Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Happy New Year! To start off we have...a Christmas-related thing? Well hey, we're still a day away from Advent ending and the alternative to not posting this now would be to wait 11 months...so might as well get it out of the way, right?
This is easily the newest VHS we have that was an official retail title and not a bootleg or home recording. Bought on eBay somewhere around the start of the now-ending Christmas season, mainly 'cause it seemed like the most convienient way to have two of the specials on VHS. Surprisingly full VHS opening for such a late release too, given 2004 being proberbly the very last year that much people were still contemporaneously buying and watching VHS until the more resillient hold-outs finally made the switch to DVDs. Heck, my birthday that year (which would've been around when this was out)? We bought our last "new" VHS title as something I wanted on my birthday list ("Animaniacs" Vol 1 - released 10 years prior but had one last new copy being sold on Amazon at the time)...before I then got surprised with a DVD player for my bedroom, rendering me individually one of the hold-outs that made the switch, though we had DVD-orientated stuff in our family since 2000.
I digress. Because it was the mid-2000's and it was more of an anti-sensitivity hellscape than those nostalgic for this might be, there's a disclaimer on at least one joke in the trailer to "Robots" that has aged like milk. Though I'd also like to apologize, albiet non-formally, for the trailer for that year's live-action "Garfield" movie here too. It's inevitable that with 20th Century Fox having the rights to animated Garfield specials for a release like this then, they were obviously going to use it to plug the live-action "Garfield" movie this serves as Trojan-horse promo of. Good thing I time-code when each trailer begins so you can skip it if you want!
Lastly, another telling sign that this was a late release is how the design sleeve had "First time on VHS" written on the back of the box despite the fact every single special featured on this tape ("Halloween Adventure", "In the Rough" on international releases like this and "A Garfield Christmas") was individually released on VHS here back in the 80's/90's. A clear copy-paste of the blurb text from the DVD release of this but edited last-minute to server the lesser format. What a time, glad it's over.
CONTENTS!:
00:33 Fox Video Warning Text for "Garfield Holiday Celebrations"
01:01 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment logo
01:28 "Piracy is Stealing" PIF/PSA (Man, the audio on this is such toilet, haha)
02:11 "Coming Soon to Cinemas" Title Card
02:17 "Robots" (2005) Trailer
03:42 "The Magic Roundabout" (2005) Teaser Trailer
04:48 "Out Now to Own on DVD and Video" Title Card
04:55 "Two Brothers" Trailer
06:34 "Garfield" (2004) Trailer
07:58 "Strawberry Shortcake" Animated Series Home Video Promo
08:12 Generic title card for "Garfield's Halloween Adventure"
Happy New Year! To start off we have...a Christmas-related thing? Well hey, we're still a day away from Advent ending and the alternative to not posting this now would be to wait 11 months...so might as well get it out of the way, right?
This is easily the newest VHS we have that was an official retail title and not a bootleg or home recording. Bought on eBay somewhere around the start of the now-ending Christmas season, mainly 'cause it seemed like the most convienient way to have two of the specials on VHS. Surprisingly full VHS opening for such a late release too, given 2004 being proberbly the very last year that much people were still contemporaneously buying and watching VHS until the more resillient hold-outs finally made the switch to DVDs. Heck, my birthday that year (which would've been around when this was out)? We bought our last "new" VHS title as something I wanted on my birthday list ("Animaniacs" Vol 1 - released 10 years prior but had one last new copy being sold on Amazon at the time)...before I then got surprised with a DVD player for my bedroom, rendering me individually one of the hold-outs that made the switch, though we had DVD-orientated stuff in our family since 2000.
I digress. Because it was the mid-2000's and it was more of an anti-sensitivity hellscape than those nostalgic for this might be, there's a disclaimer on at least one joke in the trailer to "Robots" that has aged like milk. Though I'd also like to apologize, albiet non-formally, for the trailer for that year's live-action "Garfield" movie here too. It's inevitable that with 20th Century Fox having the rights to animated Garfield specials for a release like this then, they were obviously going to use it to plug the live-action "Garfield" movie this serves as Trojan-horse promo of. Good thing I time-code when each trailer begins so you can skip it if you want!
Lastly, another telling sign that this was a late release is how the design sleeve had "First time on VHS" written on the back of the box despite the fact every single special featured on this tape ("Halloween Adventure", "In the Rough" on international releases like this and "A Garfield Christmas") was individually released on VHS here back in the 80's/90's. A clear copy-paste of the blurb text from the DVD release of this but edited last-minute to server the lesser format. What a time, glad it's over.
CONTENTS!:
00:33 Fox Video Warning Text for "Garfield Holiday Celebrations"
01:01 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment logo
01:28 "Piracy is Stealing" PIF/PSA (Man, the audio on this is such toilet, haha)
02:11 "Coming Soon to Cinemas" Title Card
02:17 "Robots" (2005) Trailer
03:42 "The Magic Roundabout" (2005) Teaser Trailer
04:48 "Out Now to Own on DVD and Video" Title Card
04:55 "Two Brothers" Trailer
06:34 "Garfield" (2004) Trailer
07:58 "Strawberry Shortcake" Animated Series Home Video Promo
08:12 Generic title card for "Garfield's Halloween Adventure"
![[AUDIO RESTORED*] Prince - The Black Album UK Advert (1994)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qDGiHm2CueU/mqdefault.jpg "[AUDIO RESTORED*] Prince - The Black Album UK Advert (1994)
*Speculatively restored, going by visual cues in the advert itself - details below.
So...I was gonna wait until around the date this album got officially released or the day/month anniversary of when this perticularly rare, unique ad was broadcast (24th November 1994, thanks to SozLike back in 08) but...I couldnt wait. x)
This is obviously NOT my own capture, but now that I could see people managed to upload this album on YT without troubles, thought now would be a good time to get a version up where all the musics there.
NOW, as said above this is all speculative. Gotta hand it to the marketing department behind this ad though, for *some* reason, they decided to give the played music names and When 2 R In Love plays, the lyrics are even there. So using the titles of tracks displayed prominently enough and using those little stereo bars there, I got a rough idea what played and where. No idea how close I actually am to the real thing, though if one day a *much* nicer quality version of this could be uploaded with the real audio, that would be cool. For now, heres this~
I listened to the album a few years ago after finding this ad. It was okay. The mystique behind the album is more interesting than the album *itself*. Im also glad Warner decided not to re-release this as part of making the rest of Princes back-catalogue avaliable online and on streaming (naughty naughty, capitalism), though if they ever decide to re-release it as a posthumous thing...yeah...dunno what Ill do with this upload at that point.
Also wanna know two more things:
1) I put some subtle VHS distortion sound on here too so it would all be more organic.
And 2) Apologies that the video quality is not fantastic, hardly much I can do about that. 240p was the highest resolution avaliable and attempts to boost the framerate to something more accurate made it look like *butt*, so there we are.
R.I.P. Prince. I ought to get on eBay and buy your albums on physical CDs cause dang it, I miss you.")
