Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was quiet compared to the weekend before that, but still a pretty good one. This post is my 300th post on this blog since I started it in March of last year, at the beginning of the pandemic. So to celebrate 300 posts on the Blogger version of The Review Basement, I'm going to talk about some of my favourite VHS releases, including boxsets. The only criteria I have for this list is they had to be ones I either owned, rented, borrowed or watched at some point in my life. This list isn't in any particular order because it's really hard to rank them since they're all my favourites. So, let's get into it.
First up is the 1991 Walt Disney Classics release of The Jungle Book. If you've read my overview of the Walt Disney Classics as well as my overview of the eleven Walt Disney Classics releases that I had when I was a kid, you know how much I love The Jungle Book. Not just this VHS release, but the movie itself, which is the first movie I remember ever seeing in theatres as it had a theatrical re-release in 1990. Apart from being my favourite movie of all time, the reason this VHS release is one of my favourites as opposed to the 1997 Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection release is because the previews are simple. They aren't promoting EVERYTHING that Disney was putting out at the time. Just a single theatrical release with the behind the scenes featurette on Beauty and the Beast, and a single home video release with the preview for The Rescuers Down Under and that's it.
As cheesy and stupid as it is, I can't help but include the VHS release of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie on this list. Apart from Alpha's Magical Christmas and six episodes from the first season that a friend of mine taped off the TV for me back in 1994, this is the only Power Rangers VHS tape that we had when I was a kid so we watched it alot. In fact, 26 years later, my dad still remembers Ivan Ooze's line from the scene where he meets the Rangers for the first time. Ivan introduces himself and Rocky tells him to pack his bags because he's going right back to where he came from and Ivan accuses him of having a big mouth, mentioning that not much had changed in 6,000 years. The rest of the scene goes like this:
KIMBERLY: "You obviously don't know who you're dealing with Mr. Raisin Head!"
IVAN OOZE: "Really?"
TOMMY: "Yeah! We're the Power Rangers!"
IVAN OOZE: "Ooh, where's my autograph book? So Zordon still uses a bunch of kids to do his dirty work eh? Well, meet my kids!"
And then he proceeds to bring to life his first set of foot soldiers, the Oozemen. And I apologize for subjecting you to the cheesy dialogue this movie has, but c'mon it's good stuff even though it's dumb. Plus the preview for Dunsten Checks In is a teaser. By the way I've still never seen Dunsten Checks In and it's been 26 years. Anyway, just for the fact that my dad remembers that "Ooh where's my autograph book?" line is enough to include this release on my list.
As you know from my Teddy Ruxpin VHS reviews Guests of the Grunges is the first Teddy Ruxpin VHS tape that I ever got. In fact, it might even be the first VHS tape I ever got when I was a kid. I had it pretty early on in my childhood, as it's in a couple of pictures from like 1988 or 1989, before either of my siblings were born. I must've watched this tape a million times and somehow I didn't wear it out. Even though I watched it two or three times in a row sometimes. I know, that sounds crazy, but what else was I going to do when I was stuck at home for long periods of time, due to illness or recovering from being in the hospital? My favourite part of the tape, and all of the Teddy Ruxpin VHS tapes that I reviewed last year, is that Teddy talked to the viewer in the live-action scenes at the beginning and end of the adventure. Like he did in the book and audiotape sets. Which, to this day, is still cool to me.
Next up is the first boxset that I want to talk about, Star Trek: The Movies - 25th Anniversary Collector's Set. Now, I didn't own this set. My dad had Star Trek: The Movie Collection which came out in 1993 and included all six movies starring the cast of the original Star Trek series. However, this boxset is the one that I first saw the first five Star Trek movies in. One of my nurses at CHEO had this boxset and she brought it to me in the hospital in 1991, not long before Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek) came to see me in the hospital. While I loved Star Trek: The Next Generation and had seen a few episodes of TOS at this point, I'd never seen any of the Star Trek movies, which totaled five at the time, with the sixth about to be released for the franchise's 25th Anniversary. Of course, watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan scared the crap out of me as I mentioned in my review of that movie, but I liked the rest of them pretty well and then completely forgot that the Starfleet uniforms with the coloured shirts (white for command, green for medical etc) and maroon jackets were actually from these movies starting with Star Trek II when my dad started buying me the Star Trek comics published by DC Comics in 1992. Go figure. Lol. Honestly, even though Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country isn't included in this boxset, I still prefer it over the one my dad had because the individual cassette boxes for the first five films were designed specifically for this box set with the picture of the Enterprise on the back of the box. Plus the six film boxset was designed weirdly and the tapes only fit into it on an angle and weren't perfectly lined up like this set was.
