Hey guys! How's it going? I'm pretty good. I know, I said I wouldn't be posting anything until tomorrow when I do my review of the first episode of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, but when I got up this morning I decided that I would do the second part in my History of Disney Movies on Home Video series, which I haven't done since November. Last time I talked about the Walt Disney Classics, which were released (and re-released) from 1984 until 1994. So now we continue with the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection which expanded the list of movies available on home video greatly. So let's get into it.
By 1994 Disney movies were selling extremely well on home video. I can't seem to find a reason for this, but at some point, probably in 1993, Disney decided to discontinue the Walt Disney Classics line and start the Masterpiece Collection. Probably because a certain movie was being released to home video and they wanted a special line of home video releases to include it in. So I think that's the real reason the Classics were discontinued and the Masterpiece Collection was started. There really isn't a whole lot to say as a general overview for the Masterpiece Collection since there isn't as much history to look into given that Disney had now been releasing their animated movies on home video for a decade at this point.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released on home video for the first time ever on October 28th 1994, seven months after The Fox and the Hound had been released, which ended the Walt Disney Classics Collection. This was an interesting play for Disney because up to this point, Snow White had been considered to be one of the "untouchable" Disney movies, meaning that it would never be released on home video because the theatrical re-releases were still bringing in tons of money. But like I said earlier, I think the Masterpiece Collection was started because they had decided to release Snow White on home video.
The interesting thing about the early printings of the VHS for Snow White is that while the cover says "Walt Disney's Masterpiece" and the spine has the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection logo at the top, the logo isn't on the tape itself. Instead the Walt Disney Home Video logo that was still in use on the cartoon shorts, Disney Sing-Along Songs, and TV show tapes coming out at the time, was put onto the tape. I think that might just be because Snow White was pressed before the logo was ready because the other nine tapes that also came out on October 28th, had the Masterpiece logo on them. Also, Snow White was one of the tapes that we had at Nana and Grandpa's house. I have it in my personal VHS collection and I watched it the other night and it's a first printing version as it has the Walt Disney Home Video logo on it instead of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection logo.
The second release in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection is also somewhat of an odd play for Disney, because it's Mary Poppins, and except for a segment that includes animation, it's a live action feature film. Mary Poppins has had many home video releases prior to this one, with the first having come out on December 30th, 1980. So it was one of the really early Walt Disney Home Video releases. However 1994 did mark the film's 30th anniversary so it makes sense that Disney would re-release it on home video as part of the Masterpiece Collection, since that seemed to be the lineup that had the most special anniversary home video releases in it. We didn't own Mary Poppins when I was a kid. I remember renting it at some point, though I think it was most likely one of the earlier home video releases from the 80s rather than this one or any of the later VHS releases. I mainly know the songs from the movie because of the Disney Sing-Along Songs tapes.
The third release in the series was Dumbo, one of the most evergreen movies in the Disney collection. The weird thing about the Masterpiece Collection is that alot of it's releases are re-releases of movies that had been released in the Walt Disney Classics line. And while there was a full decade between the Classics release and the Masterpiece release for a couple of the movies, for many of them there wasn't the traditional 6 to 7 years between the releases. For example, with Dumbo, the Masterpiece Collection release came out in 1994, which was only three years after the last time it had been released in the Classics line, back in 1991, most likely with a reprint in 1992 and 1993 as well. So if there was a reprint of the 1991 Classics release in 1993, that's only a year between that final Classics printing and the first Masterpiece release in 1994. Again it's highly unusual for Disney to do that.
After Dumbo came Alice in Wonderland. I say after, but they all came out on the exact same day, which was another first for Disney as they usually spread out their home video releases across a year rather than releasing them all at once. Unlike the second Classics release, this release of Alice in Wonderland included the original RKO logo that had been on the movie during it's theatrical releases. By the way I really like the cover design for these early tapes. They were only used for nine of the first ten tapes, then was abandoned when The Lion King was released in 1995. Though it was brought back for Melody Time and a later re-release of Mary Poppins and sort of brought back for Bambi.
Next up was Robin Hood, which had originally started off the Walt Disney Classics line ten years earlier because it wasn't a super popular film, having done okay at the box office for both it's initial 1973 theatrical release, and it's 1982 theatrical re-release. But by the time of it's Masterpiece Collection release in 1994, it had proven itself thanks to both it's 1984 home video release in the Classics line and it's 1991 home video release in the same line. And while I didn't see this movie in this lineup, you all know that I've seen it in the Classics line, and it's one of my favourite Disney movies of all time.
