This is a modified transcription of an episode of Dyer’s Daily podcast. Between 2018 and 2023, the podcast series featured Jamie Dyer speaking for three minutes about a chosen subject, completely off the cuff. For a list of episodes on the official podcast page, see here.
This was part of the Disney100 series of Dyer’s Daily podcasts, where Jamie picked an element of Disney to discuss in their 100th anniversary year. This time, the millennial broadcaster and writer discussed Piracy ads on Disney VHS. This episode was originally released in 2022.
Please note: This transcript has been cleaned up to make it easier to read, but still maintains the same thoughts and ideas.
Here’s a bit of a curiosity for Disney fans out there. Does anyone remember those ads that used to be at the beginning of VHS tapes? Back in those days, you had promotional things, and on every Disney VHS, there was this promotion that was basically an anti-piracy ad. I’m not sure if anybody paid attention to it.
I think it almost became a funny thing. Anything like that—like in the early 2000s, you had ads saying, “You wouldn’t steal a car; you wouldn’t steal a handbag”—were really good at getting the point across, but also open to a bit of ridicule. And certainly, the Disney one I’m thinking of, where they always talked about the shiny logo on the tape being how you know you’ve got a genuine article, comes to mind. There would be a clip of Dumbo where half the picture is obscured, and you’d hear this child saying, “I can’t see it. The picture’s all funny.” Then it would cut to 101 Dalmatians with the song “Cruella de Vil,” and the kid would say, “I can’t hear it.”
Of course, they were trying to show you what happens when you buy a pirated copy—that the quality is less than a genuine Disney VHS. I think this is one of the almost psychological things Disney has done over the years to convey quality, along with the idea of “getting something out of the vault,” putting it on VHS for a limited run, then sticking it back in the vault for another seven years before releasing it again. It’s allowed this idea to form that “Disney means quality.” And that’s not a bad thing—it’s actually a good thing, to instill in customers that your product is high-quality.
But yeah, it does leave it open to ridicule sometimes. I still quote that ad—if I can’t hear something, I’ll say, “I can’t hear it! The picture’s all funny!” These days, though, looking back, that video was a bit odd, wasn’t it? It was a little wiggly and strange. You go back to it and think, “This is what we had? This is what we had back in the nineties.”
If you’ve ever seen anybody try to sell those videos on eBay, they go for extortionate prices because people think they have value just because it’s Disney. It’s just one of those little memories from the nineties. And Disney, in some ways, still does this with their DVDs and Blu-rays. It’s all to ensure quality, isn’t it? Definitely.
