Sunday, September 25, 2011

Godzilla - Paramount/Gateway Style

It seems almost...quaint to be remarking on some of my favorite VHS packaging of Godzilla movies. I still find it hard to believe the format has fallen so far, so fast. Oh well, time marches on and all that.

Anyway, I come to praise some VHS, not to bury it. Though the tapes themselves were recorded in lousy SLP/EP mode, I was quite infatuated by the boxes created for the Paramount/Gateway releases in the early 1990s. The synopses were usually nothing to write home about, but the art on some of them was first-rate. True, it often featured human characters not in the movies represented, but I wager few people cared other than the most hardcore of hardcore fans. It was well-executed and eye-catching imagery, with a degree of skill I still find surprising. Has the artist of these mini-masterpieces ever been identified?

Here's a list of the kaiju film boxes illustrated by this particular artist. It's not all the Toho films from this program, but it's a hefty percentage. All images are from the website Toho Kingdom.

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