Jonny Quest: The Darkest Fathoms (UK VHS, 1996) HD

Maybe a slightly more obscure choice this time, but there’s some interesting content on this 1996 tape. This has to be one of the earliest releases for a Cartoon Network show on VHS in the UK, and it shows, since Warner Bros. weren’t even distributing them by this point – First Independent did, with that logo that I always thought was a weird head, not a bird. The logo equivalent of an ink blot test, I guess. Anyway, things start off with a promo for none other than Cartoon Network, which would have been a mega luxury for you to have in the mid-90s, even if the Cartoon Cartoons had only just started to come out of the womb and most of the programming was archival shows from the likes of Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and whatnot. That’s what this whole tape is – an advert, essentially. “Get satellite or cable! You’ll need it in the future!” We didn’t get hooked up until 1998, though, which was still a staggering 23 years ago. Ouchie. Next, a promo for the UK VHS releases of Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures, a show that was given a big marketing push by Hanna-Barbera – this tape being an obvious example – though it failed to reach expectations and died off after two seasons. In actual fact, when Toonami eventually came to the UK in 2000, this was one of the headline shows, and like most people, I only really remember it for the intro more than the show itself. With its digital line trickery, it’s still pretty cool now, and quite ahead of its time, really. But maybe that’s just me. Some more flashy Cartoon Network and Quest logos lead into the main feature, anyway, and after the credits, there’s absolutely nothing. I mean, come on – couldn’t you have squeezed in one more Cartoon Network plug while you were at it? That’s just anticlimactic.