Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983) Movie Review

Hey guys! Welcome back to another Disney review. Today I'm kicking off the Christmas movie review season with one of my favourite Christmas specials, Mickey's Christmas Carol, produced by Walt Disney Pictures in 1983. So let's get into it.

Back in the '90s, I grew up on a steady diet of Disney movies and cartoons. There weren't a whole lot of older Mickey Mouse cartoons on TV at the time, but every year, on Christmas Eve, CBC aired Mickey's Christmas Carol, along with an airing of Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too. And every year for as long as I can remember, my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother and I would sit in front of the TV, before bed and watch these two specials. Without fail. There was never a year when we didn't watch them. Sure, there were years where other Christmas specials were on as well, but Disney was appointment Television in my house when I was growing up. So whenever something Disney was on, we watched it.

For those of you who might not know what this Christmas special is about, it's Disney's adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, starring Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge, Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit, and other Disney characters as the other characters in the story. There also isn't any deviation in the story either. It's literally just the Disney version of "A Christmas Carol". Which is kind of interesting considering what Disney has been known for for 99 years (including the Laugh-O-Gram period). 

When I was a kid, the Ghost of Christmas Future scene was the one that scared me as a kid. I mean, he was played by Pete, was hooded and there was a fiery pit with Scrooge about to fall in with the ghost laughing at him and taunting him. That would be enough to scare any kid. Especially compared to the Ghost of Jacob Marley (played by Goofy), the Ghost of Christmas Past (played by Jiminy Cricket), and the Ghost of Christmas Present (played by Willie the Giant) who weren't scary at all. Aside from The Muppet Christmas Carol, and hearing Sir Patrick Stewart's dramatic reading of the Charles Dickens version on the radio when I was a kid, this is the only version of the story that I've ever experienced. 

The animation is your standard, early '80s Disney animation, though some of your usual Disney animators from the Disney Renaissance of the '90s, Glen Keane, Mark Henn and Randy Cartwright, worked on this short. I watched it on Disney+ and it looks amazing on the platform. Prior to this, I've only seen it on TV in the '90s and early 2000s, so I've never seen it on a good, quality, format like DVD or even Blu-ray. But it was good on Disney+. At some point I would like to try and get one of the VHS releases of the movie, either the Walt Disney Mini-Classics release or the Disney Favorite Stories Collection release for that nostalgic feel of watching it on an older format.

One of the most interesting things about this cartoon featurette is that it was Mickey's first appearance in a theatrical cartoon since 1953. His regular theatrical cartoon series ended in 1953 when it became more expensive to put out theatrical cartoons on a regular basis than it was to make full length animated feature films. In fact, the '50s saw a massive decline in Disney's output of theatrical short cartoons, leading to the occasional thirty minute theatrical cartoon featurette such as Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree rather than the seven or eight minute cartoon shorts like the earlier Mickey Mouse cartoons.

Overall this is a pretty solid Christmas special. Like I said, I watched it every year with Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too on CBC every Christmas Eve when I was a kid. It usually aired before that, but we tended to wait until the Christmas Eve airing to watch it just to give us something to do to settle us down before bed. And the best part is is that it still holds up really well today. Nothing about it feels outdated or anything like that. Which is nice.

That's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back on Wednesday with the next Christmas movie review where I will be reviewing Frosty the Snowman. So until then have a great evening and I will see you all next time. Later!

Links

Disney Wiki: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Mickey%27s_Christmas_Carol 

Invincible (2003) #1 Comic Book Review

After working on my previous post about the Stratemeyer Syndicate and how their novels were published on a monthly basis, naturally it led me back to comic books. Which led me to doing this review. As you all know, I love comics, but I prefer writing about movies, TV shows and novels as I feel like I have a lot more to say about those mediums than I do with comic books. But I decided to bring back reviews of singular issues, rather than full story arcs. So I chose Invincible #1 by Robert Kirkman with art by Cory Walker.

Invincible #1 is probably the best first issue of a comic book series I have ever read. Kirkman does a really good job of establishing the setting and the main characters, without giving us too much all at once. It's not an overwhelming issue like Spawn #1 is or repetitive like Superman #1 from 1939 is. It flows naturally and sets a decent pace for the entire series as it feels like Kirkman wrote it with the long haul in mind. For those of you who don't know what Invincible is, it's a story about Mark Grayson who develops super powers as a teenager, becoming the superhero known as Invincible. His dad is a superhero as well, and other superheroes populate the universe too. 

I've read the first two trade paperback volumes, containing the first eight issues of the series, and one of the things that I like about it is how normal Kirkman makes the superhero stuff. Like, Mark tells his parents that his powers have started developing and his mom is just like, "That's nice dear" as if he told her he was starting to have hair grow on his face or something to the effect of some puberty related event happening to his body. And they don't even talk about him becoming a superhero like his father, because they knew it was going to happen eventually anyway. 

Of course, because Mark is a teenager and in high school, there's plenty of drama in this early part of the series. But it's not the kind of teen drama that other teenage superheroes, like Robin or early versions of Spider-Man had to deal with. Mark has friends, he goes on dates and the only bullies that he deals with are the ones who he insinuates himself with when they're picking on some other kid. That's the extent of it. Otherwise Mark has to deal with the same thing that other teenage superheroes have to deal with, like keeping their identities secret from their friends and teachers, while staying on top of their grades and whatever other activities they have going on after school, whether it's extra-curricular activities, an after school job or hanging out with their friends. You know, the day to day stuff that we all find relatable. 

Robert Kirkman is a geek who loves comic books. In Kurt Busiek's introduction to Invincible Volume 1: Family Matters, he mentions that Kirkman didn't want to deconstruct superheroes with Invincible the way Alan Moore had with Watchmen or Frank Miller had done with his Batman books. Instead, Kirkman wanted to tell a story that embraced the superhero genre and used it to it's full potential. And from what I read of the series so far, that's exactly what it does. It doesn't satirize superheroes either. This isn't a tongue in cheek thing. It's a full fledged, serious, interesting, epic, superhero series with all the tropes you come to expect from the genre and the book does those tropes unapologetically.

