When domestic Video Cassette Recorders first appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, most of what was available to rent or buy on pre-recorded tapes consisted of normal theatrical movies.
TV shows were also released. Some programmes were edited (apparently by the villain from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, using his chainsaw) in to movie-length versions, combining parts of two or more TV episodes. Other tapes featured the original TV episodes.
As TV programmes were usually shorter than movies, you usually got two or three episodes per tape. Tapes were large, and expensive, so full TV season sets were rare. If you wanted a set, it had to be built up tape by tape, which was expensive, and only for the dedicated fan. Many shows only had a few selected episodes available.
Since colour programmes were generally thought to be more popular than those in black and white, some shows from the 1960s (when TV production largely changed over from black and white to colour) faced a problem.
In the case of The Avengers, the early episodes were in black and white, and the later episodes in colour. Video companies feared that the colour episodes would sell more than the black and white episodes, leaving the black and white tapes sitting on shop shelves.
The answer, at least in this case, was to put one of each on a single tape. These Avengers tapes by Lumiere each have two Emma Peel episodes, but from a different season of the show. Season 4 was the first Emma Peel series, and the last to be made in black and white.
Season 5 was the second and last Emma Peel series, and the first to be made in colour. Clearly an attempt has been made to put together episodes that are linked in some way, usually by theme. The first two appearances of the Cybernaut robots are included on Vol.2 - there was also a Cybernauts episode in The New Avengers.
Vol.1 The Town of No Return/From Venus With Love
Vol.2 The Cybernauts/Return of the Cybernauts
Vol.3 A Touch of Brimstone/The Bird Who Knew Too Much
Vol.4 Death at Bargain Prices/Escape in Time
Vol.5 Too Many Christmas Trees/The Joker
Vol.6 The Gravediggers/The Living Dead
Vol.7 The Danger Makers/The See-Through Man
Vol.8 Small Game For Big Hunters/The Hidden Tiger
These tapes date from the 1990s - some have dated price stickers on the back, giving a date of 20th December 1995. As there was nothing available on tape from The Avengers in NZ, the release of these volumes was a big deal for fans of the show.
They were $29.95 NZ each, for just two episodes, but I recall them being on special when they came out. There were eight volumes, although there might also have been one for Tara King (all of whose episodes were in colour), which we did not get.
As there were 26 episodes in Season 4, and 24 episodes in Season 5, these releases represent only about a third of the episodes made. As far as I know, these were the only episodes released on videotape in New Zealand. I had to wait a long time for the DVD boxed set to arrive, so I could watch the others.
The tapes have the Australian censorship rating of PG in a square printed on the paper slick that is inserted in to the plastic case. This meant Parental Guidance Recommended for Persons Under 15 Years in Australia.
For the New Zealand market paper stickers were applied, also with the PG classification. This is in two forms, the first three have PG - Parental Guidance Recommended for Persons Under 13 Years; the others have Parental Guidance Recommended for Younger Viewers, but without any age level being mentioned.
The latter have a silver stripe down the centre (in NZ, video labels have a Silver stripe for Classifications that are not age-restricted, and a Gold stripe for those that have a legally binding age restriction). The classification appears on a coloured dot: green for General (British U); yellow for those with an age recommendation; and red for those with an age restriction.
These tapes are now a piece of history, an attempt to move the less popular black and white episodes of a show by combining them with one of the more desirable colour episodes.
They also illustrate the high price of videos in the 'Good Old Days'. At full retail price, these few tapes would have cost more back in 1995 than my full DVD set of The Avengers (Seasons 1 to 6) did in 2022, and taken up more space.
Paul Adams from New Zealand