Next we have the retail release for the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint". This tape is special to me as my late grandfather would watch it with me whenever I was at his and Nana's place because that's where the tape was when I was a kid. Despite having the first five seasons of TNG on DVD, I wish I still had this tape in my collection just so I could put it on and watch the teaser trailer for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country before the episode and think about watching the tape with Grandpa. Hopefully someday I'll either find the original copy in a box somewhere here, or find another copy at a thrift store somewhere.
I actually saw Digimon: The Movie in theatres when it came out in 2000, though I probably saw it in early 2001 since it was still wintertime but Christmas was over. I was in the Teens First mentorship program at the time, so my mentor, Ahmed took me to see it. We eventually got the tape when it came out not long after. I loved Digimon when it was on in the early 2000s. Pokemon was good too, but I dropped off of the Pokemon anime around 1999 or 2000. Whereas I was watching Digimon well into the third season, which aired here in North America during the 2001-2002 TV season on Fox Kids alongside Power Rangers Time Force (which I wasn't watching in case you were wondering). Anyway, there's a whole segment before the movie which is a catch up on the first season of Digimon narrated by Tai Kamiya. There's also an Angela Anaconda short attached to the movie which is annoying because nobody went to the theatres or bought the movie on home video to watch an Angela Anaconda short even if the short is related to the movie. They went to see Digimon: The Movie. Although the case stands out on the shelf because there's a big image of Davis from season 2 on the spine and not in a window picture like most VHS tapes had. It's so big that it actually takes up half of the spine.
Next is Barney & the Backyard Gang: The Backyard Show. I've also reviewed this tape on the blog before, so I won't go into too much more detail here, but despite it being the first Barney tape ever, and being so different from what Barney would become, this is still my favourite Barney tape, and my favourite Backyard Gang tape. It's the 1992 release that came out, probably, to coincide with the debut of Barney & Friends on PBS since it has the Barney & Friends Barney on the front cover with his name in the show's font. Mind you this tape was dangerous, because at the end of the tape was previews for some of the other tapes being re-released including Barney's Campfire Sing-Along, Three Wishes, A Day at the Beach, and Waiting for Santa, which was half the Backyard Gang series, which made me want to see the other tapes. And eventually I did, except for Three Wishes, as that was the only one that didn't seem to be available at Rogers Video nor did they seem to have it at CHEO.
I had five releases of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh but the one I watched the most often was the first volume, The Great Honey Pot Robbery. I think I watched it the most because it had the funniest pieces of dialogue in both episodes on the tape. In "The Great Honey Pot Robbery" there are lines like "You can't have cake without icey cream!", "Be quiet Hose Nose!", and "Show 'em what you're made of Buddy Bear." "Fluff?" "I think we're in big trouble!". While the other episode on the tape, "Stripes"/"Monkey See, Monkey Do Better" has lines like, "Hey Banana Breath!". I don't know why I found those lines to be funny, but it's what made me come back to these episodes time and time again, even over the other four volumes that I had in the series.
And then there's the 1986 Walt Disney Home Video release of Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. This was the first Winnie the Pooh tape I ever owned when I was a kid. It was difficult to choose between this tape and the 1986 Walt Disney Home Video release of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day because I watched both them equally as much. Nevertheless I chose this one over that one, because there's no "Heffalumps and Woozles" song on this tape. Lol.
Rainbow Brite is not something I've ever talked about on any of my blogs. Simply because it's not really something that I'm into now though it was something I enjoyed when I was a kid. We had a bunch of the dolls and toys, a few of the book and tape sets, and we rented the show on VHS from Rogers Video. In fact, that's how we watched the show because it wasn't on in reruns on TV when I was a kid, and we didn't own any of the tapes. One of the ones we rented was the 1985 movie, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer. It's on this list because my siblings and I liked it enough that we made our parents rent it for us multiple times. I don't even know for sure how many times we rented it, but it was alot.
Next is The Care Bears Travels In Space. I loved the Care Bears when I was a kid and watched the Nelvana produced series, The Care Bears Family. I also love Star Trek. So you can imagine when I saw a while block of episodes of The Care Bears Family where the Care Bears, Beastly, Shrieky and No Heart are in space with the Care Bears onboard a starship that looks like the original Enterprise and has a bridge that looks like the Enterprise-D bridge from TNG and a heart-shaped saucer section. Here, I'll show you.
That's the S.S. Friendship commanded by Captain Braveheart. It's basically the original Enterprise from TOS, but with heart and star shapes for the saucer, deflector dish, and warp nacelles and rainbows for the nacelle pylons and the connector piece between the primary hull (saucer section) and secondary hull (stardrive section). Now, here's the bridge.
