Pre-production cassette tapes?

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BlueOctopede
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Pre-production cassette tapes?

Post by BlueOctopede » Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:45 am

I've aquired some odd cassettes over the years and am wondering if anyone can help me I.D. what they are. Also, I'm curious if anyone knows what the pre-production and marketing cassette shells might look like, to help with identification.

The strangest are a set of Mother Goose tapes that I've had since I was a child, that I think might just be homemade but figured I'd ask anyway. (I'll include images of all of these at the bottom, by the way.) The Mother Goose cassettes have the standard housing but different labels, blue with no WoW or Alchemy branding on them. They also do not work properly, with one side having no animation, just audio, and on the other side the animation only working some of the time, if at all. The tape reels on them are also not cut, so once you get to the end of the story there's a good 20-ish minutes of... nothing... Like I said though, I think these are just homemade tapes that didn't turn out right.

Next is a copy of The Airship in Cantonese, which as far as I'm aware never got an official release. The guy who sold me this tape thought it was the Japanese version... which it definitely is not. The label is a standard English Airship label, but one side has the letter C printed on. The audio and animation quality on the tape are excellent quality, on par with any other released tape, so I'm guessing this one is real and not a homemade dub.

Last is a set of tapes in French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Norwegian, German, and Swedish. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Spanish, Norwegian, and Swedish versions got official releases but the rest of them did. They're all in standard shells but with no labels, just the text of The Airship's label printed on, and another small sticker (it might also be printed on) specifying the language. I haven't tested these tapes since they haven't arrived yet, but I've been told that they all work so we'll see. The labels on these are very strange though, which has me quite curious. What are the purpose of these tapes? I know that some of the VERY early recorded tapes were made on a standard cassette with a handwritten label, but what are these? Just more professional versions of the sale thing, possibly to test the audio and animation quality? Any info. would be greatly appreciated!!
Last edited by BlueOctopede on Sat Dec 26, 2020 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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BlueOctopede
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Re: Pre-production cassette tapes?

Post by BlueOctopede » Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:51 am

Ack sorry the images were too big to post so here's a link to them on DropBox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rxndzbu5pnv6 ... t0-ba?dl=0
๐ŸŒ•๐ŸŒŸ๐Ÿป And if your dream's a good one, some day it might come true! ๐Ÿป๐ŸŒ•๐ŸŒŸ

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BlueOctopede
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Re: Pre-production cassette tapes?

Post by BlueOctopede » Mon Dec 28, 2020 10:42 am

Oh! Another question: do we know what other book and tape sets went through a color scheme change besides The Airship? If any? I know in early photos The Airship had blue accents instead of beige... Just curious!
๐ŸŒ•๐ŸŒŸ๐Ÿป And if your dream's a good one, some day it might come true! ๐Ÿป๐ŸŒ•๐ŸŒŸ

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IlliopMom
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Re: Pre-production cassette tapes?

Post by IlliopMom » Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:31 am

BlueOctopede wrote: โ†‘Mon Dec 28, 2020 10:42 am Oh! Another question: do we know what other book and tape sets went through a color scheme change besides The Airship? If any? I know in early photos The Airship had blue accents instead of beige... Just curious!
If any other tapes have that situation, I'd assume it'd be The Faded Fobs simply because of how early that tape was produced. Not sure.
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