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Tech mishap gives Toy Story 2 a surprise ‘F’
Parents are getting yet another shocking
surprise from a Disney animated movie on home video.
Some copies of Toy Story 2 — which Disney expects
to be its best-selling DVD title ever — have turned
up at Costco stores around the country with footage
in the middle of the movie from the R-rated High Fidelity
in which the F-word is used twice.
Costco pulled the movie from its shelves after the retailer
and Disney received about eight complaints from consumers.
Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment blames
the glitch on the studio’s manufacturer, Technicolor
Videocassette, Inc., and says the problem affects fewer
than 1% of the discs. Last year, Technicolor shipped
Pinocchio DVDs that had arch-rival DreamWorks’
animated movie The Prince of Egypt recorded on them
by mistake.
Technicolor acknowledged a manufacturing defect in the
Toy Story 2 discs and said in a statement, “Technicolor
will continue to investigate the cause of the defect
and the magnitude of the problem.” The company
would not comment further.
Disney and Technicolor say the problem is limited to
a batch of the most expensive Toy Story — The Ultimate
Toy Box three-disc sets that were shipped to Costco
stores nationwide. The retailer pulled all those collectors’
sets off its shelves — about 1,000 copies —
and is awaiting replacement sets from Disney and Technicolor.
The problem does not affect the lower-priced two-disc
sets featuring both Toy Story and Toy Story 2. “We
are confident that the defective product has been isolated
and removed from store shelves,” Disney said in
a statement.
It is not clear how the glitch happened but it was apparently
done at Technicolor’s facility in Camarillo, Calif.,
where the DVD version of Disney’s High Fidelity
was also duplicated. It’s not the first time Disney
has had this kind of public relations nightmare with
its animated features.
And it’s only the latest in a series of recent
glitches on the relatively new digital DVD platform.
In 1999, Disney had to recall several million videocassettes
of The Rescuers when it was discovered that the video
version had been transferred from an old master, that
had a couple of frames of film featuring the silhouette
of a naked woman inserted in a scene of the movie.
A few years ago, the studio was embarrassed to learn
that the videocassette and laser disc versions of Who
Framed Roger Rabbit? featured a few frames of the animated
Baby Herman doing some ‘un-baby’ like things
with his fingers to a live-action woman as he walked
under her dress. Those frames were digitally altered
for future video releases.
Disney also changed the artwork on the video packaging
of The Little Mermaid in the early 1990s, after complaints
that one of the castle turrets looked more like a phallus.
When the lyrics of a song sung by Robin Williams in
Aladdin drew criticism from certain Arab organisations,
new lyrics were recorded for the movie’s release
on video.
Disney is also encouraging consumers who get a copy
of Toy Story 2 with the R-rated material, to return
it to the store where it was purchased for a replacement.
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