The image above is the best one I could find, but as you can see it's a mix of Kirk's bridge and Picard's bridge with the sloped railing behind the captain's chair from TNG, and the solo command chair, wraparound aft consoles and combined helm and navigation console from TOS. The first episode of this Star Trek homage block of episodes aired on October 26th, 1988, only a month before the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation aired. The tape I had only had three of the episodes from this block, but man I watched that tape so many times just because it was the Care Bears and Star Trek mashed up into one. It also has a bit of Star Wars thrown into the mix because No Heart was Lord No Heart and his head/mask/whatever that thing was, was a helmet similar to Darth Vader and Beastly and Shrieky were space pirates. So yeah, pretty cool.
Speaking of Star Wars, the next VHS boxset I want to talk about it the 1995 Star Wars Trilogy boxset. I did a review of this set last year for May the 4th so I won't talk about it too much here. This was the way I saw the original trilogy for the very first time. Up to this point the only things I knew of Star Wars were Droids, Ewoks, and Star Wars: Dark Empire #3 as I'd watched the cartoons on Global when I was younger AND I had the Star Wars toys and the comic as well. But this is how I got introduced to the source material, back when it was just the three original movies, and a handful of comic books, novels, and video games and it was much easier to get into the franchise since there wasn't as much material to consume like there is now.
I also had the repackaged Special Edition boxset from 2000, which contained cassette box design similar to what would be used for the VHS releases of both The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. I'd seen the 1997 Special Edition VHS releases, but I didn't own them until much much later. The opening for A New Hope had a behind the scenes featurette for Attack of the Clones, which was in production by the time this boxset was released. This boxset was the first time that Star Wars was on the front covers for all three movies and "A New Hope" was on the front of Episode IV. Prior to that, even with the 1997 Special Edition releases, the front covers said Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi on the pre-1997 releases and Star Wars: Special Edition, The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition, and Return of the Jedi: Special Edition on the 1997 releases.
Then, to complete the Star Wars movies on VHS I also had the Star Wars Saga Video Pack which contained the VHS releases for both Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones. It actually fit nicely on the shelf with the 2000 Trilogy boxset with the box design being basically the same. My dad had had the individual VHS release of The Phantom Menace and I'd seen the movie in theatres (twice) back in 1999, but this was my way of owning all five (up to that point) theatrical Star Wars films on VHS.
C'mon, I'm sure you can see why this boxset is on my list. The box is designed like a Borg Cube, how could it not be? Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Bog Collective is the VHS releases of four Borg episodes of TNG packaged together in a Borg Cube. But that's why I like this boxset so much. The episodes included in this set are "Q Who?" (Season 2), "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I" (Season 3), "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" (Season 4), and "I, Borg" (Season 5). Aside from this set I didn't have any episodes from season 4 or season 5 on VHS, and only one other from season 3. In fact season 1 is the season of TNG that I had the most episodes on VHS from as that was what was available when Nana was buying the TNG tapes for me. I got this set for Christmas in like 1996 or 1997 with Christmas 1996 being the earliest I would've gotten it as the Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Flashback" was on TV in reruns and my paternal grandparents had moved up to the cottage full time, which is why we were there for Christmas. Plus this set first came out in November of 1996.
As I said in my review of the movie, Batman Forever was my Batman movie. I was pretty young when Batman (1989) and Batman Returns came out and I was scared to death by Batman Returns so the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton Batman films weren't really a huge part of my life until I got all four Burton/Schumacher films on DVD sometime in the 2000s, when I was a teenager and could actually handle the creepier Batman Returns. But when I was a kid, Batman Forever was the Batman movie I watched the most because I had it on VHS and got it for my 9th birthday from my godfather. Yes guys, I had a godfather. I still watched the recorded off of PBS tape for Batman: The Movie (1966), but this was the most modern Batman movie that I could handle watching on my own.
There is one reason and one reason only for why The Frog Prince is on this list. It was my introduction to Sweetums as a character (he was one of many Muppets dancing in the opening credits for The Muppet Show). I found this character to be memorable in this video because the titular Frog Prince, Robin, sings him to sleep and every time he's about to fall asleep he waves, says, "Nighty Night" and then crashes onto his bed with a thud and a puff of dust, which is great. Plus it was a good movie. My parents rented it for me at least three times from Rogers Video when I was a kid.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is on this list because it's the only time that I can recall renting a 1986 Neon Mickey VHS release. I mean the 1986 Winnie the Pooh VHS tapes had the Neon Mickey logo before the shorts, but that original white box with the Walt Disney Home Video is something I only remember seeing the couple of times that we rented this movie. I did a review of the movie on the blog earlier this year so go read it to get my thoughts on the movie itself.
