Jim on Film: Turn About and Fair Play
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Personally, I don’t buy cardboard-packaged CDs. There was enough additional music on the soundtrack re-issue of Mary Poppins that I was considering a purchase, but I have dozens of Disney CDs in plastic cases. I’m a collector, and appearance is important. Furthermore, the cheaper cardboard cases don’t appear to be particularly sturdy and won’t look nice in years to come (most of them look bent up on the store shelves), unlike my original Mary Poppins CD, which I bought some twelve years ago and still looks and plays as good as new.
To me, the cardboard cases don’t make the releases seem special—it looks to me like the music companies are trying to save themselves some change and want me to think it looks special. When there are hundreds of great CDs out there vying for my attention, I don’t know why record companies think cheap packaging makes their product more appealing. Case in point: I love Rachel York and wanted her Barnes and Noble exclusive CD, but because I have, literally, hundreds of other CDs in plastic cases, I bought a different CD instead.
Also, in the face of the ability to download package-less songs for free so readily available, music companies need to play fair. If someone is buying a hard copy of the CD, there is probably a good reason to suggest they want the packaging to look nice and be of high quality. Personally, I would rather pay an extra fifteen cents for a CD in a plastic CD case to cover the cost of the packaging than to buy something that isn’t going to last.
Fortunately for Disney, their music releases haven’t been nearly as frustrating as many other companies; however, they’ve been on the forefront of being disrespectful in the DVD market.
There has been talk in the past year about the drop in DVD sales. In the past seven years, people have gobbled up DVDs in a desire to replace the fuzzier VHS copies of their favorite movies. The result is that people own a ton of beloved movies, but as the number of desired titles that become available grows rapidly, the amount of hours in a day to watch them is not.
But I also think there is a disillusionment, a realization that movie companies are not playing fair and people are feeling cheated because of it. After all, people who feel cheated change their habits so that they don’t feel cheated anymore.
In the past, Disney would reissue their classic films on video about every seven years. Many people were buying the new editions for a new generation of children—kids who weren’t even born at the time of the original video release. The enticement to get adult fans to buy the movie again was in picture restoration and making-of documentaries. There was both a lapse of time and an added value. Now Disney, and most other movie companies, are popping up with new editions like bunnies in the spring.
The Little Mermaid re-issue was still rather too close to its original DVD release, but at least the new edition offered a tempting array of bonus features that, while significantly less than most of the other Platinum Editions, were worth the cost of the repurchase alone. Compare this to the DVD reissues of Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Mulan, which came out not long after their original DVD releases with a plethora of bonus features. I had just spent $20 on my original DVD copies two or three years prior, and I felt it was wasteful to drop it again. Because of this reputation, I never bought the DVD release of Lilo and Stitch because I was waiting for the 2-Disc treatment that was rumored and, if history repeated itself, was right around the riverbend. If that 2-disc edition finally sees the light of day in five years, Disney will have missed out on the money those of us would have spent originally.
Similar instances have happened with Tarzan, The Emperor’s New Groove, and Dumbo. While they offered bonus features that had already been available, their new editions so shortly after their original release still confused the average consumer. People wondered if they were worth the upgrade so shortly after they were already released. On the live-action front, some of Disney’s live-action releases have also not been entirely respectful of the consumer. While the Vault Disney releases offered such an array of features that it warranted an upgrade from the VHS editions, it didn’t help that not long after those titles were pulled from shelves, some of them were repackaged with their sequels in a lower-cost edition.
Such recent re-releases as bonus disc editions of The Pirates of the Carribean, Pocahontas, Lady and the Tramp, Mary Poppins, Remember the Titans, The Princess Diaries, High School Musical, The Chronicles of Narnia, and several other films create in consumers disillusionment. When Pirates of the Caribbean 2 hits store shelves, I’m going to wonder why I should buy it when a new, deluxe edition will likely be out in less than a year.
It must also be remembered that a release year doesn’t indicate when copies were last available on store shelves. Pocahontas was originally released as part of the Gold Collection in 2000, but copies remained on the shelves close to the time when the 2-Disc edition was released. Similarly, it is not unlikely that someone just bought Robin Hood who will only to be soon confronted by the “Most Wanted Edition,�? which could or could yield desired bonus features. Again, consumers should feel satisfied after buying a product and not as if they’ve been cheated because of a new edition coming out a year later. Because of this, I’ve already seen reviews saying, “With a lack of bonus features, it’s likely a more deluxe edition will be coming out in a year or so.�? This isn’t exactly enticing people away from renting it on Netflix.
We are living in a time when, for many people, integrity keeps them paying for the entertainment products they could otherwise burn, download, share, or buy bootlegged. With the recent concern over dropping CD and DVD sales, it would help greatly if entertainment companies such as Disney would not cause us to question the value of their product by dishing out multiple editions and short-changed editions only to confront us with a new edition a short time later. As these companies search for ways to make their product more appealing and to offer advantages to buying rather than stealing, they should consider how their money-making strategies are pushing away many of the consumers they are frustrated about having lost.
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-- Jim Miles
With a love for animation discovered from watching Oliver & Company in 1988, Jim Miles has actively been studying animation and storytelling through animation since the fifth grade. In addition to his column for the Laughing Place, Jim has written two novels, both of which he hopes to revise for publication sometime before he dies. His love for great literature and the theatre has also driven him to write a libretto for a dramatic musical entitled Fire in Berlin as well as to start a musical comedy, City of Dreams. Jim will soon move to Los Angeles to pursue a full-time writing career.
The opinions expressed by Jim, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of Disneyland and the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted November 2, 2006