Public Domain Highlights: Vidtape Inc

 Hooo boy, Public Domain Highlights is back with a big topic today.  This one may be by far one of the most infamous companies out there that operated.  I'm talking of course about Vidtape Inc.  

The origins of the company came about around 1989 as Home Video Syndications Ltd.  Somewhere along the lines either it became Vidtape Inc or these were two separate companies and Vidtape bought them out.  It's hard to tell since hardly any records of the said company exists.  There also were claims that HVS used 35mm prints for the cartoons, but I highly doubt it to be true.  What I do know is true is that their most popular VHS series was Cartoons R Fun which we'll talk about the most on here.

First, however, go with me on a journey back in time when I was a lad.  The only tape I ever owned from the company was a Casper one and was their later Wonder Toons brand.  We'll get to that later.  Meanwhile, the VHS rental shop, first Broadway Video then Movie Gallery, had tons of cartoon tapes.  A good number of which were the infamous Cartoons R Fun tapes as well as the Star Classics tapes.  I will talk in detail about the art covers, but each one almost had a cartoon I'd recognize given that I was watching tons of Looney Tunes at that time.  However, I was hesitant to pick them up.  I don't know why.  Perhaps I feared that the cartoons may look dupey on VHS as opposed to on TV.  I did see a lot of PD cartoons growing up in elementary school, and seeing something so old and so dupey and scratchy could be off-putting to a child.  At the end of the day, here's what I ended up renting: Road Runner Golden Jubilee, Tom and Jerry Cartoon Festival, Mickey Mouse Disney Classic Cartoon Favorites, Mickey and Minnie's Sweetheart Stories, and Bugs Bunny Superstar.  With the exception of Tom and Jerry since it was a first ever VHS release of those cartoons, all of these official releases were good quality.  Looking back at these Cartoon R Fun tapes, I'm pleased to say, I dodged a big bullet not renting these.

The cover art for each of the Cartoon R Fun tapes, in my opinion, are actually really detailed.  Sure there are flaws here and there, but it gives a sensation of you buying the tapes as if they came out the year the cartoon being sold on VHS was released.  As I said, some of the cover art were recreated from the actual cartoons on tape.  I automatically recognized A Corny Concerto and To Duck or Not to Duck.  Many of these covers you'll see along the way.  However, one really bad cover stands out above the rest.....the collector's edition Great Eight Pack

There were three volumes of the Great Eight Pack: Library A, Library B, and Library C.  But all three contained the same box art cover, so you would have to guess based one what the side of the box said.  The box art it crap, let's not misuse words.  The images looked cut and paste from various magazines.  Only Felix represented the actual era of his cartoons.  Meanwhile, Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, and Porky looked as they did in the 50's and 60's, Superman was taken from the Filmation cartoon, and Little Lulu was an enhanced version of her from the anime Little Lulu series.  Obviously, none of those era of cartoons are represented here.  So anyone expecting the cartoons as you would see on Merrie Melodies and Bugs Bunny and Tweety are sadly mistaken.  The collection came out in 1993, so I would assume the real reason for this release is to get rid of as many units as possible.  Still, 3 boxed sets of 8 tapes seem like an excellent collection of great golden age cartoons right?????  Oh what tangled webs they weaved..........

Like I said, on the individual tapes, it looked as though the box art cover looked pretty good making them represent the actual cartoons.  Up to a point where one might assume these would bare resemblance to Disney's Cartoon Classics tapes or MGM's Cartoon Moviestars tapes.  However, it would be far from it.  For the most part, the cartoons would be severely edited especially with the opening and end titles usually chopped off and/or replaced with something generic.  This is especially noticing with the Warner Bros. cartoons.  Possibly to get rid of any reference to Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies as these trademarks, obviously, were still copyrighted.  The end titles seemed to have been generic made, but after further research, we found out where it came from....there were some Columbia Krazy Kat cartoons that were redrawn colorized and had these title cards.  That was the source of this card.  And since these Krazy Kat cartoons hardly if ever had any air time, well, that would explain why it was a mystery.  

For the black and white cartoons, at least for the most part, you couldn't really say they were in black and white BUUUT you couldn't say they were colorized either.  There may have been one or two redrawn colorized cartoons, but the rest appeared to be in sepa-tone.  This gives off a fake feeling of being in color.  These faded red cartoons looked and sounded awful.  Because they were this way as opposed to the redrawn colorized cartoons, these Cartoons R Fun tapes actually ended up being sought out by collectors as Warner Bros. had not yet even released these black and white cartoons on home video.