Cory Walker's artwork is amazing. It's simple, but amazing. To be honest, I actually prefer Ryan Ottley's work on the later issues, but Walker established the look of the series while Ottley enriched it. And honestly, the two of them are so close in their art styles that there really isn't a noticeable difference when Ottley takes over for Walker in issue #8. Definitely the opposite from the difference between Norm Breyfogle and Jim Aparo's work on Detective Comics and Batman in the late '80s and early '90s.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall Invincible #1 is a great first issue of a comic book series. It doesn't throw six hundred characters at you, it doesn't try to be spectacular and epic in a single issue, it doesn't try to do anything daring or different with the genre. It just tells a simple story about a boy getting super powers and that's it. It accomplishes that and sets up a wonderful story that gets more interesting and exciting as it goes on. If you haven't read it yet I highly recommend it. I don't know what the original edition of the issue goes for in terms of price, but it was reprinted recently as a Free Comic Book Day 2020 promo for the upcoming Amazon Prime Video animated series coming out next year and it's in a number of Invincible collected editions, trade paperback and hardcover. I'm giving Invincible #1 10/10 stars.

Links

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invincible_(comics) 

Image Comics Wiki: https://imagecomics.fandom.com/wiki/Invincible_Vol_1_1

Series Books for Kids and Teens: An Overview in Four Parts, Part 1: The Stratemeyer Syndicate

Hey guys! With the Nancy Drew TV series going into it's second season, the Hardy Boys getting their own TV series next week, the Baby-Sitters Club having their own Netflix series, and an Animorphs movie in the works, I thought now was the perfect time to talk about the books that inspired these shows and movies, as well as their history and which ones have stood the test of time. I'll be doing this overview in four parts. Part 1 will be on the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which published series like The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys, part 2 will focus on Scholastic, which produced series like Sweet Valley High and it's spin-offs, Bruno & Boots, Goosebumps, The Baby-Sitters Club and Animorphs, part 3 will be miscellaneous series books that were published by Grosset & Dunlap, but not the Stratemeyer Syndicate, Berkley Jam Books, and and Bantam Skylark, as well as Archie Comics as a whole, and part 4 will be about the various TV and movie adaptations these books have received over the years. These are going to be long posts and they will be spoiler free since I'm not actually talking about the stories, just the series as a whole. Let's start off with a little pre-history here.

While the Stratemeyer Syndicate basically coined the phrase, Juvenile Series Books, they were not the first to create the concept of a monthly series of books. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and other early mystery writers often published their novels in parts in literary magazines before the complete story was published in book form a year or so later. Early Science Fiction novels were published the same way. But until 1899, books for children hadn't been produced this way. Stratemeyer did it first.

The first series to be produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate was The Rover Boys by Arthur M. Winfield (the first of many pseudonyms for Stratemeyer Syndicate founder, Edward Stratemeyer). Produced between 1899 and 1926, The Rover Boys was about three boys who go to a military boarding school and have many exciting adventures there. This series didn't have much staying power though it was really popular while it was coming out. The Rover Boys established many of the tropes that would be used by later series books such as Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys.

A second Rover Boys series began publication in 1917, with the 21st volume of the series. This time it's the sons of the original Rover Boys who are the stars of the series. This is sort of like how the original Hardy Boys series ended at book #58, but continued in the Digest series with #59 and going forward from there. Unlike The Hardy Boys though, The Rover Boys only lasted nine more books before ending or getting cancelled. There was also a six book spin-off series but I can't find very much info on it, other than it's a prequel series to The Rover Boys. According to Wikipedia the books stayed in print for a number of years after the series ceased publication, but by the time I was reading The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, The Rover Boys series was out of print and long forgotten. 

After the success of The Rover Boys, the Stratemeyer Syndicate published other short series of books between 1900 and 1904. None of them lasted for more than a year or two and were re-issued once in the 1910s or 1920s. However, in 1904, the next big Stratemeyer series to debut was The Bobbsey Twins. This series was about two sets of twins, Nan and Bert, and Freddie and Flossie (Flo in more recent incarnations). While they didn't have the same multimedia presence as Frank, Joe and Nancy did, the Bobbseys are the most long lasting characters ever created by Stratemeyer. Their book series lasted until 1979 and the characters continue to make guest and cameo appearances in the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys comics published by Dynamite. Some of these books would have mysteries involved, but most of the times they don't. I guess it depends on the era. I've never read any of The Bobbsey Twins personally, but my mom loved them when she was a kid, and I'm pretty sure my sister owned some of the books as well. I just never read them myself.

A second series, called The New Bobbsey Twins began publication in 1987, around the time that Nancy Drew Secret Files and The Hardy Boys Casefiles started coming out. Once again, I can't find any information on this series, only that it ended with volume 30 in 1992. 

In 1910, Stratemeyer published a new series called Tom Swift. Unlike other series books that came between The Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift, Tom Swift would continue to return with new series every few decades, with the most recent series, Tom Swift Inventors' Academy, beginning in 2019. This series was more science based, with Tom being an inventor. The original series ran from 1910 until 1941 with a total of 40 volumes. However, a new series would begin.

In 1954 a second Tom Swift series, The New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures began. This time, the central protagonist was Tom Swift Jr., the son of the main character from the first series. This time, the series was a Science Fiction series, where Tom's inventions were meant to go out into space, hence the Sci-Fi spin to the original adventure series concept of the 1910 series. Unlike his father though, Tom would perpetually remain a teenager, never getting married or having children of his own, though he does have a girlfriend, named Phyllis, who he loves. This is the series I remember seeing ads for on the back of the dust jackets for many of my original text versions of The Hardy Boys when I was a kid. This is how I learned about Tom Swift. 

Then in 1981 a third Tom Swift series, officially just called Tom Swift on the books themselves, but referred to as Tom Swift III by fans. This series is even more of a Science Fiction series as it takes place in space instead of on Earth. It didn't last long though and ended with Volume 11 in 1984.

However, seven years later, in 1991 Tom Swift returned once again in a fourth series. This time Tom would be darker and more mature much like Nancy Drew Files and The Hardy Boys Casefiles, with Tom even teaming up with the Hardys for two books. Also, the setting of the series was transferred back to Earth though Tom still dealt with Sci-Fi concepts like time travel and extra-terrestrial invaders from time to time. And unlike earlier versions of the character, Tom would prove to be dangerous with his genius because his inventions were less benign than they previously had been. But this series proved to be less popular than the previous Tom Swift series and less popular than either more mature Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, so it was cancelled in 1993, after two years of publication and only 13 books.

