Topic on User talk:Astounding Beyond Belief

Hey Astounding Beyond Belief, sorry if this is a waste of your time but I need to discuss some things about those Toho English-variant VHS covers I (breifly) uploaded. You mentioned that the Mechagodzilla II listing that you discovered made you believe these were bootlegs, I presume this is because the description claimed they had English subtitles. However I stumbled on some Ebay listings myself and they make no mention of these subtitles (I believe some even say there is only Japanese audio as well, no English subs) and only the front cover had an English logo and credits (you should also notice a "subtitled" Japanese title below some of them, heck even the sides of the VHS covers say "TOHO VIDEO". I also noticed that Titanollante uploaded a similar looking VHS for Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, if you compare it with the other tapes (I might add the sides/backs of the English logo VHS tapes for your reference) it is very similar to them, only English for the front and every other side is in Japanese. Finally I would like to bring attention to the fonts used, notably for G2K and Megaguirus, since the G2K logo uses the "2000" logo from the Japanese version (as well as the bar which in-cases "MILLENNIUM") and the Megaguirus logo uses a similar (if not the same) font for "MEGAGUIRUS", while these could just have simply been photoshopped I doubt that bootleggers would put in the time and effort to make these logos, especially since (if they are bootlegs) they could have just reused the bland sans serif font from the GvMGII cover. There would also be the matter of how they got textless artwork which matches the Japanese covers but I feel I've already made this comment long enough. In conclusion, I believe these might actually be variants of the Japanese VHS covers, and only released in Japan (not the US or UK), I get that I'm new here and you might still choose to not include them but at the very least investigate that Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah cover I mentioned. Thank you for your time

The H-Man set me straight on these. For the films in question and several others from this era, Toho released two VHS editions: one for rental with a cover in Japanese, then later one for retail with a cover in English. Bootleggers copied the English covers for their own releases, such as the Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II tape I found on eBay; the calling card for those is the "IMPORT" sticker on the back. As long as the images don't have that sticker, we can include them. Sorry for the holdup!

No need to be sorry my friend, just glad you were able to actually see this. Thanks for noting the import sticker, noticed Titanollante’s GvKG VHS uses the import sticker so I’m removing that right now. I’ll try and find the legitimate covers and upload them onto the site.

Much appreciated!

Found some of the rental VHS covers, adding them soon. Pretty sure I found the retail VHS for Bio too.