The Many Logos of Disney Home Ent.

I’m a long-time Disney VHS collector who is fascinated by the little details that differentiate tapes, from all the different eras of Disney’s home media division.

In a way, it’s kind of odd… Walt Disney Home Video had a logo before Walt Disney Productions proper. Walt Disney’s films, up until the mid-1950s, had been distributed by the big Hollywood houses. After stints with United Artists and Columbia Pictures, Disney’s output – with the exception of a single film, Victory Through Air Power – would be distributed by RKO Radio Pictures starting with the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

Before the films, you’d see a stylized RKO title card while “Walt Disney presents” would be part of the opening credits sequence, not its own logo. This continued after Walt and Roy formed Buena Vista, their own self-distribution company. The simplistic, woodcut-looking Buena Vista logo would get multiple variants, so that was your logo for Disney’s releases, not a “Walt Disney”-centric logo. No, Disney wouldn’t make one until 1985… The iconic castle on the blue background.

In 1978, Mickey Mouse had turned 50.

Walt Disney Productions created a special introduction with a rotating red Mickey with flashy outlines, the Mickey itself was apparently rotoscoped from an animatronic. Either way, it was a cool intro and it had appeared before films like The Cat from Outer Space and Hot Lead & Cold Feet in theaters that year.

Disney then teamed up with MCA to release some titles on their then-new DiscoVision format, essentially the precursor to LaserDisc.

Most of these releases would be cartoon compilations, and episodes of the Disneyland/anthology TV series. The programs would be preceded by a revamp of the rotating Mickey logo…

At the time, there was no Walt Disney Home Video division, so “Home Entertainment” stuck. It was essentially the continuation of the print-rental arm that Disney had set up in the early 70s. Plus, you can tell the logo is a product of its time, because it uses the pseudo-signature font for “Walt Disney” and not the iconic corporate font. (Which was introduced as far back as the 50s, but only used on certain things… It wouldn’t be until the 80s when it really stuck!)

Walt Disney Home Video was formed in 1980, and while the sale-only cover art for the releases had big WDHV logos (pictured above), this intro was still used up until around 1984. The second variant of this spinner – minus the textless one that appeared on the first wave Cartoon Classics volumes – used the regular Disney font and replaced the off-center “Home Entertainment” with “HOME VIDEO” in that EPCOT-looking font. It began appearing on American tapes in around 1983, though reportedly it showed up as early as 1981 in foreign territories!

Here’s the intro to the Cartoon Classics series tapes…

… the original wave ran from 1983 to 1986. It spawned two sub-lines, the Limited Gold Edition collection (1984) and the Limited Golden Edition II collection (1985), the former being very instrumental in changing Walt Disney Home Video and changing the home video industry. Why’s that?

After putting it off for many years (read: flat-out refusing), Disney had decided to release its animated classics on video. It was determined that home video was becoming more and more of a market, more people around the world were purchasing videocassette players. Prior to his resignation, CEO and Walt’s son-in-law Ron Miller had plans to finally get the animated classics on home media, something most of the old guard objected to. No more future theatrical re-releases and cash flows! Little did they know that video was going to be an even bigger cash flow than the recent big screen re-issues…

The success of the Limited Gold Edition Cartoon Classics tapes in 1984 convinced them to move forward with the classics plan… So they created a special line for these animated gems that audiences could formerly only see via the cinema, every 6-10 years… The Classics…

The lovely, shiny diamond and the Art Deco-esque font for the letters made for a grand-looking logo that emphasized the importance of a good chunk of these films.

To go along with it was an animated logo that would open up the tapes, in place of the rotating Mickey…

A bit crude (especially by 1984 standards), but it further got the point across…

1984 was also when we saw Disney Channel’s first few original movies hit home video, so they got this special logo that would have the Neon Mickey music accompanying it…

By 1986, the spinning neon Mickey was beginning to look a bit outdated. Disney, just in time for the smash fall/holiday sales promotion that set many industry records, introduced an all-new, up-to-date logo that is one of the most well-known. Using the Sorcerer Mickey design that we had seen on the cover art since 1980, a spark from his hand spelled Walt Disney in red (just like the earlier box art!), with “Home Video” in a red bubbly font settling below.

Graphically clean with a modern but not-too-80s-sounding synthesizer theme, it was right for the times and wasn’t dated when it appeared on tapes some 15 years later. Its last proper appearance was in 2001, though it accidentally got left on DVD prints of certain titles in the mid-2000s.

It also had like a million different variants, many of which came from different countries… Variants that had text under the logo, like “presents” in various different languages and such. Some foreign variants put words above the logo, the UK tapes notably used things like “Coming Soon from” and whatnot…

Apparently so content with this new logo, Walt Disney Home Video decided to up the Classics logo. Getting rid of the cheap-looking one they had made in 1984, they used the same opening animation from the WDHV logo and had “Walt Disney” be written in silver instead, the word “Classics” in the Art Deco font settling below it, with a metal diamond frame behind it. A flying comet-like spark then turns the blue text into shiny golden yellow. It was all set against a blue background…

Or black/blue gradient. The very first tape to use this logo, the 1988 release of Cinderella, had this variant where the diamond looks more like a metal plaque than a frame, the background’s a blue gradient, and the color grading is a little different.

