Holiday Horrors: Classic Media

Continuing the fabled tradition begun all the way back in 2009, Scratchbomb presents Holiday Horrors and Holiday Triumphs: an advent calendar of some of the more hideous aspects of this most stressful time of year–with a few bits of awesomeness sprinkled in.

Earlier this week, I did a post on the awful He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special. I gave the show a proverbial smackdown, but it was all in good fun and we all had a jolly good laugh. Of course, there always has to be Grinch at every holiday gathering, and the turd in my punchbowl is Classic Media.

A few days ago, I received an ominous email from YouTube that one of the clips I posted from the special “may have content or media that is owned or licensed by Classic Media.” I’m very sensitive to stuff like this, because I once had a YouTube account that contained a treasure trove of old commercials and other weird clips, but lost it all thanks to several baseball-related clips. MLBAM fiercely guards its copyrights, and even though the footage I posted will never, ever, ever, and also EVER be released by them in any form from now until the seas dry up and the cities turn to loam, they came down on me like a ton of bricks.

Not wanting to endanger my YouTube account, I decided to just take down the clips. They died so that the rest of my video library could live. A moment of silence, please.

Truth be told, this was my fault for posting the clips in the first place. Had I done two seconds of googling, I would’ve realized the special was recently released on DVD, and therefore generally available, and therefore the clips were liable to be noticed by the makers of said DVD. And while the clips illustrated my points, I think you could understand the special’s horror without them.

But you know what? Fuck Classic Media in the pants is what. Do they think the clips I posted on my site, digitzed from a 25-year-old VHS tape, are going to dissuade people from buying their DVD? Are my lo-fi efforts really cutting into their bottom line?

Trust me, the only reason you buy this hunk of crap is nostalgia. It has absolutely no intrinsic value otherwise. You’ll want to watch it because you saw it as a kid. And the people who feel this way will go ahead and buy the stupid DVD no matter what I post on my site. I could have thrown up the entire special with an extra soundtrack of me farting throughout it, and not one less person would have bought this thing.

So thanks, Classic Media, for reminding me that even at Christmastime, there are people with nothing better to do than sic lawyers on poor schmucks who have no recourse. Happy holidays!