short, or extended, period of time. (There are instances of cartoons being written onto reused adult tapes, found out by the old contents showing up after the cartoons ended.) I even have a Playhouse Video (Fox) tape with 2 labels, likely due to the tape being rewritten.
ReplyDelete@JunkeonWedge - Good points--the guy who runs the Oddity Archive channel on YT refers to these cheap-o companies as "craphouses," which I think was accurate!
ReplyDeleteYou just reminded me, I have a Godzilla video where the label is placed over one that is for a Shirley Temple movie!
I love this stuff; I get sad to think there will ever be a time that I can't go into a thrift store and dig through 1,000 VHS tapes at a time.
I see you watch Archive as well. I actually discovered him when I went down a public domain rabbit hole. I think there was also a similar video by a channel called Steve the Amateur Historian or something like that. I remember it being decently informative, but the production values weee a bit beneath Archive and I believe he tried to do some sort of skit at the end of his first part. (It’s split into 2 videos.)
DeleteFound it:
Deletehttps://youtu.be/X2RWJEI_D74
https://youtu.be/TAQMOwG4t7o
Again, not high quality content, but does have some good information to be found.
You just reminded me, my Just for Kids cassette of Gamera vs Zigra was solid yellow. Wish I still had it!
ReplyDelete@JunkeonWedge - HEY thank you! I will watch this over the weekend. Looks interesting!
ReplyDelete@Anonymous - I would love to see the all-yellow Gamera tape! Maybe it's still out there somewhere!