They must’ve been unsatisfied with this variant, because the second ever release to have the logo – the 1989 release of Bambi – had the all-blue background variant. The common one. The 1988 gradient one would pop up randomly from time to time over the years, most notably on later printings of the 1991 Robin Hood videocassette, and the LaserDisc of The Rescuers. Anyways, the blue background variant showed up on pretty much every Classics release from 1989 to 1992.

One last set of variants showed up in 1992. The logo is really tinted blue this time around! Later on, a very muffled, bass-heavy sounding version of the jingle accompanied the logo.

This was used up until the line’s end in 1994. Though again, typical of Disney Home Ent., the Sorcerer Mickey Classics logo accidentally showed up a few times after its expiration. (The 1996 VHS of Pocahontas and the 2003 UK VHS of Pinocchio immediately come to mind.)

This is the best-looking Disney Home Ent. logo in my not-so-humble opinion. The colors are just right, the look of the text and the diamond are just right, the graphics aren’t dated yet they have a retro charm. The various animated effects throughout – particularly the diamond fading in from the background – are pretty subtle, even for the late 80s! The music is light and poppy and Disney-sounding. Oddly enough, few Disney home media logos would look as interesting as this one in the coming years. The Classics line had a clear theme: Golden Age of Hollywood aesthetics, bright colors (as opposed to the other WDHV logos, which seemed to be all about stark black backgrounds), and designs that suggested the excellence of the Disney animated feature library. I really do think the combination of the rhombus and the Binner font work so well…

More so than what we saw later on…

The company also decided to use a short standard mainline logo alongside the longer, Sorcerer Mickey logo.

Also came in blue… And there were some oddball variants here and there…

Nice to look at, but ultimately a minor logo in the grand scheme of things.

On some tapes, you’d come across this very simple logo.

Walt Disney Home Video ended the Classics line in early 1994, and in its place came the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection. Ditching the diamond and Art Deco scheme, the Masterpiece Collection’s logo incorporates the Disney castle logo into a simple shape. This logo appeared on several video covers, notably many of the first-wave titles…

The animated intro is clean enough, and is nice on the eyes, but it doesn’t really have the pull of the Classics logo or the surrealism of the spinning Neon Mickey logo… But at least Tinker Bell appears!

After the Masterpiece Collection ended in 1999, Disney then launched the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection. Lasting a little over a year, the line had its own special logo that mostly appeared on the VHS tapes… But it was just the cover logo with some animated effects, and the early 90s WDHV music. Nothing too special…

Future lines meant for the animated features wouldn’t get logo treatment like this… The Platinum Collection, the Diamond Collection, the Signature Collection… No animated intros like these. Just whatever you saw on the packaging or advertising. After the Platinum line was launched in 2001, Disney never created a line for the entire classics library again. The Platinum/Diamond/Signature series only covers a selection of films, ones that are among Disney’s most requested. Everything else is just a standalone title, with their own fancy banners. (i.e. “Special Edition,” this edition, that edition.)

Although Disney’s home entertainment division is a completely different beast in this day and age, it would be cool to see future releases of the animated classics bearing some kind of logo that differentiates them from the mainline ones. Maybe it’s time to create a new line, but what would we call it? The problem with The Classics and the Masterpiece Collection is that… Well… Not every Disney animated feature is a classic or a masterpiece. The Masterpiece Collection had some doozies in it, like Pocahontas and Oliver & Company. Not every title in the Classics line was a classic, either. Classic is a rather overused word anyways, it doesn’t define “old film,” but rather an excellent film that continues to stand the test of time. Pinocchio is that, The Sword in the Stone isn’t. And that’s fine, not that that makes them “bad” films… Just… Well… Classic is a high peak, and not every film is worthy of such a peak. The same goes the word masterpiece, or opus. The Walt Disney Opus Collection… Imagine that!

Maybe Disney should, one day, make a line for animated features called The Walt Disney Animation Collection. Or maybe The Walt Disney Animation Studios Collection, in keeping with the studio’s current name.

But enough waffling on about that… The DVD era.

Early Disney DVD releases mostly used the standard gold WDHV logo. In 2001, Disney introduced two logos for the new age of home media… One encompassed everything. For the first time in years, “Walt Disney Home Entertainment” was used again…

From here on out, “Walt Disney Home Video” was a thing of the past. Though DVD is technically home video, the company apparently felt that “home video” was a dated term, and felt that people would associate it with VHS. Disney continued to release films on VHS up until 2006, but the push for DVD was strong by this point. Here is the Disney DVD logo proper…

All up-to-date looking, but definitely have that early aughts glitziness to them. Variants of both logos, of course, exist.

A few years later, enter Blu-ray…

This logo aligns perfectly with the film studio’s image revamp in the mid-aughts. Out was the castle that Disney had been using for over two decades, in came a fully-detailed, CGI castle. This is integrated well with the Blu-ray logo, as it’s actually one of the better ones they’ve made in the last 20 or so years. There’s a real futuristic and spacey vibe to this one, which I think puts it above the previous DVD logos.

Around 2007, Walt Disney Home Entertainment and Buena Vista Home Video became all one big thing: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. It’s a mouthful if you ask me, go back to “Walt Disney Home Video.”

Of course, there are also plenty of unique title cards, bumpers, and graphics used on various Disney video releases over time… FBI/anti-piracy warnings, “Feature Presentation” cards, bumpers that notify you of coming attractions, lots of things… Maybe we’ll look at those some other time!

What are your favorites?