New For 1983!

So my mother's been tearing through the house as of late in a Tasmanian Devil-esque storm of new furniture, new wallpaper, and fresh paint in the living room. Naturally, she's been unearthing a lot of our house's buried treasures, so it was no surprise the other day when she walked over to me with an armful of vaguely familiar rectangular plastic boxes and dropped them in a stack on the desk.

"Here," she said. "Do something with these."

I looked over skeptically. "What do you mean, do something with them?"

"I don't know. Get rid of them. Sell them on eBay."

"Mom, I don't think even eBay can help us get rid of six Disney movies on Betamax."



Yep. Betamax. Not just dead technology, but dead technology from like three generations of home video back. There are people going into Wal-Mart right now to buy VHS copies of Maid in Manhattan who are having a good laugh at my expense.

But to be fair, these aren't just any old tapes. I'm talking high quality Disney films in the hard clamshell packages. Let's take a look at what we've got, hm?

First up are the classics, Kidnapped, and Treasure Island, followed up with a modern classic in its own right, Tron. Then there's The Adventures of Chip 'n' Dale, which I can remember being a big fan of when I was, uh, one. Things start to get a little iffy when you hit the Tom Hanks/Daryl Hannah interspecies sex-romp Splash, but hey, different strokes people. And of course, The Moon-Spinners.

There's also a catalog from when they first came out, just so you can know what was hot on the streets back in '83. I've got six words for you, folks: Herbie the Love Bug Triple Pack.

Wait, what the hell is The Moon-Spinners?

Not only have I never heard of this movie, but nobody I know has ever heard of it. Which seems to be pretty appropriate, since it's a Mystery/Romance that combines Eli Wallach (of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly) with Haley Mills (from The Parent Trap and early episodes of TV's Saved by the Bell) at a Greek resort where some jewel theiving's going down.

I lost interest immediately when I found out that Eli and Haley don't fall in love with each other.

For a minute there, I considered giving them away as a prize in an ISB Contest, but I think that's probably the one prize that people would actually want less than my hand-drawn portrait of the Vengeful Spirit of William Henry Harrison. So there's that idea down the drain.

Which just serves to beg the question: What the hell am I going to do with six Beta tapes?