That didn't stop Tom Swift though because in 2006 a new series began publication, known as Tom Swift, Young Inventor similar to the current Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers and Nancy Drew, Girl Detective series being published at the time. The series goes back to basics after the lukewarm reception of the more mature series from the early '90s, though Tom's inventions were closer to then current technology rather than the more futuristic tech seen in previous series. But, like the previous series, this one didn't sell very well and after only 6 books were published, the series ended in 2007.

And yet, in 2019 Tom Swift returned in a new series called Tom Swift Inventors' Academy. As with The Hardy Boys Adventures and Nancy Drew Diaries, Tom is de-aged from his usual older teen self that has been portrayed since the original 1910 series. Most likely because as the years have gone on, the audience for the Series Books have gotten younger, and so they wanted characters they could better relate to. The first five books are out with books six and seven due to come out in 2021. This series has a much more modern twist on Tom Swift, with current technology being the focus.

Since 1899 when Edward Stratemeyer first wrote The Rover Boys, the Stratemeyer Syndicate had been producing many Series Books. Though none of these series would have any lasting power, with none of them being adapted into movies or TV shows. However, that all changed in 1927 when The Tower Treasure, the first book in The Hardy Boys series was published. The Hardy Boys was the first of the Stratemeyer Series Books to go for more than 100 volumes in the original series, and over 300 volumes across multiple series, spanning 93 years (and counting). And then in 1956, 29 years after the series first began publication, The Hardy Boys was adapted into a TV serial on The Mickey Mouse Club and ran for 19 episodes, each running 15 minutes in length. Then about ten years after that the Hardys returned in an animated series produced by none other than Filmation. In 1977 the Hardys returned in another live action TV show, teaming up with Nancy Drew for The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, which ran for three seasons. The Hardys wouldn't return to Television again until 1995 when a Canadian series aired, this time for only 13 episodes before getting cancelled. Which leads to the upcoming TV series that's airing on Hulu in the U.S. and on YTV here in Canada. The Hardys have also appeared in comic books and video games, though they have yet to have their own movie. 

Including the revised text and the Digest series, The Hardy Boys Mysteries ran for a total of 190 volumes from 1927 until 2005 when the series was finally laid to rest. The first 39 books in the original series were revised in the '50s and '60s while new volumes were still coming out. If you want to find out about all of the cover variations and text variations, go to the Unofficial Hardy Boys Home Page, which documents every single variant and edition of the original series. I'll put the link at the end of this post.

In 1987, a new Hardy Boys book series began publication to run concurrently with the original series, which was still publishing new volumes in the Digest format. The new series was known as The Hardy Boys Casefiles, which was a more mature take on the world of the Hardy Boys. For example, on the first page of book #1, Dead on Target, Joe's girlfriend, and Chet's sister, Iola is killed when a bomb goes off in Frank and Joe's car. Unlike in the original series, Frank and Joe use guns in these books. This series ran for 127 volumes spanning ten years, ending in 1997, though the final book in the series came out in January, 1998. 

The Hardys weren't away for very long though, as in 1997, they returned as 8 and 9 year olds going to Bayport Elementary School in a series for third and fourth grade readers called The Hardy Boys Clues Brothers. This series only lasted for 17 volumes and ended in 2000 because they weren't as popular as the original series or Casefiles were. 

But in 2005, just after the original series ended, The Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers began publication. This was an attempt to modernize the Hardys for the 21st Century and it worked pretty well. Some changes were made, like Frank and Joe's friends don't play as big of a role as they had in the original series or The Hardy Boys Casefiles, though Chet Morton and Biff Hooper still make the most appearances of all of Frank and Joe's friends. Other changes include Aunt Gertrude changing her name to Trudy, and Frank and Joe are no longer dating Callie Shaw and Iola Morton, though the two girls do show up in the series still. Oh and Frank and Joe fight crime as secret agents for American Teens Against Crime (ATAC), an organization created by their father, Fenton Hardy for the sole purpose of building a support network for his sons's activities as ace crimefighters. The series ran for seven years and 39 volumes, ending in 2012. It also had a graphic novel series published by Papercutz, which ran concurrently with the main series. 

A year after Undercover Brothers ended, a new series known as The Hardy Boys Adventures. This series is still going on today. What's unique about this series from what I can gather from the research I'm doing as I write this blog post is that the series starts off with Frank and Joe retired from their detective work and enjoying being regular high school students. But when a new mystery plagues Bayport, the Hardy Boys come out of retirement to solve it. According to the excerpt I read on the Simon and Schuster website Frank and Joe "retired" for the reason the Ghostbusters retired between Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, no license and tons of lawsuits. Which actually sounds unique and interesting despite the fact that normally I would role my eyes at the more realistic take on classic characters. For some reason it works for the Hardy Boys.

Despite The Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers continuing it's publication run a new Hardy Boys series started in 2010 as a companion piece. The series was called The Hardy Boys Secret Files and just like The Clues Brothers, Frank and Joe are in elementary school. It ran for 19 volumes over five years, ending in 2015.

With The Hardy Boys Secret Files ending in 2015, it's replacement, The Hardy Boys Clue Book began in 2016. Again meant for younger readers, this series was interactive, where you could actually write in the book on a special page before the last chapter to figure out the mystery yourself, using the clues in the illustrations to solve it. Which is a fun idea. With this series basically being a continuation of the Secret Files series, the age of the characters are the same. Clue Book is still being published today alongside The Hardy Boys Adventures.

With the success of The Hardy Boys and the realization that girls were also reading them, Stratemeyer decided to create a new series with a female detective named Nancy Drew. In 1930, Nancy Drew debuted in The Secret of the Old Clock, the first book in The Nancy Drew Mysteries. Like the Hardy Boys, Nancy solved mysteries with the help of her friends, Bess and George, her father, Carson, and her boyfriend, Ned Nickerson. It wasn't long before the Stratemeyer Syndicate had another hit on their hands, with boys and girls reading both The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. As with The Hardy Boys, the Nancy Drew books were revised in the '50s and '60s while new volumes were still coming out, and the series changed to paperback by Simon & Schuster in 1979. However, unlike it's brother series, the Nancy Drew paperback series is considered to be a continuation of the original Grosset & Dunlap hardcover series rather than a separate "Digest" series. 