This hunt, however, would be buy at your own risk.  The contents listed on the box would sometimes NOT be on the tape itself.  This problem was a tape by tape basis.  For example, one tape of Scrap Happy Daffy would be correct, another Scrap Happy Daffy tape may have different cartoons.  Some copies may start right away at the beginning of the tape, a good number of copies would have the tape just end right before the cartoon would end.  And in some cases when another cartoon was starting, Flippo!!!!  The tape would end.  This could easily be the case of not determining how much videotape is needed well.  Content issues become even weirder as a copy of a Casper tape played The Friendly Ghost followed by A Haunting We Will Go 3 TIMES!!!!!  

Things could only go further down from here folks, we haven't even gotten into what tapes were used for the Cartoons R Fun Collection.  This issue of tapes beginning and ending early may come down to the problem of Vidtape reusing tapes (even if it means one of their own).  I don't know how they did  this, but perhaps to cut costs of actually manufacturing new tapes, they just bought and sought after any tape they could get a hold of and try to erases them the best they could (but not really the best). One copy of a Casper tape uses a strange white tape instead of black with no label.  Red flag warnings there. This means anything and everything could show up on these tapes at any time.  Sometimes, even NOTHING shows up; either it's a blank tape or the tape had so bad tracking that it would not work (possibly causing PERMANINT damage to your VCR....Yikes).  Perhaps the most innocent examples of other unusual stuff showing up would be a copy of a Superman tape.  At the end of the tape there's some black but then quietly appearing is what appears to be a Thomas the Tank Engine tape.  Oddly enough, Shining Time Station was just starting, and US copies of Thomas would not appear until the following year after the Cartoons R Fun line started up which means that Vidtape got a hold of a UK original VHS release of Thomas.  

Thomas the Tank Engine was just the tip of the iceberg however.  As I said, anything could show up on these tapes.  One person claimed that a copy of their Cartoons R Fun tape had someone's graduation ceremony at the end.  At least two Cartoons R Fun tapes, one Bugs Bunny one and Porky's Garden, contained pornography.  For Porky's Garden, the unfortunate buyer witnessed 15 minutes worth of hardcore porn, so bad that states ended up urging Vidtape to recall Porky's Garden.  Yes, my Movie Gallery had that exact tape for rental........I think you know what I am thinking........wow. 

By the early 90's, two more cartoon series of tapes came out from Vidtape Inc.  The first bare very similar resemblance to Cartoons R Fun.  Now called Wonder Toons, it was the same ordeal as Cartoons R Fun: bad quality tapes, bad quality prints, same issues.  I once owned a Casper tape from the Wonder Toons series.  It was a hand me down, no where near the tapes I would get as a child.  It was 3 cartoons, all bad prints.  The NTA logo appeared to have disappeared on the cartoons.  

One thing that has gotten worse however was the box art for the tapes.  The characters now look off model.  What's interesting is that this appears to be the same artist used for the Cartoons R Fun tapes.  I could tell by the eyes of some of the characters, specifically Porky.  The art

cover issue gets even weirder.  There is only one Woody Woodpecker cartoon in the public domain, Pantry Panic, yet the artwork makes it look like to be Niagara Fools.  The most infamous cover has to be for Droopy.  The cover makes it appear that that Senior Droopy was the star attraction, but it isn't on here.  In fact, no MGM Droopy cartoon is in the public domain.  What shows up instead is the Famous Studios cartoon Hector's Hectic Life.  And, like many Vidtape releases, the cartoons just starts.  No opening titles nor any indication as to who this character is.  This could confuse anyone to thinking it's a Droopy cartoon.....maybe.  This is....bizarre.....to say the least.  Why would they do that knowing darn well that's not Droopy?  Sales?  Who knows.

Another series of tapes began called Wonderworld Cartoons.  This time cashing in on the Disney VHS craze.  The cartoons here are all foreign produced dubbed into English, many of which are unknown.  These cartoons suck for lack of better description.  Once again the drawings of the art cover was done by the same artist for Cartoons R Fun.  Again, look at the Three Little Pigs, they look like their version of Porky.  Which begs the question.....could some of these fairy tales come from PD cartoons?  I don't know.  What I do know is that it's the same song and dance just like the other two Vidtape series: reused tapes, not enough room, tapes suddenly start or end.  

So why did Vidtape have all these issues with reused not enough room tapes?  The answer, while not definitive, may be more shadier than you thought.  This was brought about in a 1998 lawsuit filed by former US Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao stating that Vidtape made tons of work violations.  Here are some of the details of the case:

"At trial, 21 former Vidtape employees testified [...] as to the hours they worked and the pay they received.  These employees testified in English, Spanish, and Punjabi."

