Forum:Which companies are best at retaining logos?
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Which companies do you think are best at keeping their older logos as opposed to ones who plaster them with newer ones? Dont think Disney have ever plastered older logos, and while Hanna-Barbera used to be plaster-happy in the 80s-90s, once Cartoon Network Studios took them over, most older HB shows have brought back their original logos. |
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"Dont think Disney have ever plastered older logos." Ooooh, current prints of most of their animated catalogue would like to talk with you. Anyways when it comes to preservation I think Universal comes to mind. Yes they did some plasterings but most of their older logos are intact on modern prints of their respective catalogue. The only brutal plastering they did was the case with PolyGram but even they did that decades ago. |
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Like Sagan said, Universal is very good at keeping their older logos intact, with the exceptions of some of their pre-1946 films and the post-1996 PolyGram library that they own. Fox (before the Disney acquisition) also great at mostly keeping their older logos intact, with the obvious exception being post-1997 versions of Star Wars. And some others like the Director’s Cut of Alien. I think Warner Bros has definitely started to be better at keeping older logos intact, especially on Warner Archive DVDs/Blu-rays of Warner Bros titles released during the Warner Communications era (1972-1990). And it’s also great seeing the 1984 Warner Communications “Shield” logo restored on the recent 4K releases of Christmas Vacation, The Lost Boys and Superman IV. And it also gives me hope that the upcoming 4K release of the original Vacation movie may have potentially restored the 1973 Warner Communications “W” logo (or The Worm logo as Joe Dante referred to it as on the commentary on the DVD of Gremlins). It also gives me hope that we might start to see Warner restore both the 1987 and Turner-era New Line logos on new 4K remasters of 1987-1997 New Line films. With The Mask turning 30 next year, I hope Warner does a new 4K release of that with the 1987 logo restored. I think it’s great starting to see older MGM and United Artists logos show up on the most titles that they’ve licensed to labels like Shout Factory and Arrow Such as seeing the 1957 MGM logo on the Shout Factory Blu-Rays of Poltergeist II and the recent 4K of Wargames (which used the MGM/UA variant). Same with seeing the 1987 MGM/UA Communications/MGM combo on the Arrow release of A Fish Called Wanda. And Severin’s Blu-Ray of Overboard (1987) has it semi-restored (the MGM/UA Communications logo is silent and the 1986 MGM logo with the MGM/UA byline has Leo’s 1985 roar replaced with the 1995 roar.) However, some of the MGM titles that were licensed to other labels such as Criterion and Kino Lorber such as Moonstruck (released by Criterion) and Spaceballs (released by Kino). have the original MGM/UA Communications era logos replaced with the 2012 MGM logo. I think it’s because the transfers for Moonstruck and Spaceballs were actually performed by MGM themselves while the transfers for the titles above were actually performed by Shout, Arrow and Severin. But thankfully, a bunch of the Transamerica-era UA films that Kino released such as the 4K of the original The Taking Of Pelham 123. Unfortunately I was disappointed with the new Rocky 4K collection, as I was hoping it that the Transamerica UA logos would be restored for the first two Rocky movies and the the MGM/UA Entertainment Co. logo would be restored on Rocky IV. But nope, they’re still plastered with newer MGM and UA logos, though the 4K of Rocky III still retains the 1982 UA logo. I also have a theory as to why MGM continues to plaster Transamerica-era UA logos. I think it’s possible that when MGM purchased UA from Transamerica in 1981, that Transamerica forced MGM to sign an agreement/or contract to remove all references to Transamerica on future releases of pre-1981 UA films. |
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Most television prints of Die Hard 2 do have its original Fox logo plastered over too, actually. As for Miramax, that company's not good at preserving their own logos. Sony is very good at keeping their older logos too (for instance, the Columbia Pictures-owned Castle Rock films (A Few Good Men, In the Line of Fire, and North) and Cliffhanger (the lone Carolco Pictures release that is still owned by its original distributor, that being TriStar Pictures) preserve their original Columbia and TriStar logos). |
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The good news is that ever since Paramount took hold of the Miramax catalog, we’ve been starting to see more of the 1987 logo again. For instance, the recent 4K release of Pulp Fiction has the 1987 logo restored. |
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Funny thing is, the 2018 Miramax logo is on that 4K release as well. Meanwhile, AMC's print has just the 3rd Miramax logo. Also, Warner Bros. owns home video rights to the Largo Entertainment library. While WB does usually preserve the original distributors' logos, Largo's is usually not so lucky. In fact, only a few films actually retain Largo (example: AMC's print of Point Break, where both the Fox AND Largo logos are left intact). For actual WB titles, however, we all know how bad they tend to plaster older Warner Bros. logos. Below is a list of some WB movies I checked that have their original WB logo intact or not (in no particular order):
Notably, aside from Twister, of the films listed, Lethal Weapon 4 is the only one that had a variant of the logo it used (the "75 Years" logo). As for Paramount on their own, it's clear that they're very relaxed with preserving logos nowadays, but in the past, they did some plastering (usually on home media releases, although re-releases like those of Top Gun (the 2013 re-release; the original "Blue Mountain" is preserved on more recent prints), Grease and Titanic also have their original logos plastered over). |
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It’s worth mentioning that the Fox logo is also intact on current TV prints of Gladden Entertainment films they distributed such as current TV prints of Weekend At Bernie’s. |
