Disney has always marched to its own
drummer.. so to speak. It's been one of those love/hate relationships.
I think they have a special council that meets regularly to figure
out how they can annoy collectors more...Here's a couple of examples:
*When other studios would put the
year of a rerelease on a poster, Disney would put the original copyright
year.....making many collectors scratch their heads trying to figure
out which rerelease it was. (Thank goodness NSS was used for some
of the Disney rereleases)
*Disney would send threatening letters
to theater managers warning them not to even give a poster to a
charity.
*Disney was so worried that a collector
would get one of their posters that they individually numbered most
of their posters trying to catch theater managers selling posters.
And for years I received Disney posters with numbers SCRATCHED off
the back so they couldn't be traced.
*They also printed horizontally
on the backs of their posters an ownership tag similar to the NSS
tag of old.
*Trying to cut cost, it was Disney
that came up with scrimpping on the presskits.... calling a pressbook
with a single press still stuck inside the front cover a 'Presskit'.
Most dealers wind up selling them as pressbooks and throw in the
still because they're too ashamed to call it a presskit.
We had so many young collectors contacting
us and asking us questions about these that we put up an article just
to address the Disney poster problems
Well it was looking a little better
for the presskit lovers when Dreamworks came out with color press
stills and color photos inside their pressbooks.... and fancier covers....of
course trying to keep up, Disney had to follow ....
These new improved kits weren't as
good as the old presskits where you could see the different posters
sizes and pictures of all the different promotional items that were
available ........ but at least the new ones were in color.
Well, the Disney 'let's iritate the
collectors' council has met again...
Take a look at some of the NEW presskits
they are releasing:
We're going to have to change the
name to PRESS BOOKLETS!!!
They measure 4 3/4" x 7 1/4"!!!!
The National Treasure Pressbooklet
has 42 pages and has the credits and everything just like a regular
size pressbook... even a good number of color photos inside.....
The Life Aquatic is also 42 pages
and the same.... they even put out a little 4 page additional booklet
the same size with Q&A about the movie.
Maybe I'm just getting old..... but
I feel like I need to hand it to the kids to color on or something!!
ok... I know... the writing is on
the wall for paper pressbooks anyway... The majority of theaters get
electronic or Interactive presskits. It won't be long that the pressbook
will be a thing of the past and completely replaced with the theater
manager being able to download anything that they want.