Next came The Sword in the Stone, another sleeper hit for Walt Disney Productions. One thing I haven't mentioned so far is that Disney Feature Animation didn't release a movie in 1993. Instead they did the final theatrical re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which is why it came out on home video when it did, the direct-to-video release of the sequel to Aladdin, The Return of Jafar, and then The Nightmare Before Christmas was released through Touchstone Pictures. And while The Lion King was released in the summer of 1994, before the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection began, it had just finished it's theatrical run by the time the lineup began and so it wouldn't get it's home video release until early 1995. Which is why there's only been classic films in this lineup so far. As for The Sword in the Stone, it's a good movie but there's really nothing special about this release. At this point the movies that were released in the Classics line and re-released early in the Masterpiece Collection, are basically just the same prints used for the second releases from the Classics collection, with new previews added at the beginning. I also didn't own this tape so I don't have much to say about it than what I said in the first part of this series.
However, the next title on the list is Pete's Dragon, which is an even weirder choice than Mary Poppins was. This movie is a completely live action feature, with the only piece of animation in the whole movie being the dragon, Elliott. But again, that's probably why it's in the Masterpiece Collection rather than in a home video lineup like the Walt Disney Family Film Collection, where it's just live action movies with no animation in them at all. I remember watching Pete's Dragon at school in 1994 or 1995, the latest being 1996. So it's possible that it was this release, but it just as easily could've been one of the earlier releases as there were VHS releases in 1980, 1985, 1987 and 1991. I honestly don't remember.
Like Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks makes sense for this home video line because it has an entire segment that's done in animation. I remember renting this movie when I was a kid. It was from Rogers Video. It wasn't this release though. They had the 1986 release so that's what we rented. I remember liking it, but since we didn't own it, I only saw it the one or two times that we rented it.
Next is The Three Caballeros, which also had a home video release in the early 80s and again in 1988 and 1991. This is the first time it was released with the other Walt Disney animated movies. It's a package film which was what Walt made in the 40s because he just couldn't get the money to make full length animated features like he'd done with Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Bambi earlier in the decade. I've seen this movie once, about ten years ago. I mainly know it because the title song was one of the songs on Disney Sing-Along Songs: Heigh-Ho, which I had. It also wasn't advertised all that hard during this period either.
The final Masterpiece Collection release to come out on October 28th 1994 was So Dear to My Heart. Much like Pete's Dragon, this movie confuses me as to why it's part of this collection. It's not super popular, it's never had any theatrical re-releases, and it's only ever had four home video releases. 3 VHS releases and one DVD release with the DVD being a Disney Movie Club Exclusive from 2008. Though according to the Disney Wiki it was supposed to be released on DVD as part of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection in the early 2000s, but the release was cancelled for no apparent reason. I guess it's here because there is some animation in it, and it was the last live action movie produced by Walt in the 1940s. I've never seen it and I don't know anyone who has seen it either, so I don't know anything about it. Just what I read on the Disney Wiki while writing this post.
1995 was actually a lean year for the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection, with only two releases that year. However the first of those releases was The Lion King a movie that had dominated people's lives in the summer of 1994. It was released on home video on March 3rd, 1995. Not only did I see it in theatres but we owned this release as well. We watched this movie all the time when I was a kid. It was a favourite of mine as well as a favourite of my brother and sister as well. I also have it in my current collection.
The final Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection release in 1995 was Cinderella. The movie had been previously released in 1988 as part of the Walt Disney Classics Collection and it had been seven years since that release had come out. And unlike other Classics releases Cinderella didn't get a re-release in the Classics line in the early 90s. This is the release that we had when I was a kid. I don't really remember watching it, but I'm pretty sure we did watch it a few times. It was basically my sister's tape though so we'd only watch it if she wanted to. It was released on October 4th, 1995.
As with The Lion King the previous year, the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection began 1996 with the home video debut of Walt Disney Feature Animation's latest summer blockbuster, Pocahontas, which came out in theatres on June 23rd, 1995, and was released on home video on February 28th 1996. We didn't own this movie when I was a kid, but we did rent it. It hadn't done nearly as well in theatres as Disney had expected it to, with it not making nearly as much as The Lion King had the year before. Personally, I think it's an okay movie. I haven't seen it more than a couple of times since we didn't own it and we only rented it the one time.
