Public Domain Highlights: Goodtimes Video

Here is a new series of blog posts talking about the many public domain companies over the years that released public domain cartoons.

Our first victim is Goodtimes Entertainment.  This company was formed in the 1984 with the primary goal is releasing public domain titles.  Some of the earliest known tapes include the Kids Kartoons, Great American Cartoons, Classic Video Library, just simply Cartoons, or no titles at all.

In the late 1980's, Goodtimes formed a division known as Kids Klassics.  This series of tapes mimicked somewhat of the previous Goodtimes VHS's.  However, they went a step further and began sub licensing  from other companies.

Many of these Kids Klassics tapes include The Berenstain Bears specials, Muppet Babies, but big time with Hanna-Barbera cartoons.  These tapes were made right before Turner bought the Hanna-Barbera library.  The public domain tapes bear similar references to Goodtimes's previous tapes with the box art.  The art covers in the 80's varied, but they were ok for the most part as they tried to make them look like they did on the actual cartoons.

In the 1990's, Goodtimes began to make their tapes a little better looking with the success of the Disney titles being sold.  So the art covers improved dramatically.  Goodtimes operated as both Goodtimes and Kids Klassics labels. Kids Klassics released a series of tapes called 1 hour.  Most of these tapes were the Warner Brothers cartoons like Bugs Bunny (albeit public domain).  The art covers were done by Sparacio

It should be noted for these tapes that the quality is pretty decent for a PD company, but they still varied print to print.  WB fans would be disappointed to hear that on the Kids Klassics tapes for sure (and maybe all Goodtimes tapes) that they muted the intros and outros to avoid any lawsuit for the uses of the themes.  A Corny Concerto was cut in half to only show the Bugs Bunny half.  A hidden "Wasn't that lovely?" from Elmer could be heard at the end of that cartoon during the end titles.

Goodtimes then released their tapes with no banners.  The art covers still were an improvement on many of the re-releases of previous tapes such as Bugs Bunny.

The trouble now becomes that the Goodtimes and the Kids Klassics almost uses the same exact cover art on some of these titles.  All they did is change the label on the cover and tape, make a different background on the cover,

Goodtimes then began making new animated films in 1992 which bears resemblance to the major Disney movies like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.  A lawsuit was filed by Disney, but was dropped.  These cheap knock offs became the face of the company.  In 1998, their first and only theatrical release was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  It bombed despite major publicity.  More information could be found at Pirates and Princesses.  They also released kids titles such as Fast Moving Trains which I grew up with personally and was a fun tape to watch since I loved trains. It was basically footage of different kinds of trains (new and existing footage).

 In 2000 with the publicity of their new movie, Goodtimes released one more so called PD tape.  The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle was a five volume series plus a collectors box set.  These were select episodes of the syndicated Bullwinkle Show in the 70's.  Many fans believe that the syndicated Bullwinkle Show is in the public domain while others think this is a bootleg.  Nevertheless, they were a success as they included episodes not yet released on home video like Metal Munching Mice.  Picture quality varied, but they were fair.

Goodtimes folded in the 2005 due to bankruptcy.  Their assets such as the movies were then sold to Gaiam Vivendi.  They will forever be best known for their Disney knock offs and public domain tapes.  Overall, they did a decent job, but it's a shame with Kids Klassics having to result in losing the WB themes.  If they were fixed, they would be a vast improvement.

You can read and see more about these tapes on The VCR from Heck on Tumblr.