G1 cartoon VHS releases in the UK

Discussion in 'Transformers Earthspark and Cartoon Discussion' started by TechnoBot, Feb 24, 2017.

  1. moonDUST

    moonDUST Well-Known Member

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    Fun Factory started way back in 1985

    Fun Factory (TV series) - Wikipedia

    Transformers was broadcasted then too. I actually have recorded episodes from those 85-87 broadcasts on my dad's old Video 2000 system. In fact I have the last episode of the rebirth which aired somewhere in 87/88 on Sky and the voice over confirms it's the last episode of the transformers series.

    The name of the station wasn't Sky One at that time but still Sky Channel. Sky One's Fun Factory was just a cartoon block. The early version was more of a show with Andy, Snoot and Crocker. In that first version of the show, Transformers, Master OF the Universe, She Rha were shown full run.

    But it's true not every household could get those sky broadcasts. I remember in the Netherlands they were part of the cable services in the big city, but in small towns you couldn't get it. I always hated sleeping over at my grandparents in the weekend because I would miss 2 transformers episodes.. Luckily my dad taped them for me :) 
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2018
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  2. Greebtron

    Greebtron Well-Known Member

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    Generally speaking, there was often a pattern where North American VHS would start at the beginning of a show and go in order, then usually tail off after the first season. UK releases would be more focused on later in the run because those episodes weren't airing on TV. Hence why Transformers releases kept going until 1992 and 1993.

    From that wiki page and those ads, we had:

    From Video Gems:
    Arrival From Cybertron 86
    The Key to Vector Sigma/War Dawn 86
    Megatron's Master Plan 86
    TFTM 87

    From Tempo/Collins
    Rented Rebirth
    Starscream's Brigade 89
    The Girl Who Love Powerglide 90


    In my town, we had Sky One as a basic 5th channel, except for a brief period in 1994 when it was switched to NBC Super Channel. I remember that well, as it meant we missed the finale of Star Trek TNG.

    Anyway, Fun Factory continued playing 80's cartoons quite a way into the early 90's. With heavy season 3 and Rebirth rotation, I actually didn't see most season 1 and 2 stuff until G2 started airing.
     
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  3. Gingerchris

    Gingerchris Telly-headed Tyrant

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    I think it's just promo artwork. The link below has it listed as 'US Promotional Art 2'. Since it's US I guess the UK didn't see it in the regular movie promo pack over here. I suppose later on there was only so much movie artwork around at the time and after the movie had come and gone it just got shuffled into a stash to be used for other TF merchandise featuring the movie characters. I imagine there will be far more examples of that particular artwork being used in America.

    TFTM.net - The Transformers: The Movie - Un-official Fansite

    As for the VHS cover, I've got a slightly different one dated 1988, two years before the one you posted:
     

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  4. TechnoBot

    TechnoBot Well-Known Member

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    Thank you! Apparently that artwork got used on an album cover too.

    It's an interesting picture to me because of the mix of characters- Megatron alongside Cyclonus and Bumblebee beside the '86 Autobots. But also, it's just particularly nostalgic to me.

    Yes, the 1990 one is the edition I remember but it's cool to see the '88 one as well. Similar packaging to the Rebirth tape, which is actually advertised on the back.
     
  5. Gingerchris

    Gingerchris Telly-headed Tyrant

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    Yep. That's what I was looking for originally online before I came across that link. Then I remembered *d'oh!* I've got the CD on my shelf. So I snapped a quick photo:
     

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  6. Ryan F

    Ryan F Transform and Roll Out!

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    This is really interesting, cheers!

    Do you think it's possible that Sky made two versions of Fun Factory (one for continental Europe and one for the UK), because TV-am certainly had UK-exclusive rights to broadcast Transformers in the 1980s. I have it on extremely good authority that - in the UK at least - Transformers wasn't shown on Sky until the early 1990s.

    As well as complete episodes being shown as part of Fun Factory on Saturday mornings, episodes were also cut up into five-minute chunks and stripped across an entire week on The DJ Kat Show, which went out Monday-to-Friday (so they'd show an episode per week).
     
  7. moonDUST

    moonDUST Well-Known Member

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    You're probably right about the exclusive broadcasting rights. But those were for UK broadcasters only and most cable providers probably also had foreign broadcasters in their offer?

    This following is speculation, but Sky Channel and Super Channel were satellite stations and even though they recorded most of their shows in the UK, they may have broadcasted from a different country to avoid UK law.

    Something similar was done with Dutch commercial television in the Netherlands. Dutch commercial broadcasting was forbidden by law until the mid 90s, but in 1989 we did get Dutch commercial television. They broadcasted thru Luxemburg to avoid that law. They even programmed Luxembourg shows very early in the morning and late at night to make it seem like a 'foreign station' while the rest of the day its programming was completely targeted to the Dutch market.

    Back to Fun Factory. I do believe Andy and Co got drawings made by kids all around Europe including the UK. They would highlight some during the show. But I would need to re-watch those tapes to be sure these included UK kids.