The next movie to come out was The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which hadn't had a home video release since 1982. Having said that, the Disney Wiki says it had a home video release in 1984 as part of the Walt Disney Cartoon Classics line on the home video release page for the movie, but on the page for the Walt Disney Cartoon Classics line, it says it's a non-U.S. release, with a question mark after the 1984 date. So I tend to go with that 1984 release being outside of North America, and the 1982 release being the last home video release here in North America until this 1996 Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection release came out. It being Winnie the Pooh, you'd think I'd have owned this release, well I didn't. Mainly because I already had the three cartoons that made up the film on VHS. I saw the feature film version on TV sometime in the 90s, but we never owned it or rented it. I have the 25th Anniversary DVD release of the movie, but this VHS release is on my list of tapes to pick up at some point. It was released on March 27th, 1996.
Next up was the home video debut of The Aristocats. It was released on April 24th, 1996. We borrowed it from someone sometime in the early 2000s but I knew of the movie because "Everybody Wants to be a Cat" was on Disney Sing-Along Songs: The Bare Necessities which I had when I was a kid. It's interesting to see when certain movies were released on home video and the reasoning for waiting for so long. Back in the late 80s and early 90s things were alot different in terms of Disney putting movies out on home video because of how long it took for movies like The Rescuers to come out on home video compared to the evergreen films like Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland. And so movies like The Aristocats didn't get home video releases when they easily could've done.
The final Masterpiece Collection release for 1996 was Oliver & Company, having been released on September 25th, 1996. Though it wasn't the final Disney Home Video release for 1996 as Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too, James and the Giant Peach, Toy Story, Disney Sing-Along Songs: Pongo & Perdita, and the Disney Favorite Stories release of Mickey's Christmas Carol all came out that year after Oliver & Company did. This is one of the Disney movies that we didn't own and didn't rent when I was a kid. I knew about it because of clips used in the previews on the Walt Disney Classics tapes I owned but I didn't actually see the movie until I was an adult.
1997 saw a slight difference in the home video releases in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection. When it was released on February 4th, 1997, Bambi had something extra at the end of the movie. It was a making of featurette called Bambi: The Magic Behind the Masterpiece. Up to this point home video releases didn't have much on them besides the movies and maybe some previews on them unless they were deluxe releases. The exception, that I've had experience with, being the 1995 home video release of the Star Wars Trilogy which has Leonard Maltin's three part interview with George Lucas at the beginning of each tape. But with the Masterpiece Collection release of Bambi also being a special 55th Anniversary Limited Edition, Disney decided to put this special feature on it. Which is cool. I didn't have this edition of Bambi when I was a kid. Instead we had the Walt Disney Classics release from 1989. However, it was in the box of VHS that Michelle and Jonathan brought over for me back in September, so I grabbed it to expand my Masterpiece Collection VHS collection.
Exactly one month after Bambi was released, Disney released The Hunchback of Notre Dame on home video as part of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection. This was just a standard release with no bonus content on it. I had this one as a kid and I don't remember watching it all that often. Probably because it was darker than most of the other more recent Disney movies that came out. We had it though and I have it in my collection again thanks to Michelle and Jonathan.
Up next was the 50th Anniversary Limited Edition release of Fun and Fancy Free which hadn't had a home video release since 1982. Because it was also a special anniversary edition, this release also had a making of featurette after the movie, called The Story Behind Fun and Fancy Free, which would later be included on the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection VHS and DVD released in 2000. This was another tape that we didn't have and didn't rent when I was a kid. I remember seeing the Mickey and the Beanstalk segment on TV, but I didn't see the full movie until I was an adult.
The next few releases were all Limited Edition Masterpiece Collection tapes so they had bonus features at the end of them. The first of these was the 1997 re-release of Mary Poppins. This was one of the few re-releases in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection that was completely different from the previous release in the lineup. Certain movies had new printings of the 1994 releases, but only Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, and Robin Hood got brand new releases in 1997 and 1999 respectively. The bonus feature at the end of this tape was called Mary Poppins: Practically Perfect in Every Way.
Next in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection lineup was Sleeping Beauty. The last time the movie had had a home video release was in 1986, pretty early on in the Walt Disney Classics line and right after the initial Classics release of Alice in Wonderland. So it was definitely time that it had a re-release. Especially since it had had it's final theatrical re-release in 1995. This is the release of Sleeping Beauty that we had when I was a kid. It was my mom's favourite Disney movie and we got it for her for Christmas in 1997, as it had been released on September 16th that year. And by we, I mean my dad because he bought it, but we put it from the four of us. I also have a copy of this tape in my current VHS collection.