Also unlike the Hardys, it only took Nancy eight years to make it into an adaptation when the film, Nancy Drew: Detective, starring Bonita Granville as Nancy, came out in 1938. Three more films came out in 1939. Nancy wouldn't be seen again until 1977 when she was portrayed by Pamela Sue Martin on the ABC TV series, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries which ran until 1979, though Pamela Sue Martin was replaced by Janet Louise Johnson at the end of the second season before the character was dropped for the show's third and final season. Along with Frank and Joe, Nancy starred in her own TV series in 1995, produced in Canada. It too only lasted 13 episodes before being cancelled. Nancy was portrayed by Tracy Ryan in the Canadian series. 

There was apparently a TV movie that aired in 2002 on The Wonderful World of Disney that was meant to be the pilot for a new TV series, but then ABC decided not to pick up the series and it was passed on by UPN after Maggie Lawson, the actress playing Nancy, was cast on another show. Five years later though Nancy would return to the big screen in the 2007 Warner Bros. film, Nancy Drew. Emma Roberts was cast as Nancy but the movie bombed at the box office with critics mixed on it much as they'd been mixed about the four films released in the late '30s. Another Nancy Drew movie, called Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, was released by Warner Bros. in 2019. Produced by Ellen DeGeneres, the movie starred Sophia Lillis, who played Beverly Marsh in It: Chapter One. It too bombed, making only $946,027 at the box office, against a budget of $17 million. Though the critics were more favourable on it than they had been with previous Nancy Drew films. Also in 2019 Nancy Drew returned to Television in a series produced by the creators of The O.C., Gossip Girl, and Marvel's Runaways, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. The series got picked up for a second season and it airs on The CW.

One of the reasons for the success of Nancy Drew is that, like Lois Lane would in 1938, Nancy broke all conventions of what a girl was supposed to be in the '30s. She was smart, capable, and daring. She was a role model for the girls who read the books. After 175 volumes the original series ended in 2003. Though Nancy Drew lived on.

 In 1986 a more mature Nancy Drew series when Secrets Can Kill, the first book in The Nancy Drew Files was published. As would happen with the Hardys in 1987, The Nancy Drew Files was an attempt to make the character more adult than she had been up to that point. More drama and romance were injected into the series too. The series ran for 124 books before ending in 1997.

In 1994, another Nancy Drew series began. This time Nancy was 8 years old and in the third grade. Unlike the main series and The Nancy Drew Files, the mysteries in these books were more like the type of cases you'd see in Encyclopedia Brown with kids stealing stuff from other kids, and little things like that. It ran for 69 books and ended in 2005.

In 1989 a spin-off of The Nancy Drew Files, called River Heights began publication. Nancy Drew was nowhere to be found in this series, aside from cameos in some of the books. Instead the books focused on other characters from Nancy's hometown, including her neighbour, Nicki. As a result, the series had no mystery aspect to it, instead it focuses on the romance aspect that was part of the series this was a spin-off of. It ran for 16 books and ended in 1992.

Another YA series debuted in 1995, called Nancy Drew on Campus. In this series, Nancy, Bess and George are off to college where Nancy wants to get a degree in journalism. She and Ned also break up when he goes to a different school than Nancy and her friends do. Like River Heights, this series focuses more on the romance and college drama though there's still some mysteries involved. Because this series is aimed at older teens, more serious topics like drug abuse and date rape are the subject of cases. It ran for 25 books, despite the mixed reaction from critics and fans. It ended in 1998.

In 2004 a replacement for the original Nancy Drew series began publication. The series was called Nancy Drew: Girl Detective. In this series Nancy is a regular teenager, solving mysteries and she's subject to all the regular fallacies that plague Humanity. Including focusing on other things besides mysteries. She was also very single minded, being forgetful to do her chores or homework when working on a case. She's also clumsy. Basically she's like Usagi/Serena on Sailor Moon, though she's not as lazy as Serena is. Bess and George get an overhaul too being less perfect than they had been in the original series. Nancy and Ned are together again in this series, and Ned lives in River Heights now, whereas, he was from another town in the previous series. Which I didn't remember because it's been so long since I read any of the Nancy Drew books. This series ran for 47 volumes and ended in 2012.

As both a companion piece to Nancy Drew: Girl Detective and a replacement for Nancy Drew Notebooks, Aladdin Paperbacks, who were responsible for the later books in the original series for both Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, published another series of books for younger children called Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew. Like the previous Notebooks series, Nancy, Bess, and George are in the third grade and are 8 years old. They solve mysteries like finding a stolen ice cream formula entry. Good for younger readers.

The most recent main Nancy Drew book series is Nancy Drew Diaries. Starting in 2013, the new series has had 20 volumes so far with volumes 21 and 22 due to come out in 2021. Like Girl Detective, Diaries has Nancy in high school and solving mysteries with Bess, George, and Ned. Of course there's modern technology. Though unlike The Hardy Boys Adventures, it doesn't seem like they're taking the harsher route with Nancy being a detective. Personally, I would love to see how Nancy would handle needing to "retire" from her detective activities, but it doesn't seem like that that's what they're doing with this series. I haven't read this series and there's little information about this series on Wikipedia in terms of story and character changes. Though the Unofficial Nancy Drew Home Page has a bit more information on it than Wikipedia does.

As a replacement for Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, Aladdin Paperbacks began the Nancy Drew Clue Book series. It's the exact same format as the Hardy Boys version so I won't go into details here. It started in 2015 and has had four volumes published already with another two coming in 2021. It serves as a younger readers companion to Nancy Drew Diaries.

There's one more series that I need to talk about but for that we need to travel back to 1934. It had been four years since Nancy Drew came onto the scene and her and the Hardy Boys were vastly popular. Naturally, the Stratemeyer Syndicate wanted to capitalize on their own successes and came with a female duo, reminiscent of the Hardy Boys, known as the Dana Girls. Unlike Nancy and the Hardys though the Danas did not succeed and they didn't last beyond 1979. The reason being is that people weren't interested in them. They were fine with Nancy Drew and the Hardys, along with the Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift, the other popular characters from Stratemeyer that had some semblance of staying power. The Dana Girls Mystery Stories ended with volume 30 in 1968. But that was not the end of the girls, Louise and Jean.

A second series started in 1972 with The Mystery of the Stone Tiger. This series was short-lived though and ended with volume 17 in 1979. This would still not be the end for the girls though. They appeared in 2010, appearing in an issue of the Nancy Drew: Girl Detective comic book series from Papercutz.