    Just found this on Imdb, a Fun Factory poster from the '85 season:

    Fun Factory (1985-1994)

    It has Transformers and Black star on it. When I was a kid a thought Black star was such a scary cartoon :) 
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2018
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  8. TechnoBot

    TechnoBot Well-Known Member

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    Oh wow. Thanks again! Pretty strange seeing that photo on something other than a VHS cover.
     
  9. jackgaughan

    jackgaughan Banned

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    Hearing about how UK TV handled G1 is always a fun read, but chopping up 1 episode into chunks and showing them over a week? Who thought that was a good idea? Bloody Thatcher eh?
     
  10. Greebtron

    Greebtron Well-Known Member

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    I don't remember DJ Kat doing minisodes of the shows they played. I remember ITV shows like Wacaday in the school holidays doing that. Not saying they didn't, but must have been before I was old enough to be watching.

    Had a search around youtube, best I could find was the ending link from Fun Factory in 1986 which starts with the end of Aerial Assault:


    And from 1993, a DJ Kat ad break where the show immediately comes back into Ghost In The Machine:
     
  11. moonDUST

    moonDUST Well-Known Member

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    Wow great hearing that Fun Factory tune again!! The good old days :) 
     
  12. Ryan F

    Ryan F Transform and Roll Out!

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    The thing with TV-am (the ITV franchise that broadcast Transformers in the UK) was that it was only on-air until 9.25am, at which point the regional stations (Anglia, Tyne Tees, Thames etc.) would kick in.

    In the weekdays, TV-am's flagship programme - Good Morning Britain (a live-broadcast news/chat show) - was transmitted, taking up the entire slot until the 9.25 cut-off; however, in the weekends the channel broadcast a kids' show, The Wide Awake Club, in the same slot. Transformers episodes were broadcast as uninterrupted 25-minute episodes on Saturdays as part of the Wide Awake Club (aka WAC, for short).

    However, in the school holidays, TV-am's weekday schedule was re-jigged slightly. Good Morning Britain would finish early (at 9am), leaving a 21-minute gap for a kids' segment from 9.04 to 9.25, to keep the children occupied when they weren't at school.

    A number of different formats were attempted in this weekday 9.04-9.25 slot, including Roland Rat (before he defected to the BBC), a short-lived music show called Pop Shots, and finally the long-running WACaday.

    Now, because the weekday slot only lasted 21 minutes, there was no way to broadcast an entire TF episode, let alone have time for other stuff as well (such as the Mallett's Mallet segment). So 25-minute episodes would regularly be cut into five 5-minute chunks and stripped across an entire week.

    Transformers wasn't the only show done this way (Galaxy High was another cartoon split up in that fashion). So yeah - full episodes on a Saturday, split episodes on weekdays.

    In fact, there was a full nine-month gap between the first split-weekday broadcast of Transformers (as part of Roland Rat), and the first Saturday-uncut broadcast as part of The Wide Awake Club.

    I know you mentioned Thatcher, but to be fair, if we're going to chat 80s politics here, I should mention that the then-current climate of frequent strike action actually increased the number of Transformers broadcasts. For example, when TV-am staff went on strike in the winter of 1987 (thereby preventing them from broadcasting the usual Good Morning Britain show), the slot was instead filled by more cartoons, including - you guessed it - complete episodes of the Transformers!

    My forthcoming book (mentioned in my sig - pre-orders coming very soon!) delves into the TV-am transmissions in further detail, including a full schedule of broadcast dates.
     
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  13. TechnoBot

    TechnoBot Well-Known Member

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    Bumping this thread because I have another question- does anyone know which of the UK VHS releases from the 80s and early 90s are the most scarce / valuable?
     
  14. Goregrinder

    Goregrinder Well-Known Member

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    I had a few of the VHS tapes in the mid 90s as a little kid. it shaped my understanding of the show kind of weirdly. I thought the combiner teams were the main focus of the show, because I had all the stunticon episodes, all the combaticon episodes, all the constructicon episodes, but bugger all else. the dinobots were also huge favourites, and im glad I saw so little of them being made into comic relief in season 3.

    I really liked the season 3 intro, it was insanely futuristic to me. I didn't see the movie till after I'd seen a few season 3 eps like 100 times each, so a few things were confusing to me. I did love galvatron, scourge, cyclonus, and sky lynx though.

    my copy of the return of optimus prime had art of power master prime and some pretenders on the cover, who I just assumed were waaaaay off model art. I was used to the vhs covers having very outdated toy box art, and I'd never seen or heard of powermasters.

    most of my toys came from car boot sales, which let me get a lot of g1 stuff that was long out of shops. it also got me used to transforming stuff with no instructions.

    I did have a lot of the comics, particularly the g2 ones. I remember when I first got in touch with American tf fans in the early 2000s, and confusing them with talk of an orange samurai skeleton who kept killing everyone
     
  15. The Killer Meteor

    The Killer Meteor Member

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    The UK tape of The Rebirth was missing the title sequence. Very jarring!