On the first of this month (August), Paramount/MTV released
Beavis and Butt-head - The Mike Judge Collection Vol. 3, and on the street date
we reported that Target chain stores would be selling the set at an advantage over the other retailers: they would have a bonus DVD that "
includes 2 new to DVD cartoons and more." Our story starts there.
It continues a couple of days after that, when we
followed up with a report that Best Buy also had a bonus DVD to accompany that release. However, it didn't have any episodes on it, just a featurette about the future of
Beavis and Butt-head. Frankly, our readers didn't seem much interested in that...they wanted the extra cartoons on the Target disc! However, we had to recognize in that second newspost that we had been getting lots of reports from readers that they could not find the bonus DVD at Target stores. I personally experienced this, at 3 different Target stores, with employees themselves telling me that they didn't see any specially marked boxes. Heck, most Target staff told me they hadn't even heard of the promotion until I pointed out the mention on both the weekly ad circular and on the shelf-talker signs in the new arrivals section.
Still, a couple of trusted readers told us that they had seen stickered packages with the bonus DVDs, and so we mentioned to look for stickered packages...we had a very few people who wrote in to tell us that they had seen stickered boxes that actually had the bonus DVD with it. The odd thing, though, is that noone could send us a scan of the bonus DVD, or even tell us what the two extra cartoons were on that disc!
Things got even more weird after that. The following week was to see the DVD release of the first season of Fox's popular new show,
Prison Break, and again we
reported that both Target and Best Buy each had a separate exclusive bonus DVD to go along with it. But on street date,
it was apparent that the Best Buy bonus DVD had ended up at Target stores instead. We railed against this, and - as TVShowsOnDVD owner Gord Lacey stated so well - we find that most of our readers are fed up with the whole practice of these bonus discs that are exclusive a particular retailer. We'll editorialize on this further in a moment.
Within a single day after the release of
Prison Break, and the revelation of the issue with the bonus DVD, Target
announced a program to get consumers the correct Target version of the bonus DVD, shipped directly from the folks at the factory that got the extra discs mixed up during the production and shipping of the sets. That's great for
Prison Break fans, but what about
Beavis and Butt-head fans? Target was mum on this!
That's where reader Jamie Svatba came to the rescue! Jamie contacted us first the day after Target's
Prison Break fix was announced, letting us know that he had left messages at both Target and Paramount, asking about the missing
Beavis and Butt-head bonus DVD. Target called Jamie back the next day (Friday the 11th), offering to take his information and send him the missing bonus DVD. Jamie let us know that, but we didn't get the message from him until after-hours at the Target customer service phone line. So I personally called them bright and early on Monday the 14th. By Thursday the 17th, both Jamie and I had gotten our bonus DVDs! See, it really DOES exist:
As you can see, the bonus cartoons are "Evolution Sucks" and "Nothing Happening." It is true, by the way, that those two cartoons have never been on DVD before (not even the two-disc "
History" set that Paramount cancelled). The bonus DVD also contains "
The Animation Show: The Beginning" and "Guard Dog" (by Bill Plympton) on the same disc.
So, how can you get this? While Target has not officially given TVShowsOnDVD any information about this from the viewpoint of information to a news service, I
can relate my own personal experience as a consumer who deserved this DVD (and have the receipt to prove it). This also worked for Jamie, who I have to thank for the information. We cannot guarantee it will work for anyone else, but it worked for us. We both called Target Guest Relations at 1-800-440-0680. When the electronic phone system picked up, I selected the following options to navigate to the correct area and speak to a person who could take my information:
- Pressed 2 for "a store experience"
- Pressed 3 for "questions about store merchandise"
- Pressed 4 for "all other questions about merchandise"
And...that's it. I told an agent about how I looked at 3 different Target stores for the bonus DVD, couldn't find it, and couldn't find a single employee at those locations who recalled seeing any copies arrive that for-certain had the DVD. She took my information, told me it would be passed to the vendor, and the vendor sent the disc to me via 2nd-Day Express service (no signature was required). Thanks, Jamie, for the information, and thanks to the agent at Target Guest Relations who took care of me.
But really, that may be my very last bonus disc I put up with. We're certainly, by and large, done with reporting on them here at TVShowsOnDVD, unless they are something truly special. The studios aren't driving these, the retailers are. And it's gotten so out-of-hand that now we've got releases that have 2 or even 3 different bonus discs that are made for different retailers. It confuses consumers, who don't know what to get, and are forced to make a choice based on criteria other than "best price." It's confusing the production houses, who are getting mixed up about which package version belongs to which retailer. It's pissing off employees at the retailers, who don't know enough about these to be able to help customers to even identify if the bonus DVD is on-pack, or behind a register somewhere in the store (at a register station in the store's DVD area, at the registers located at the front of the store, or even only found in the store's customer service area). If the bonus disc is a pack-in with the main set, are the sets marked with a sticker or not? Where in the store are the stickered copies: new releases area, endcap, special display, or what?
Readers have a LOT of personal stories about this frustration, but let me give you one of my own! This past week I decided at the last minute to pick up
Rome - Season 1, and Circuit City had the best price in my neighborhood. Every store you can think of - Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. - was advertising a bonus DVD with previews of various HBO shows on it. Circuit City had the best price, though, and was also supposed to be giving away another bonus DVD - about the new
Snakes On A Plane film - with any purchase. So I swung in there mid-day Saturday looking for
Rome, and there were plenty of copies left. However, they were out of both bonus DVDs, they told me. Already? Yep. And that's frustrating, you feel like someone owes you something! The HBO disc was the one that really seemed wacko to be gone, though, because you would think they'd get enough copies to go with each copy of
Rome...especially since Circuit City's offer was to only get the bonus disc if you bought
Rome (unlike most other retailers).
So look, we think that every box set ought to have the same bonus content. All of it, whatever's available. Box sets come out in another Region (Europe, say) with 5 featurettes, and then the North American version gets only 4 of those featurettes, so that the extra one can be on some retailer's bonus DVD. Uh-uh; bad way to play. We blame the studios for agreeing to do it, but we blame the retailers for driving it. And while many people point back to Best Buy's exclusive "Rolling Stones" concert DVD set as the start of it all, we can think further back to the days of VHS, when Wal-Mart would get exclusive video tapes like
the first "Nickstravaganza!" release.
And so far we've only talked about the issues in the United States. Canada doesn't get these bonus DVDs at all, or very very few of them, and are gypped out of getting that material unless they go to extreme lengths to get the releases from stores in the USA. This is nuts! Gord and I agree on that, and think it should end. And trade magazine
Home Media Retailing is passing on that word to the industry.
Feel free to
let Best Buy and let Target know how you feel. If you wish to complain directly to a human, the phone number above may be used for Target, and for Best Buy the number is 1-888-BEST BUY (1-888-237-8289). I am informed that it may be more effective to complain by phone, especially at Target, since they cannot respond via form letter e-mail and since their Guest Relations phone center would see a noticable taxation of resources. While we're at it:
e-mail Circuit City or call them at 1-800-843-2489. And you can
e-mail Wal-Mart or call them at 1-800-WAL-MART (1-800-925-6278).
For now, though, we're out of it. We're done. We don't expect to report any bonus DVD information in the near future. We'll leave that sort of thing up to the very nice Russell Hammond at
DVDFanboy.com.