As you can see the Stratemeyer Syndicate's Series Books have become staples of our pop culture, often reaching new fans as the decades continue. Many of these characters are more than a hundred years old, but the continued reprinting of the early books, as well as movies, TV shows, comic books and video games has made sure they aren't forgotten, even if they never reached the success of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. But what makes these characters so tailor made for TV show adaptations? Well, because the books are written and distributed like TV shows. Each book is a new episode, and each continuation, reboot and spin-off is a new season or series based on the original, much like the way Star Trek is handled to this day. It also laid the groundwork for Scholastic Press in the '70s, '80s and '90s as they prepped their own packaged book series, some longer than others, some more popular, but each one with it's own fanbase that continues to this day.

And that is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back sometime this weekend with a comic book review for you and then part 2 of this series will be out sometime next month. I plan on doing this once a month just because it does require research and planning for them, which means I need time to do it all. Later.

Links

The Unofficial Nancy Drew Home Page: http://nancydrew.info/nddiaries.htm 

http://nancydrew.info/nd0.htm

The Unofficial Hardy Boys Home Page: http://hardyboys.us/hbos.htm

http://hardyboys.us/hbadventures.htm

The Dana Girls: http://seriesbooks.info/dana.htm

Tom Swift: http://tomswift.net/ts1.htm

http://tomswift.net/ts2.htm

http://tomswift.net/ts3.htm

http://tomswift.net/ts4.htm

http://tomswift.net/ts5.htm

http://tomswift.net/ts6.htm

List of Stratemeyer Syndicate Books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stratemeyer_Syndicate_series

*All images taken from The Hardy Boys Wiki, the Nancy Drew Wiki, and Librarything.com.

The History of Disney Movies on Home Video Part 1: Walt Disney Classics

Good morning everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I had a pretty good weekend. So this week I'm not doing any reviews. Instead I'm going to be doing three non review posts, starting with today's Disney related topic, the Walt Disney Classics Home Video line. On the old Wordpress site, I did a four part series on the history of Disney's home video release of movies. I never got passed the Walt Disney Gold Classics Collection just because I was doing alot of stuff on the blog at the time and I just never finished. Then on this blog, I was originally going to do a movie by movie look at the Walt Disney Classics and Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection with reviews of all the movies in a similar fashion to how I approached the Teddy Ruxpin VHS reviews. That idea was abandoned as well. Instead I'm going to do an overview of the brand lines of Disney home video releases, starting with the one I grew up with. The Walt Disney Classics collection.

In 1984 home video was a relatively new market still. At the Walt Disney Company, it was even more in it's infancy than it had been at other studios. Mainly because of Walt's policy of never releasing the animated movies on TV, re-releasing them theatrically every seven to ten years. After Walt's death in 1966, his brother Roy, and the studio executives continued that tradition. However, there were four animated movies that Walt had aired on the Disneyland TV series (this became The Wonderful World of Disney in the '80s). They were Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland, Fun and Fancy Free and The Three Caballeros. So while Disney had been releasing the live action Disney movies like Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and The Love Bug on home video since the late '70s, in 1981 they put out Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland on VHS and Betamax, with a Laserdisc and CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc) release in 1982. Also in 1982, Fun and Fancy Free and The Three Caballeros were released on VHS and Betamax. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was released on VHS and Betamax in 1981 for the video store rental market, and then in 1982 for the regular retail market.

1984 saw many changes happen at Disney. One of those changes was that Ron W. Miller, the CEO of the studio, decided to start releasing the classic animated movies on home video platforms. Some of the studio executives, who were older and didn't realize the money making potential of the home video market, hated this idea as they felt that if a Disney animated movie was released on home video it would take away from the film's potential to make more money at the box office when it came time to re-release them theatrically. Miller was a visionary though and saw the potential that the home video market had. So, on December 3rd, 1984, the 1973 animated classic, Robin Hood was released on home video.

Before I go into each release, I just wanna talk about my experience with the Walt Disney Classics collection and what I liked about them. When I think about this line of VHS tapes, this logo comes to mind. This logo was such a huge part of my childhood. It's how I saw most of the movies in this line. Between having many of them at home in my family's video collection, renting some of them, and seeing others at the hospital, this was my introduction to the magic of Disney and I've been a lifelong fan ever since. The original logo (shown earlier in this post) was retired in 1987 with the release of Lady and the Tramp, with the second logo (and it's many variants) first appearing on the 1988 VHS release of Cinderella. I still own thirteen out of twenty-five of the Walt Disney Classics, and every time I pop one of those tapes in, it transports me back to the '90s when I'd sit on the living room floor, in front of the TV, and watch a Disney movie. Let's get into the actual releases themselves.

Robin Hood was chosen because it wasn't one of the more popular movies that Disney had produced over the many many decades they'd been making movies. It hadn't done as well at the box office as other Disney movies had, and had actually gotten some criticism for recycling old animation and repurposing it for it's own use. So those older executives felt that it would be safe to release on home video since they had had one theatrical re-release of the film in 1982 and that's it. They were wrong. It had a fairly moderate home video success and was actually one of the best-selling home video releases of 1984 (gotta love those Christmas releases). Which kind of deflated the older executives who had balked at the notion of releasing one of their animated movies on home video.

The second release in the Walt Disney Classics was kind of a shock. Pinocchio was originally considered to be one of the "untouchable" Disney movies for home video release, because Disney was still re-releasing it in theatres every seven years or so and it was one of Walt's greatest achievements, being the second full length animated feature film that Walt had produced, after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Nonetheless, on July 16th, 1985, Pinocchio was released on home video for the very first time. It's sales further vindicated Ron Miller's faith in the home video market, though he'd been replaced by Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Frank Wells shortly before Robin Hood had been released. 

The next release was a no-brainer for a home video release by the studio. Dumbo was considered to be evergreen as it was in constant re-release, and had already been successful in the home video market, due to it's earlier 1981 release. So it came out as the third release in the line, and I think it might've also had another theatrical re-release at this point too. 