Follow That Bird! is one of my favourite movies of all time. I haven't reviewed it on this blog though I once did one on the old blog that no longer exists. Trust me though, I do intend to to review it on here at some point since it's a movie that, even though I never owned it, I watched it many times when I was a kid. It was one of the handful of must rent movies that we had on our list and it's one I still don't have a physical copy of. All three DVD releases for the movie are out of print and I never see any of them or any of the VHS releases at thrift stores. It's also not on iTunes or any streaming service, so my search continues for either a VHS or a DVD copy of the movie. My goal is to get this original one from 1986, but I'm happy with a 1990s VHS, 2002 VHS, or 2000s or 2010s DVD copy if that's what I end up finding out in the wild. In the meantime I have a digitized copy, DVD quality, sent to me by a friend many years ago, but I'd still like a physical copy to put on my shelf.
Jetsons: The Movie is on this list because of the music. That's it. It's such iconic late '80s/early '90s music that every time I watch the movie I dance and sing along to the songs in the movie. Plus there's some funny scenes in the movie too. Go read my review, which I did at the beginning of the year, to get my full thoughts on the movie.
You didn't think I was going to do my favourite VHS list and not include a Disney Sing-Along Songs tape did you? I mean the title alone is why this tape is on my list. It was my very first Sing-Along Songs tape, which I got for Christmas in 1989. It also has some really good songs on the tape as well. And yes, I did do a review of it on the blog earlier this year, so go read that if you feel like it. Okay, five more tapes to go, so let's power through them.
I don't have to explain why the 1991 Walt Disney Classics release of Robin Hood is one of my favourite VHS releases do I? I've done it in so many posts by now that you must be tired of reading it. That's okay though, because this tape was a holy grail for so long since I never got to see it the whole way through when I watched it in the Cardiology clinic at CHEO. Luckily Michelle and Jonathan had a copy in the box of VHS they brought over for me almost a year ago and now I can watch it whenever I want.
I'm lumping the two volumes of the Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Collector's Edition that I had into one, because unlike the ones for TOS, they didn't include the titles of the episodes on the front covers, just the back and the spines. This is how I remember seeing "Encounter at Farpoint" for the first time. Unlike the retail releases for "Encounter at Farpoint", "The Naked Now", and "Code of Honor", I had these Collector's Editions at my house rather than at Nana's and Grandpa's house. I swear if my parents hadn't stopped me, I would've had both of these tapes on an eternal loop, only turning them off to go to sleep at night. Particularly "Encounter at Farpoint". In fact I watched the episode so much that I can recite the dialogue from the entire episode while watching it and recite most of the dialogue while listening to the soundtrack. Somehow I have the ability to recognize what scene the music is from just by hearing particular music cues. Don't ask me how. I just do.
We actually didn't rent The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland all that often when I was a kid. We rented it at least twice, and I watched it once in the hospital but it was the Care Bears doing Alice in Wonderland, so I enjoyed it. The Mad Hatter's song "You Like Hats?" is what stuck out to me the most about the movie and as a teenager it would get stuck in my head from time to time even though it had been at least a decade since I'd seen the movie last and to this day, I still haven't seen it since I was a kid in the '90s. Unlike The Care Bears Movie and The Care Bears Movie II, this one never got a DVD release with the only release being the original VHS release from the '80s.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is another movie that we didn't rent very often, but it's one I enjoyed every time we did rent it. We've also never owned it on any physical media. I did buy it from iTunes because it was cheap and I could watch it to review here on the blog without having to track down a physical copy. Though that seems to be pretty easy to do since Warner Bros. released it on 4K recently, and I think they reprinted the most recent Blu-ray release as well if I'm not mistaken. Or it never went out of print. Regardless, this is such a fun movie, with the Oompa-Loompa song being the creepiest part.
And finally, last but not least, the 1989 50th Anniversary VHS release of The Wizard of Oz. This was Grandpa's favourite movie. One of them anyway. I watched it at his and Nana's house once or twice, though not nearly as much as many of the other tapes on this list. I have the copy from Nana and Grandpa's house in my collection and even though I have it on Blu-ray as well, this is the tape I watched the movie on when I watched it for my review a couple of months ago. It was wonderful.
That my friends comes to the end of my list. There are a total of 26 VHS tapes on this list, more if you count every single individual tape in each boxset, which I'm not going to do. I'll be back tomorrow for a look at an album that is very special to me. A friend gave it to me for my 16th birthday and it also holds significance for me with another friend from back in the day. So, until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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