| Kids Klassics | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1985[?] |
| Defunct | 1992[?] |
| First Super Mario Home Video | The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! - The Bird! The Bird! |
Kids Klassics, also known as Kids Klassics Home Video, was a home video distribution company and the children's division of budget distributor GoodTimes Home Video. The company is most well known for releasing public domain children's content, but have also released budget-priced releases based on licensed content. One of which was a range of VHS tapes of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! from 1989 until 1991 under the "DIC Video" label.
Although GoodTimes stopped using the Kids Klassics brand in 1992, they continued to release children's content under their mainstream GoodTimes Home Video brand, including an additional Super Show! tape in 1993.
Format
Super Show! tapes by Kids Klassics were released in three different formats throughout three years.
- The 1989 run of tapes consisted of a single animated segment with two live-action segments in-between. There is no "The Super Mario Bros." intro proceeding the animated segment, however. This run of tapes was sponsored by Nestle Quik chocolate drink, and so, each Super Show! release featured an advertisement for the product before the Super Show! intro sequence (although later reissues would remove it). Two of these tapes - "The Bird! The Bird!" and "Pirates of the Koopa" were sold exclusively through mail-order via purchases of Nestle Quik.
- The 1990 run of tapes consists of a single live-action segment at the beginning, followed up with three animated segments. These releases once again do not contain the "The Super Mario Bros." opening, nor do they include any credits. After the last animated segment ends, it goes straight to Kids Klassics' logo sequence.
- The 1991 run of tapes contains four animated segments. These continue to utalise the standard Super Show! intro despite not containing live-action segments. The credits are also inserted back at the end.
As with most Kids Klassics releases, the Super Show tapes were recorded in "LP" mode. Due to this, it isn't uncommon for them to degrade or wear out faster than higher-quality tapes. In some cases, the existing content was recorded over other tapes (mainly unsold stock of other releases): an example of which is a copy of "Butch Mario and the Luigi Kid" containing the last minute of the public domain animated film Gulliver's Travels at the end of the tape after the Mario cartoons finish.
Releases
1989
- "The Bird! The Bird!" (Quik mail-order)
- "Pirates of the Koopa" (Quik mail-order)
- "Mario's Magic Carpet"
- "Mario Meets Koopzilla"
- "King Mario of Cramalot"
- "The Great Gladiator Gig"
- "Butch Maro and the Luigi Kid"
- "The Great BMX Race"