The final Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection release for 1997 was the 30th Anniversary Limited Edition release, with bonus making of featurette, of The Jungle Book. I remember seeing commercials for this back in 1997 and I remember asking my mom if she could buy it for me because The Jungle Book is my favourite Disney movie, but she said no because we already had the Walt Disney Classics release from 1991 and we didn't need two copies of the same movie. I totally understand that back then since being a VHS collector wasn't really a thing yet since VHS was still the primary home video format in 1997 even though DVD was starting to become a thing at this point. However I found a brand new, factory sealed, copy for $5 at the Ottawa Geek Market in 2019 so naturally I bought it because I wasn't about to pass up a factory sealed copy of The Jungle Book on VHS for $5. I'm still hoping to get a copy of the original 1991 Walt Disney Classics release, but I am also very happy to have this edition in my VHS collection.
1998 started the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection off with the home video debut of the newest Disney animated classic, Hercules. For the next two years this would be the trend for the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection, putting out the newest movie out on VHS at the beginning of the year with the remaining releases for the year being older movies. I had this tape when I was a kid, and we watched it a couple of times, but nowhere near as often as movies like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. I enjoy Hercules. In fact I think it's an underrated film for sure. But there's just something about it that just doesn't hold up as well as the other three movies that I mentioned. I also have a copy in my collection now though I haven't watched it yet.
The second Masterpiece Collection release in 1998 was the 55th Anniversary Fully Restored Limited Edition of Peter Pan. It has a making of featurette at the end of the tape called You Can Fly!: The Making of Peter Pan, which has been on every home video release of the movie since then, including the more recent Walt Disney Signature Collection Blu-ray from 2018. Because I had the 1990 Walt Disney Classics release, I didn't get this when it first came out on March 3rd 1998. However I do have it in my collection now, which is pretty cool.
Disney re-released two movies in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection on March 31st 1998. The first was a barebones re-release of Mary Poppins which has the cover art that was on the Limited Edition release from the previous year, but it's now set in the classic Masterpiece Collection cover design from the early tapes in the collection that were released in 1994. I don't actually remember ever seeing this release anywhere.
The second release on March 31st 1998 was the Fully Restored Special Edition of The Little Mermaid. While we'd rented the original 1990 Walt Disney Classics release of the movie when I was a kid, I do remember seeing this edition in stores and seeing the commercials for it on TV. I think this was also the first time that I remember hearing references to the Disney Vault in the commercials because this tape was only going to be out for a short time. The only bonus feature on this tape is the music video for "Part of Your World". I have this tape along with the 1990 Classics edition in my collection now.
Next up is the home video debut of the 1948 Walt Disney package film, Melody Time. Despite it being a 50th Anniversary Special Edition, the cover has the original Masterpiece Collection design from the 1994 tapes and no bonus features on it. Melody Time is a movie I didn't get to see when I was a kid as it wasn't available on home video until 1998 and we didn't rent it or own it. I thought it was okay when I finally saw it as an adult, but I actually liked Fun and Fancy Free better.
The next 1998 release was the movie that Disney had done everything they could to pretend it didn't exist. After The Black Cauldron bombed hard at the box office in 1985, Disney didn't do a thing with it. No theatrical re-releases, at least not in North America, and no home video releases. It seemed like it was just going to disappear once it left theatres. But then on August 4th, 1998 The Black Cauldron debuted on VHS only to everyone's surprise. Even though I don't like this movie that much, I would love to get my hands on a copy of this tape just because the movie's history fascinates me immensely. I haven't found a copy yet but I haven't exactly been out thrifting in more than a year.
The final release of the year came out on September 15th, 1998 and that release was Lady and the Tramp. This movie hadn't seen a home video release since the Walt Disney Classics release came out in 1987. I didn't have this tape when I was a kid and I don't remember renting it. I did see the movie in the early 90s because we rented the Classics release. I have it in my collection now and it has a teaser for the direct-to-video sequel Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure on it but I haven't watched the movie yet so I don't know if the teaser is before or after the movie.
