Welcome to Anime Bargain Bin!

During the late 70's-80's Cartoons from all over the world were being bought up by hungry American companies for use as kid's shows in the west. What started slowly in the 60's with Marine Boy and Speed Racer soon grew into a small industry of it's own with the arrival of the Saturday morning cartoon slot and the home VCR.

The kids TV and video markets were soon littered with numerous different titles each created from one or more Japanese Anime series and re-edited, re-dubbed and re-titled to be children's entertainment. The advantages of this practice are obvious; with foreign animation the distributor already had 80% of what they needed for a show. By buying up existing animation and simply using it as a template for their own tales they were saving themselves a vast amount of time and money.

This was especially useful in the video cassette boom as it meant a distributor could have a whole new series of videos out on the shelves faster than anyone who was starting from scratch and it would be a guaranteed money maker in a market just in it's beginnings where demand massively outstretched supply.

Welcome one and all to Anime Bargain Bin Reviews!
Here's where I'll be taking a weekly dip into my vast collection of old anime video tapes and bringing you the details.

Will it be an overlooked, forgotten anime gem or a messy, flickery, pile of old junk? Or will it simply kill my Video Player?