While Pinocchio and Dumbo were no-brainers for movies to be released on home video, The Sword in the Stone wasn't. At least, not for audiences. For the studio executives though it made perfect sense. Like Robin Hood, The Sword in the Stone was less of a hit for the studio and wasn't as well liked by the critics. Which made it perfectly safe to be released on home video since it wasn't making as much money during it's two theatrical re-releases, the last one being in 1983 when it was packaged with the fourth Winnie the Pooh cartoon, Winnie the Pooh and A Day for Eeyore. There aren't any numbers that I could find for how well this movie sold though. I assume it did fairly well. Before I continue with the movie overview, I just want to touch on something real quick.

While all of the movies that had been released on home video so far had been classics from the '40s through to the mid-'70s, none of the modern animated movies had been included. The Fox and the Hound was originally released theatrically in 1981, but would not get a home video release until 1994. The Black Cauldron had come out, but had bombed, which meant that Disney wanted to distance itself from such an embarrassment, so it wasn't going to be getting a home video release. The Great Mouse Detective had it's theatrical earlier in the year, but Disney was still hesitant to release new animated movies on home video, which actually put them behind pretty much every other studio. 

By 1986 home video was super popular. Owning movies was more difficult because VHS tapes were fairly expensive, but the rental market was huge. Especially with families. They'd go to the video store on Friday nights, rent a few movies, some for the kids, some for them to watch as a family, and then maybe one or two for mom and dad. Then over the weekend, they'd watch the movies before returning them to the video store on Monday morning on the way to work. With the exception of Disney who had mainly limited their current output to classic films, and newer live action films, other studios such as 20th Century Fox, Universal, United Artists, Columbia Pictures, and MGM would put their movies out on home video, both classic and current, with the current movies coming to home video six months to a year after their theatrical runs. Yet Disney clung to it's outdated policy of theatrical re-releases of classic movies, and holding onto modern movies until they too could be re-released theatrically, reserving home video for the cartoon shorts and direct-to-video releases like Disney Sing-Along Songs. It wouldn't be until 1990 that Disney would catch up to everyone else.

Alice in Wonderland was another evergreen movie in the Disney library. Walt had aired it on the Disneyland TV series in 1954 as the show's second episode, and it had a few theatrical re-releases in the '70s and '80s before being released on home video in 1981. And it's because of this status that Alice in Wonderland has so many VHS and DVD releases. 

The last Classics release in 1986 was Sleeping Beauty. I don't remember seeing this movie's VHS release. In fact, I don't actually think I saw Sleeping Beauty until it's 1998 home video re-release, which I'll be talking about in a future post. I probably saw it on TV at some point and I just don't remember.

1987 was a very lean year for the Walt Disney Classics collection. Though The Great Mouse Detective had ended it's theatrical run, 1987 did not see a home video release for Disney's most recent animated feature film. Instead, it was the release of Lady and the Tramp due to the film's 1986 theatrical re-release. It was the only Classics release that year. I'm pretty sure my parents rented this movie for me when I was a kid, but I don't know fro sure. The cover is familiar besides seeing it on the Disney Wiki and on the VHS Collector website, but I know we didn't own the movie, so we had to have rented it at some point.

1988 was another lean year for the Walt Disney Classics collection. Oliver & Company wasn't due to be released theatrically until November 18th, 1988, and no other animated movies were due to come out. I'm pretty sure my parents rented this release for my siblings and I sometime before 1995 when the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection release came out. I remember seeing Cinderella when I was really young, but I don't really remember when it was or if it was on VHS or on TV. As I mentioned earlier, the more iconic Walt Disney Classics logo debuted on this release. It's also the first Classics tape to have previews at the beginning of the tape. The early tapes had previews for the early 1980s home video releases for the live action movies, but no mention of theatrical releases. This tape has a preview for the upcoming theatrical release of Oliver & Company. I have this tape in my current VHS collection.

1989 was a third lean year for the line, with only Bambi having been released that year. It's another tape with only one preview before the movie. That preview was for the theatrical release of The Little Mermaid. I don't know what it was about 1988, but something that year switched at Disney because suddenly they were promoting their theatrical releases of animated movies, though The Sword in the Stone had a preview for the 1986 home video release for the 1985 live action film, The Journey of Natty Gann at the beginning. This is how I saw Bambi as I owned this tape growing up. We kept it at my grandparents's place. I do remember watching it at least once while we were there. When I started building up my VHS collection again almost two years ago, this is one I made sure to put back into my collection, unaware that our original copy was still at Nana's house. 

May 18th, 1990 was a major date for the Walt Disney Classics collection, and for Walt Disney Home Video in general. It's the date that The Little Mermaid was released on home video, giving it the distinction of being the first modern animated Disney movie to be released on home video. Something changed in the six years between the original decision to launch this line of home video releases, and the release of The Little Mermaid. Maybe it has something to do with movies like Lady and the Tramp doing well at the box office for theatrical re-releases as well as on home video that finally swayed the studio to start releasing current animated movies on home video as well. Whatever the case may have been, this was a huge difference between the attitude of the studio when they released Robin Hood in 1984.

1990 also saw the release of Peter Pan for the first time. This was the first of three tapes to have a behind the scenes preview for an upcoming animated movie. In this case it was The Rescuers Down Under. The preview was my first time seeing some of the Disney animators, such as Glen Keane, and my first time seeing Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt, and Jeffrey Katzenberg as well. I don't remember exactly when I got Peter Pan, but it was probably around the same time that I got The Jungle Book. This tape also includes a preview for the home video release of The Little Mermaid, which had just come out four months earlier. Even though it's had several home video releases in the last thirty years, this is the one I think of when I think of Peter Pan just because it's the one I grew up watching. 

1991 was a huge year for the Walt Disney Classics, as it had the largest number of releases in a single year with a whopping seven releases. Only three of these releases were movies that had never been released on home video before, while the remaining four were re-releases of previously released tapes. The first of the seven releases was The Jungle Book, which was released on home video for the first time on the heels of it's theatrical re-release the previous year. This tape is my favourite in the entire line. It's the one I watched the most when I was a kid and I watched it on repeat all the time. I also watched it in rotation with a few non-Disney VHS tapes as well. As with Peter Pan, The Jungle Book had a behind the scenes preview on it. This time it was for the 1991 release of Beauty and the Beast. Both Katzenberg and Keane appear in the preview. As do Angela Lansbury and composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Like I said, this one was one of the tapes I owned when I was a kid and I watched it all the time. Oh and a preview for the home video release of The Rescuers Down Under is played after the behind the scenes preview of Beauty and the Beast.

