1987 catalog of dreams and VHS tapes

[davemerrill]

Here's a new Let's Anime all about a mail-order (and convention table) anime merch import business and their 1987 catalog, giving us a look at exactly what the discerning and well-heeled anime fan could conceivably purchase if he had the long green to afford $160 for Final Yamato on VHS.

http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2020/08/1 ... tapes.html

uy pencil case 1.jpg (89.79 KiB) Viewed 5000 times

[labsenpai]

Those prices are why I'm only a collector of luxury pencil boards and key chains
Seems weird how today the anime recordings are cheap but the SD plastic toys (like nendoroids) are absurdly expensive.

[Drew_Sutton]

Very cool as always. Question about the LD prices - I always figured that LD was a "premier" format but nearly everything in their catalog, the LD was cheaper than tape. Was that common then, and LD prices went up in the 90s, or were LDs always cheaper but just never caught on for one reason or another? (Maybe the players were much more expensive than a VCR?)

Also, weird cover aside - I am jealous of that Zeta Gundam Symphonic Suite, I'll need to check and see if there are CD copies around somewhere. Well, there's lots of stuff in there to be jealous of!

[davemerrill]

Laser discs were always a little cheaper than VHS, even domestically. I have absolutely no idea why. A deliberate move to try to spur sales of laser disc players? LDs cheaper to manufacture than VHS tapes? It's a mystery.

[DKop]

There's some old Laser Perceptions ads in ANIMAG that had prices listed for what they were offering at the time, and one movie, say Crystal Triangle, they wanted $120 for it on LD. I don't think 120 pesos is worth owing Crystal Triangle, then again I did drop money on a VHS copy recently, so I will not judge that harshly.

The price of LD I would think could cost more, but disk media has been cheaper to manufacture than cartridge. There's more material I would guess that goes into VHS manufacturing than Laserdisc, and having it cheaper to compete against VHS to get people to buy highly priced players seems like the best strategy at the time, but it did ultimately failed.

[Drew_Sutton]

There's some old Laser Perceptions ads in ANIMAG that had prices listed for what they were offering at the time, and one movie, say Crystal Triangle, they wanted $120 for it on LD. I don't think 120 pesos is worth owing Crystal Triangle, then again I did drop money on a VHS copy recently, so I will not judge that harshly.

Yeah, I'd have to check my Animags specifically, but a lot of my reference was probably coming from those ads (and that the typical anime VHS was more expensive by a few bucks at least over non-anime/mainstream tapes). Good to know that those cases weren't the norm but will need to do my own research as to why they were cheaper and never took off. Thanks, Dave and DKop.

[usamimi]

I think it really depended on 1. what the title was, 2. who was releasing it, and 3. when it was released. For example: When Criteron released Akira on LD in 1992, the retail price was $124.95: https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/09372/CC ... al-Edition But then, when they released another edition in 1995, it was only $59.95: https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/06724/CC1435L/Akira So in some instances they could be cheaper, but the prices varied a lot over the span of the format's lifetime.