"The employees testified that they typically worked from 8:30am to 7:00pm Monday through Saturday.  They took 30 minute lunch breaks and had one or two short breaks as well.  Some employees also worked on Sundays.  This consistent testimony indicates that employees worked an average of 60 hours per week[.]"  And might I add, without paid overtime.  Vidtape kept NO pay records.

Wilber Amaya testified to the court stating that he was 14 years old when hired.  "Vidtape hired him to pack videos and move boxes using a 'hand truck'. [.....] Amaya worked ten hour days, six days a week, during the months when school was in session."  YIKES!  "Amaya worked at Vidtape in 1997 for approximately one year. [....] [He was fired] when the Department of Labor's investigation began."  The lawsuit, which I am quoting from courtesy of Steve the Amateur Historian, stated that Amaya was one of those employees that worked the crazy 8:30-7 work hours Monday through Saturday.  This obviously meant that Vidtape violated child labor laws.  Fortunately, the court ruled in favor of Chao, but by then, Vidtape Inc was pretty much defunct (or so we thought).  Wilber Amaya, if you are out there reading this, please comment below about your working conditions and some other inside scoop about Vidtape Inc.  Were they really as shady as we thought?  Stick around and find out.

A Vidtape copy of Scrap Happy Daffy airs on
Cartoon Network's Toonheads

But that's not the end of Vidtape's reign...their copies, somehow, ended up on TV.  When Cartoon Network aired Toonheads The Wartime Cartoons, Scrap Happy Daffy was among the cartoons.  Remember when I said WB fans actually sought out these tapes?  This is why....Warner Bros. must not have provided Cartoon Network with a copy of that cartoon since it's a heavy duty wartime cartoon not seen in nearly 40 years, so they used Vidtape's copy.  Thanks to Jerry Beck's involvement with this special, however, the colortone was turned off bringing it back to its black and white glory, the "The End" title card was carefully edited out, and opening and closing titles from that era were placed back on used from a different cartoon which they had an official copy from.  This was the last time Scrap Happy Daffy would appear on TV, but has since been restored for DVD and Blu-ray from the original masters.

There was allegedly one more Vidtape master that aired on Cartoon Network.  Rumor has it that Porky's Pastry Pirates was the Vidtape master for a brief time.  There is no proof of this happening, just word of mouth.  But if true,  I don't think it was an accident.  My guess is that Cartoon Network may not have been provided of this cartoon yet when it was becoming the exclusive home for Looney Tunes.  Again, being the necessary evil Vidtape was and that one of the tapes in the Cartoons R Fun series was literally Porky's Pastry Pirates, it seemed like an obvious and temporary solution.  Once Cartoon Network got official copies of the cartoon, the Vidtape version no longer aired.  But, of course, this is all speculation of something that may not be true.

But what WAS TRUE however is the last straw that broke the camel's back.  It's been suggested that many of the PD video companies only did these releases to cover their tracks for more shady operations.  I've discussed what Amvest did a while back with their "kids club" selling off information to pedo beauty pageant people, and it is a bold statement to make saying these companies were doing shady business when there is no actual proof...........except, for Vidtape, there IS actual proof.  Though they stopped putting out VHS tapes (although they might have been involved with a DVD line called Wonder Toons only this time Senor Droopy DOES appear), they were caught being involved with something much more sinister.  We reach back to Steve the Amateur Historian with his latest video on PD companies, and his recent findings may surprise you.  From Newsday.com: "Vidtape Inc. [..] bought 3,084 tubes of counterfeit product between November 2006 and June 2007[.]"  The product, counterfeit grey market Colgate toothpaste imported from China.  The article claims that they knew it was counterfeit but help distribute it anyway.  Inside these toothpastes were diethylene glycol and some bacteria.  Simply put, this stuff could poison you.  And they knew full well that they could too.  This concludes that Vidtape Inc was a terrible company doing terrible things.

The Bugs Bunny Video Guide said it best: "the less said about Vidtape Inc's sprawling Cartoons R Fun line launched in 1989, the better."  Diving into the company's past.....It's very clear why they would say that.  I see without a reasonable doubt that this was a shady company putting out cartoon videos just to cover their illegal tracks.  You think you are getting that awesome cartoon collection, but in the end, it's all crap.  Nothing but crap.  I can't believe I dodged a bullet not renting these tapes, and considering what I've read, sometimes I wonder.....what would have happened if I DID rent one of these tapes.  Would I have ended up seeing someone's family memories, some porn, or perhaps something much worse??????????????