Alice in Wonderland was the first of four Walt Disney Classics re-releases to come out in 1991. At least it's the first one listed on the Disney Wiki page for the Walt Disney Classics as it and the other three re-releases all came out on the same day. I have this release in my collection now. I think this is also how I saw Alice in Wonderland when I was a kid if I didn't see the movie on TV, which is also entirely possible. I'm pretty sure I saw the movie on this tape at the hospital though since I don't remember renting it. 1991 was also a stable year for Disney movies. Even though The Rescuers Down Under was a box office failure, Disney didn't pretend it didn't exist like they had been doing with The Black Cauldron since 1985 and Katzenberg was eager to move along with Beauty and the Beast without any real hesitation on his part. Which is pretty good, given his attitude towards Animation only six years earlier. There aren't any previews on this tape.

The second of the four 1991 home video re-releases was Dumbo. I'm pretty sure I saw this movie at the hospital because I don't recall seeing it at home unless we rented one of the earlier VHS releases of the movie. Which is entirely possible since we did rent alot of movies whose VHS releases were from the '80s even though many of them had newer releases in the '90s. I just remember the cover for this VHS release of Dumbo being the one I saw when I watched this movie in the '90s. So I'm pretty sure I saw it in the hospital since I was there often enough. Regardless, I have this tape in my collection now. There aren't any previews on this tape. Just the Walt Disney Classics logo before the movie starts.

The third re-release in 1991 was Robin Hood. I've talked about this tape a lot on this blog, so I won't say too much more about it here. You know the story of how I always got interrupted watching this movie because I would watch it in the waiting room at the Cardiology clinic at CHEO and would always get called in for my appointment before the tape was finished. I own this tape now, though mine is the previewless variant, which I'm about 99% certain is the one I watched at CHEO too. The original version had two home video previews on the tape. One for The Jungle Book and one for The Rescuers Down Under.

The final re-release in 1991 was The Sword in the Stone. Now, I am 100% certain that this was the edition that my parents rented for us from Rogers Video, because it was the only version in stores by the time I was old enough to remember seeing this movie. As with Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo, The Sword in the Stone has no previews on the tape before the movie. I don't know if that's because the releases are just an update from the original releases, which had no previews on them, or there was another reason for there to be no previews on them, all I know is that the 1991 VHS release of The Sword in the Stone has no previews on it. 

The second new release of 1991 was The Rescuers Down Under. Despite being a box office flop, Disney put the movie out on home video relatively quickly, it having been released on home video, only ten months after the film's theatrical release. I had this movie when I was a kid and I think I watched fairly frequently, though Wilbur being in the hospital freaked me out because I was a kid who was in the hospital all the time, and seeing it in a movie just scared me. The only preview on this tape is the one for The Jungle Book, which was on the 1991 re-release of Robin Hood as well. I thought it was cool that this movie came out on home video the same year as The Jungle Book.

The final Walt Disney Classics release in 1991 was also a brand new release. That release was Fantasia. But this release was different. While all the previous VHS releases in the Walt Disney Classics collection had the Classics logo on the spine and said either "Walt Disney's Classic" or "A Walt Disney Classic", depending on the era the movie was produced in, Fantasia doesn't mention the Walt Disney Classics at all on the packaging. Instead it says "Walt Disney's Masterpiece" with no logo anywhere on the box or on the tape's label on the cassette itself. However, the Walt Disney Classics logo still appears on the tape before the movie. This is another tape that I had at my grandparents's place, along with Bambi. To be honest I don't actually remember watching Fantasia when I was a kid. I've seen it since then, but I don't think we ever actually watched it. One thing about the tapes from 1991, is that some, if not all, have a biege tape head instead of the standard black one that most VHS tapes have. The Jungle Book has it, Dumbo has it, and Fantasia has it, I think The Rescuers Down Under has it, but Alice in Wonderland and Robin Hood don't, and I don't know if The Sword in the Stone has it or not. I got it back into my collection earlier this year, which is cool because it's one I would really like to watch on VHS.

1992 produced four releases in the Walt Disney Classics line, two classics and two modern films. The first of that year's releases was 101 Dalmatians. Of course this was that movie's debut on home video. I had this tape growing up and it's a movie I quite enjoyed. I don't remember how often I watched it when I was a kid, but it definitely wasn't as many times as I watched Peter Pan and The Jungle Book. This is also the first tape to have a preview for the then upcoming theatrical release of Aladdin, which was still a few months away. There aren't any home video previews on this tape though, like there had been on previous tapes. This is one of the most recent additions to my current VHS collection, having gotten it in the stack of VHS tapes that Michelle and Jonathan gave me a month ago

Next up is The Great Mouse Detective. Despite having been in theatres back in 1986, Disney sat on this movie for home video release until after it's 1992 theatrical re-release because of that mentality the studio had about home video in the mid-'80s. This is also only third more modern Disney animated movie to be released on home video, after The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under. This was the third tape that we had at my grandparents's place when I was a kid. I only really remember watching it once or twice when I was over there, and then I remember borrowing it when I was in high school and watching it on my TV/VCR combo set. Back in early March I grabbed this tape from Nana's house when we were there one weekend, before the pandemic hit, so it's in my personal collection now. Like the previous tape, this one only has a preview for Aladdin, though it's a different one from the preview on 101 Dalmatians. There also isn't a home video preview on the tape either.

The third Classics home video release in 1992 was The Rescuers. As you can imagine, I owned this tape as well when I was a kid, though we got it quite a bit later than some of the other tapes. In fact, I think we got it after we had gotten the next three tapes in the line, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio and Aladdin. There weren't any previews for this movie on other tapes for some unknown reason. Maybe because the sequel was already out on home video and had done poorly at the box office, so Disney didn't feel the need to market the home video release for this movie, even though they marketed the heck out of the home video release for the sequel, The Rescuers Down Under only the year before. I liked this one though and enjoyed watching it from time to time. There are two home video previews on this tape, but no preview for Aladdin. The first preview is for the then upcoming home video release of Beauty and the Beast and the second is for The Great Mouse Detective, which had just come out on VHS two months earlier.

