After my post about the VHS tapes I picked up at Goodwill the other day, I thought I would start a new series on the site dedicated to VHS Nostalgia. Besides the box art, one of the things I remember most about VHS tapes was the stuff that you’d find inside.

I remember being almost as excited about the inserts, ads, and coupons as I would be about getting to watch the movie. In the days before the Internet, Twitter, and blogs, sometimes the inserts in VHS tapes were the way you’d find out about new movies or when one of your favorite movies was coming to home video for the first time. Disney tapes in particular always had a ton of inserts.

Well, today I was at Goodwill again and I found something pretty awesome. A sealed Jurassic Park tape for fifty cents. I immediately started wondering what treasures would be inside the cardboard box besides my favorite movie of all time on an old-school tape. When I got home I took the shrink-wrap off and scanned the pages of the booklet that fell out. Other than a few superfluous Jello pages, here it is intact.
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I was wandering through my local Goodwill yesterday and after finding a sweet toy from my childhood I ventured into the VHS section. Now it’s important to note that I don’t have a CRT TV or a VCR and haven’t for like six years. But, I’ve been wanting to get a little TV/VCR combo to put in my office so I can play old-school video games and watch random VHS tapes, so me getting all nostalgic isn’t totally unwarranted.

Anyway, I’m standing at this wall of VHS tapes reading the ends of the boxes upside down and trying to spot anything good, and I realize that I’m going to bring home a stack of VHS tapes that I’ll only be able to look at. I started to put them back, but my moment of sanity was sadly temporary.
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In honor of Pinocchio being released on Platinum Edition DVD and Blu-ray, I decided to find a sealed copy of it on the format I grew up with, VHS.

For some reason, seeing old VHS intros makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

In the days before the internet was mainstream, I always looked forward to getting the newest Disney movie on VHS, mainly so I could flip through the booklet inside to see what movies were coming out next. Those booklets, combined with my subscription to Disney Adventures magazine were my RSS feeds of the day, if you will.

Check out the pages from this booklet below. The last couple pages were all about the Muppets, yay! Remember those Muppet Movie VHS tapes that came with the watches?

*ed. – These images died in the transition from Saturday Morning Central to Tophat Sasquatch

A year or so ago I picked up a crazy looking bootlegish VHS set called Kid Pics. I didn’t think much of it at the time, and the main reason I picked it up was for the gaudy airbrushed art on the cover. It wasn’t until quite some time later that I actually popped it in to check out the toons, and discovered The Happy hamster.

Apparently, a company called Amvest Video thought it would be a good idea to bundle a bunch of cartoons together and try to pawn them off as quality collections, when in fact they were insane compilations. They surrounded the shorts with clips of The Happy Hamster dancing and saying creepy things in front of a blue screen. Take a look at the titles featured on this Walt Disney edition of Kids Pics.

I love how they included some of the old Alice Comedies under the Mickey Mouse category. Seven Dwarfs and Friends? Really? I wouldn’t have been too excited by The Winged Scourge when I was five years old.

The fact that Hooked Bear came out in 1956, and they included their company’s contact information on the box makes me think that it is somehow legit, but who knows. Did the Happy Hamster even get used in other sets? Did anyone actually join the club and get one of those awesome shirts?

Did any of you have any bizarre VHS bootlegs growing up?