What the Heck is a Video Bancorp

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 Ladies and gentlemen, or gentle humans. Lemme do that again. 

Ladies, gentlemen, and Homestar fans alike, allow me to introduce you a very fascinating company I had found out about. No this has nothing to do with Homestar. Sorry to disappoint thee.

The topic for today is The Video Bancorp! 


What do you mean, you don't know who that is? Well, I'm your guide who's way too nerdy for his own good, and this is an essay I made out of boredom. 

No more nonsense, let's begin!!

So, The Video Bancorp was this VHS company that specialized in.. let's say, less than family friendly content. These guys are pretty barely known outside of two factors, both of which I'll get into a wee bit later. They apparently lasted about 5 years and shut down in 1990, so my estimate would be around 1985.

And by getting into those factors a wee bit later, I mean right now! 

First things first, these guys had gotten into some very hot water with one of their releases. See, alongside the content meant for the older folks, they'd also pump out some of those crummy public domain cartoon tapes.. one of which happened to be a Popeye tape with 30 minutes of the bad stuff at the end. 

This one tape which might've been one of a kind sparked lots of outrage and even a news article [Citation 1] was made on it, although the article dates back to 1993. So I'm assuming the ol Bancorp had their tapes sold up into at least '93.

Anyway, the other thing, and where I get to unleash my inner critic, is their logo. Yes, their logo. 

Some of these public domain distributor logos would be very cheaply made, often some crummy sci-fi music over a bad 3d rendering of their logo, or just a zoom in on their logo with some fanfare of the sort playing. 

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is going to salvage these guys' cheapness. Here we go! 


Odd, scary, "disgustang" as the old memes would put it. 

Hey, I've got an idea! Yeah, let's play "I spy everything wrong with this logo!" 

How about the lines separating the logo and the text below, so it looks like "thanks you for using our product" is a new sentence? How about the fact you can see the interface poking through the logo? Or, as an extension to that one, how about the fact this logo looks like someone actually took a picture of it with a camera?

And all that would be dead silent, making it all the weirder. 

But that's not it! Sometimes, these folks would put what they called "math refreshers" on their tapes. I don't know why, but they exist. I'll show you two of the most redundant ones here. 



Wow, thanks, you guys! I wouldn't have EVER guessed that 2+2 and 2x2 are the same!! The 2+2 one in particular really makes it obvious that the whole logo is just a picture of a monitor. 

There are about 3 more7 of these math refreshing things, but I'm gonna.. not show em. Mostly cause they're not as unintentionally redundant as these two. 

Anyway, that is The Video Bancorp, the VHS company with the most shoestring budget I've ever seen. Have a good one, folks. 

Now it's time for EXTRA CREDIT!!! Credit to the below.


Citation 1: https://www.deseret.com/1993/4/15/19042240/popeye-videotape-is-a-real-eye-popper/

Images source (and some more formal reading on these folks): https://www.avid.wiki/The_Video_Bancorp

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