Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing well on this Tuesday. Today I'm going to be talking about the second Neon Mickey era Disney VHS tape in my collection. It's another cartoon short compilation from the Walt Disney Cartoon Classics series, Sport Goofy. It was released in 1983, a year before the Walt Disney Classics launched with Robin Hood. I've also modified this series a little bit so that it focuses on the main release lines such as the Walt Disney Classics, Masterpiece Collection etc, in addition to a few releases, like the original VHS releases for the original four Winnie the Pooh featurettes, and the Disney Sing-Along Songs series, and a few other movies, both live action and animated, that don't fit into the other categories. So without further ado, let's hop into our preferred method of time travel, and go back to 1983, the year that Return of the Jedi was first released to theatres.
The Walt Disney Home Video Cartoon Classics series is one that I'm not all that familiar with. I don't remember seeing any of these releases on the shelves at Rogers Video and we didn't own any of them either. I do remember watching the early Disney cartoons on TV, including a few Goofy ones, such as The Big Wash which my grandmother had taped off the TV, along with Winnie the Pooh and A Day for Eeyore, and I think one or two Chip 'n' Dale cartoons. Basically the idea for this release line is compiling the cartoon shorts according to character and theme. For example, this tape is a collection of seven sports themed Goofy cartoons like How to Play Baseball and Goofy Gymnastics.
I feel like I'm going to be saying this alot during this series, but the opening for this tape is cool. It has a modified version of the Neon Mickey logo that says "The magic lives on...Walt Disney Home Video" which is actually on the back of some of the Neon Mickey clamshells in 1983 as Disney was starting to promote their home video releases by this point.
As previously mentioned in my other Disney home media posts, Ron W. Miller was the CEO of the Walt Disney Company by 1983 and was a year away from being ousted by Roy E. Disney and replaced by Michael Eisner. Miller was a major proponent for Walt Disney Home Video and championed the release of the classic animated movies on home video formats, which is how Dumbo, The Three Caballeros, Fun and Fancy Free, Alice in Wonderland, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh got released on VHS, Betamax, and Laserdisc in the early 80s. But, as we all know, Disney execs were still hesitant to release movies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio on home video since Walt didn't air those on the Disneyland TV series back in the 50s and 60s. Though clips would occasionally be used on the show in the 70s and in specials like the 50th anniversary Snow White TV special hosted by Dick Van Dyke.
Another interesting piece of this history that I just thought of is the timeline for the launch of the Walt Disney Classics. I'll get into that more when I review the 1984 VHS release of Robin Hood, but Disney had to have begun planning that lineup at this point, given they were a year away from Robin Hood's home video debut and decisions had to be made so that the marketing department could promote the release. Especially since the early Walt Disney Classics tapes from 1984, 1985, and 1986 were released concurrently with later Neon Mickey releases. Like I said, I'll get more into that when I talk about the 1984 Robin Hood VHS and the start of the Walt Disney Classics in two weeks.
The ending of the tape is even more cool as it shows the 1983 "Walt Disney and You" promo after the program. This is the first preview on Disney home video releases as the tapes from this period didn't have previews on them generally. This wouldn't start happening until the late 80s with the Walt Disney Classics line though regular Walt Disney Home Video releases of live action movies and series like the Disney Sing-Along Songs releases wouldn't have previews before the movie or program until about 1993 or so. Though The Rocketeer was released on VHS in 1991 or 1992 and it has one preview before the movie. I'll talk about that more when I get to that release.
The program itself wasn't bad. I'm not a sports/athletics guy, so I found these particular Goofy cartoons to be a little boring, though some were pretty funny to watch. Especially the golf one, How to Play Golf. Honestly, the two How to cartoons are probably my favourite, mainly because I've heard of these cartoons for so long, but have never actually seen them before. Goofy doesn't actually talk in any of these cartoons either. There's just a narrator through all of them. Though they do include the Goofy holler in some of them, as well as the Goofy laugh. Which is good.
Overall, this was a fun watch. Seeing that Walt Disney and You promo at the end of the tape made me feel like I was watching a piece of Disney history. In a way I was because the early to mid 80s was the start of Disney video releases. So it's great to be able to look at these pieces of Disney history, as well as pieces of my own childhood, particularly when I get into the Walt Disney Classics and Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection releases. If you're a Disney history buff, both for home video, and for the cartoons themselves, I recommend trying to find a copy. Mine is digitized so I don't actually know how easy the early Walt Disney Cartoon Classics releases are to find. I've heard they're rare, but some people are under the misconception that the Walt Disney Classics releases are rare. So who knows.
That's going to be it for me for today, but I'll be back on Friday for sure for this week's movie review, which is going to be the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz. Next week's Disney VHS review is going to be the ninth volume of the Walt Disney Cartoon Classics series, Donald Duck's First 50 Years. So until then have a great day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
No comments:
Post a Comment