The final Classics release for 1992 was Beauty and the Beast. Yeah, I don't think I have to tell you that I owned this tape do I? My sister and I watched this movie all the time when we were kids. In fact this was probably our most watched Disney VHS tape after Peter Pan and The Jungle Book. We freaking loved this movie! I still do. I honestly believe that this movie was Disney's best animated movie of the '90s. I love Aladdin, The Lion King, Hercules and Mulan, and enjoy Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but Beauty and the Beast works on every level. So naturally, when I got a stack of VHS tapes from my buddy Lance back in February and this tape was in it, I had to grab it to put it back into my collection even though I have the movie on DVD. It's classic nostalgia. This tape has lots of previews on it, both before AND after the movie. Some editions only had the preview for Aladdin at the beginning of the tape, with the home video previews for Pinocchio and 101 Dalmatians after the movie, while the one I had as a kid, as well as the one I have now (I think) has the Pinocchio preview before the movie, leaving the one for 101 Dalmatians alone after the tape. Also, at the beginning of the tape, after the Aladdin theatrical preview, there's a preview for a theatrical re-release of Sleeping Beauty, which was originally slated to happen in late 1993, but then didn't actually happen until 1995.

1993 saw only two Classics releases. The first was the re-release of Pinocchio. Yeah, I owned this movie too. Though we didn't watch it quite as often as some of the other Disney movies we had on VHS just because it scared my sister so much it caused her nightmares every time she watched it. So I think this was one movie that my brother and I watched together. Like all of our old Disney VHS tapes, except for the ones we had at my grandparents's place, we got rid of it sometime in the late 2000s or early 2010s. But I got it back in my collection from the box of tapes that Michelle and Jonathan brought over for me to peruse last month. Pinocchio has two previews on it. The first is for the theatrical release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, where I saw Tim Burton for the first time. The second is for the then current theatrical release of Aladdin. There aren't any home video release previews on the tape since no other Disney movies were being released on home video in 1993 until Aladdin at the end of the year. No animated movies anyway. The animated movies hadn't previewed the live action movies being produced by Walt Disney Pictures on their home video releases since the 1986 release of The Sword in the Stone had the preview for The Journey of Natty Gann on it. But, I do know that Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey had a VHS release in mid-1993, since it had a theatrical release in early 1993.

The second and final Classics release in 1993 was Aladdin. Yes, we owned this one too, and yes, I re-acquired this tape earlier this year in the stack of tapes I got from Lance. Aladdin is another Disney movie that I love and that my siblings and I watched all the time on VHS. Though I don't think we watched it quite as much as we watched Beauty and the Beast. Unlike Pinocchio though, Aladdin was a movie that all three of us could watch together any time we wanted to and we could watch it whenever we wanted to because we had our own top loader VCR hooked up to an old dial TV set in the second floor kids common area outside of our bedrooms of the old log farmhouse we had moved into in the summer of 1993. I'm also about 95% certain that we got Aladdin on VHS for Christmas 1993 since it was released on home video on October 1st, 1993. Come to think of it, I think we also got Pinocchio for Christmas that year too, if I didn't get it as an Easter present instead of chocolate (since I couldn't eat chocolate anymore), or for my birthday that year. There are two previews on this tape. The first is for the upcoming theatrical release of The Lion King which was due to come out in the summer of 1994. The second is for the home video re-release of Pinocchio, which had come out earlier that year, which I just talked about. 

The 25th and final release in the Walt Disney Classics collection was The Fox and the Hound, the third Disney animated movie from the '80s to be released on home video. I didn't own this movie when I was a kid, but I do remember exactly when and where I saw the movie for the first time. I saw it in June 1994, in the hospital on 4 East, when I had been admitted with the chicken pox. I was in bed and my roommate's mother put it on for us before she left to go get herself some dinner, and my parents were gone for the night too. I remember laughing as Dinky (a sparrow) and Boomer (a Woodpecker) were trying to catch a worm who was eluding them and I remember thinking that Boomer sounded alot like Tigger, because Paul Winchell, who voiced Tigger at the time, voiced Boomer in the movie. Even though I never owned the movie on VHS when I was a kid, I grabbed it when I saw it in that box of tapes that Michelle and Jonathan brought over for me to look through last month, because I remembered it so fondly from that one time I saw it at the hospital when I was a kid. Plus I have it on DVD as well and watched it the night of the day I got the DVD. 

After ten years, Disney wrapped up the Walt Disney Classics collection, to pave the way for the next line of home video releases, the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection. The longevity of this line vindicated Ron Miller's belief in 1984 that home video would be profitable for Disney and it's animated movies. Though Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was deemed early in the line's lifetime to be "untouchable". Meaning it could never be released on home video because it would diminish it's value for theatrical re-releases. By the line's end in 1994 though, Disney's policy on this changed and Snow White was prepped to be released on October 28th, 1994 to kick off the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection.

A few other movies were absent from this line as well. Besides The Black Cauldron and Oliver & Company, the movies that didn't get a release under the Walt Disney Classics banner were Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, The Aristocats, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Though The Three Caballeros, Fun and Fancy Free, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh had all had home video releases in the early '80s, along with Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland, and The Three Caballeros had a home video re-release in 1988 and again in 1991, though it was not released under the Classics banner, despite having packaging that was similar to the Classics releases, with the wrap-around artwork and the diamond with a character's face on the bottom of the case's spine. All of these movies would get releases in either the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection in the mid to late '90s or the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection in 2000.

For me personally, the Walt Disney Classics collection is my childhood. This is how I saw these Disney movies if I didn't see them on TV. This is what kept me entertained for hours upon hours during my waking hours if I wasn't watching Barney, Teddy Ruxpin, Winnie the Pooh or Star Trek. These are the movies that made me a fan of Disney animation. Just seeing some of these releases sitting on my shelf transports me back to my childhood when I would sit together with my family and watch a Disney movie for an hour and a half. And so does taking one off the shelf, opening up the case, taking the tape out of the case and popping it into the VCR to return to that simpler, but uncertain time.

And that my friends is my comprehensive look at the Walt Disney Classics. This is a post that I have been wanting to do since last year when I started picking these tapes up at flea markets, geek sales and thrift stores and now that I have 13 of the tapes and a VCR to play them on, I thought now would be a good time to start talking about these lines more in depth. I'll be back on Wednesday with a fun little post about the state of pop culture in 2020. Until then have a great evening folks.

Links

Walt Disney Classics: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Walt_Disney_Classics

VHS Collector: https://vhscollector.com/

*all images were taken from the Walt Disney Classics page on the Disney Wiki site.