The first Masterpiece Collection release for 1999 and the final new Disney animated movie to be released on home video in the lineup as well as the last one to be released on home video in the 90s was Mulan and it was released on February 2nd, 1999. Mulan was the last Disney movie that we owned on VHS as the next Disney movie that we owned was Lilo & Stitch and we had it on DVD. We still rented Disney movies on VHS right into the early 2000s, but this was the last one we owned. I think my parents felt that we were getting to be too old to be getting Disney movies for our birthdays and Christmas like we had been my entire life. At least on VHS, because like I said we still got a few Disney and Pixar movies on DVD as well as classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs throughout the 2000s.
The second release of 1999 actually came out with some controversy surrounding it due to some suggestive imagery which you couldn't actually tell what it was unless you paused the movie at a particular moment. The Rescuers was that movie and during the montage of Bernard and Bianca flying to the Bayou on Orville the Albatross, they fly by some apartment buildings and apparently there's a topless woman drawn into one of the windows. Again, unless you pause the movie at that particular moment you'd never actually see it, even if you're looking for it because the windows go by so fast they're blurry. But Disney got complaints about it and so they pulled the movie from shelves and re-released it. Originally it had come out on January 5th, before Mulan, but due to the recall, it was pulled and re-released on March 23rd, 1999. The post-Recall edition included a short from the TV series, Mickey Mouse Works at the beginning of the movie called Pluto Gets the Paper: Bubble Gum.
101 Dalmatians came out on March 9th, 1999 to less controversy than The Rescuers had. Probably because nobody actually did anything with the movie. I had the Walt Disney Classics edition from 1992 so obviously we didn't buy or rent this edition. There really isn't much else to say about this edition since I don't own it and I haven't seen it. The cover is kind of cool though.
1999 saw one final home video debut in the Masterpiece Collection when The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad came out on VHS on May 25th. Despite being a 50th Anniversary there aren't any bonus features. At this point Disney was starting to release movies on DVD with both the Walt Disney Limited Issues line and the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection so they were starting to put less effort into the Masterpiece Collection since it was winding down at this point. I think that's why the Masterpiece Collection ended in 1999 even though it easily could've continued for at least two more years.
The next release to come out was the 1999 re-release of Alice in Wonderland. Again, no bonus features so aside from the usual previews and the movie itself, there's nothing on the tape. I didn't know this tape existed because I wasn't getting Disney movies as often by this point and this came out in the summer of 1999 so we weren't renting Disney movies quite as often either. I think we rented A Bug's Life when that came out on home video in April of that year. But I don't recall there being a preview for this release on that tape. Not like back on the Walt Disney Classics tapes where certain movies were heavily advertised on the other Walt Disney Classics tapes.
The final Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection release was Robin Hood and it came out on July 13th, 1999, the same day as the re-release of Alice in Wonderland. I really don't have anything else to say about this release because I've never owned it or rented it. It's interesting that fifteen years earlier this movie proved to the Disney executives that home video releases were a viable thing for the company to pursue by being the highest selling home video release at Christmas in 1984. Then in 1999 it wrapped up the second line of Disney movies on VHS.
Aside from the Walt Disney Classics, the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection was how I saw many Disney movies that weren't included in the Classics series. Especially the newer films that were coming out every year since, aside from The Lion King and Mulan, I didn't get to go to the movies very much in the 90s to see them. And while the Masterpiece Collection was only around for half as long as the Classics had been, it had more releases due to the first ten movies coming out on the same day in 1994 and the focus being on new releases and less on re-releases of the same four or five movies. Which was nice.
That's it for this post. I'm not sure how, or when I'm going to do the next part of the series. For the Walt Disney Limited Issues DVD releases I'll do what I did for the Walt Disney Classics and Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection. However once I get to the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection, I'm thinking of splitting the post up into two parts. The first part will be the VHS releases and the second will focus solely on the DVD releases. For these next two sections I'm going into unknown territory because I didn't grow up with either the Limited Issues or the Gold Classic Collection so I won't have as much to say about them, though I do have the Limited Issue DVD release of The Jungle Book so I'll probably watch it just to see how Disney designed these early DVD releases. Unfortunately I don't have any of the Gold Classic releases, but there will be more bonus features to talk about with those. The Platinum Editions, Diamond Editions and Signature Collection releases are all ones that I have examples of in my collection for me to look at so we'll see.
Alright guys that's gonna be it for me for today. But I will be back sometime tomorrow for my review of the first episode of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier which drops tomorrow morning on Disney+. So until then have a great night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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