1971/91 Aesop's Fables. With Bill Cosby as Aesop. About 26 minutes. Fairlawn, NJ: Alpha Video Distributors Inc. Gift of Greg and Kathy Grant, Summer, '92.
Seems to be exactly identical with the Lorimar tape listed under 1971/86. Thus it contains "The Tortoise and the Eagle" and TH. Explicitly declared as public domain work not authorized by the original copyright owners. There is a crazy "Chipmunks Christmas" advertisement at the end.
1971/86 Aesop's Fables. Starring Bill Cosby. About 30 minutes. #127. Irvine, CA: Karl-Lorimar Home Video. One extra.
The best of the tapes I have. A delightful composition of animation and photography. Wonderland (where you have to take your shoes off!), songs, the personality of "Mr. Aesop," two main fables, and a little wisdom about life (especially about having a dream) work together to make a good film. In fact, the integration of the two fables with each other and with the other elements is superb. "The Turtle Who Wanted To Fly" (8:30 long) begins with springtime in the pond. Romantic interest leads the tortoise, on the advice of the hare, to want to impress a female tortoise with his flying. The eagle will give the tortoise only a start. Stealing feathers becomes a major portion of the story. The tortoise has good wings and actually flies for a bit before he loses the feathers, slides into the pond, and learns to be just a slow tortoise. Proud to be himself, the tortoise promptly challenges the hare to a race. The hare stops just short of the finishline in order to get the victory celebration, including dinner, going. Dinner includes many kinds of carrots. The hare: "The tortoise is as good a runner as a flier." Bad weather, spans without bridges, rivers, and overnight make the race an ordeal for the tortoise. An over-filled belly gives the hare his own ordeal. Good antics along the way. The tortoise gets the girl; in fact we soon see a whole tortoise family. The second fable takes 9:30. The box lists the copyright as 1986, the tape as 1971.
1985 Aesop's Fables. Magic Window. Produced by Simon Nuchtern and Carmen Ventura. Edited by Arshes Anasal. Burbank, CA: RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video. Turner Program Services. 60 minute animated video cassette. $4.99 from Galaxy of Games II, Hamden CT, through Ebay, March, '99. One extra copy in a slightly larger clamshell for $5 from Barry Rieger, Buffalo Grove, IL, through Ebay, April, '99. Two extra copies in more usual cardboard slipcases dated with an 1989 copyright, one of them for $3.25 from Dr. Rob Tingle, Easton, MD, through Ebay, Feb., '00, and the other for $1.40 from Charles Evans, Bogalusa, Louisiana, Sept., '00.
Little Aesop, perhaps ten years old, likes mischief, like tying together dogs' tails. He himself tries the "Wolf!" trick when he starts his first job as a shepherd. The wolf chases him into a dark woods, where he falls through a hole into a new world. There he meets Skitter the Country Mouse, Silkwing the Flower Elf, and Hayhee the ass. Their adventures include an invitation to a City Mouse meal, where the master of the house is a cat. As the three travel, they run into a tortoise and hare arguing. The three soon get work along the way delivering salt; Hayhee's second load is cotton. They meet a fiddling grasshopper who entertains the whole pondside, all of whom join in ridiculing the ants who keep chanting "No time, no time!" Hayhee finds a lion's skin and plays dead when a bear approaches the foursome. In winter, the ants accept an apology and give the travelers food and warm clothing and send them on their way across Terror Mountain, where Winter becomes the North Wind and Spring becomes the Sun to play out a bet. Spring gives Aesop storytelling power and brings him home. As Silkwing reminds Aesop on arriving back home, the animals back here cannot talk. She has lost her wings and will live with him forever. There is a clever attempt here to weave a number of fables into a continuous narrative. Part of the price is to make Aesop into a small boy who, with friends, needs to learn lessons before he can return to his mother. I enjoy the attempt, though I am sorry to see fables turned into a fairy tale. The prose on the slipcases of the extra copies has little Aesop meeting not a Flower Elf but a Flower Elk. That kind of mistake makes me wonder about the claim "Duplicated, Packaged and Printed in USA."
1965? Aesop's Fables. Narrated by Burgess Meredith. Arranged and Conducted by Reg Owen and Wally Stott. NY: Golden Records LP 152. $5 from Robin Chaney, Schoolcraft, MI, through Ebay, Oct., '99.
Side One is devoted to TH, and Side Two to FC. This record originally cost only $1.98.
2001 Aesop's Fables. Editor: Yu-A Vision. Seoul, Korea: EntersKorea. 7000 Won from Kyobo Books, Seoul, July, '04.
This tape accompanies Story Books Step 1: Aesop's Fables. They sold together for 7000 Won. There are two stories: TMCM and GGE. The country meal in TMCM features, according to the text, "only potatoes and corns" (6). The city meal is interrupted by a woman with a broom, who is flanked by a cat. "The Hen that lays Golden Eggs" starts "There are old man and woman" (18). They pray "Please make this hen lays a golden egg only once!" I have never seen this prayer before as part of the story. After the two stories are told and illustrated, there is a bilingual script for TMCM, including wives for the two mice, two kids, and a landlady. For a book produced by "native speakers" there are far too many mistakes here, like "Vegetable are put on the table" and "with a disappointment" (34). The script is followed by a chant (44) and a song (45). Finally, after a bilingual presentation of the text of the two stories, there are words (49-endpaper) and stickers (inserted) for key vocabulary in the two stories. The tape begins with the song by the two mice. The tape then follows the texts of the two stories exactly as they appear on 6-17 and 18-29, respectively. The tape offers the words on 49 through the endpaper for listeners to repeat with the children's voices on the tape. Next, a reader reads through the stories, and listeners are invited to repeat it with the children's voices on the tape. Listening to these repetitions almost drove me crazy! The tape ends with the chant (44).
1986 Aesop's Fables. Look Listen 'N Play audio and visual set. Playtime. Usborne Publishing. (Text of Carol Watson from Aesop's Fables and Animal Stories, 1982, unacknowledged.) For use with filmstrip. About 15 minutes. $.77 at Kay-Bee, Council Bluffs, March, '91. One extra.
Six fables of the ten in the printed version (TH, "The Crow and the Jug," AD, TMCM, LM, GA). Good voices and sound effects, satisfactory background music. Some small changes in the versions, including interchanging the sexes of the ant and the grasshopper. The two sides of the tape seem identical.
