It’s going to be a prehistoric fall in video stores, with Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” coming to video Tuesday and the feature-film edition of “The Flintstones” arriving Nov. 8.
The kid-vid market, currently dominated by Disney cartoons, Shirley Temple and the Little Rascals, will also be crowded with large and scary creatures, some long gone, a few of them still with us.
Walt Disney Home Video has already released a 46-minute tape, “Dinosaurs: Those Big Boneheads” ($13), in which Robin Leach helps Bill Nye the Science Guy examine “lifestyles of the big and extinct.” Republic Pictures’ Children’s Television Workshop is represented by “It’s a Woolly Woolly World,” “Adventures in Woollyville” and “Have Mammoths, Will Travel” ($10 apiece), a collection of 45-minute tapes drawn from ABC’s Saturday morning cartoon series, “Cro.”
New this week from Turner Home Entertainment is “The Dinosaurs!,” a collection of four one-hour cassettes ($15 apiece, $50 for the set) hosted by dinosaur expert Dr. John Ostrum. Each tape examines a different aspect of the prehistoric world.
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The company has also released six 55-minute cassettes drawn from the animated Hanna-Barbera series, “Dink the Little Dinosaur” ($10 apiece), and four new-to-video, hourlong cassettes made from episodes of the original “Flintstones” series ($13 apiece). One of the “Flintstones” tapes, “Dino’s Two Tales,” will be available in combination with a dinosaur toy for $17.
Early next month, Golden Book Video is releasing “Whatever Happened to the Dinosaurs?” ($10). The half-hour tape sends four children on a dinosaur hunt while making use of puppetry, animation and paleontologists’ theories about the fate of the creatures.
National Geographic Video, which introduced a children’s collection called “Really Wild Animals” earlier this year, is bringing out a similar line of educational tapes aimed at children under 5. “GeoKids” uses wildlife footage, puppets, songs and stories. The first three cassettes, including “Cool Cats, Raindrops and Things That Live in Holes,” will make their debuts Wednesday ($15 apiece), along with another National Geographic release, “Lions of Darkness” ($20), an African wildlife program that’s being promoted as the real-life counterpart to Disney’s “The Lion King.”
View Video has released the PBS-produced series, “Conserving America,” which focuses on endangered animals and other environmental challenges. The first hour-long cassettes, priced at $20 apiece, are “Champions of Wildlife” and “The Rivers.”
“The Biggest Bears!” ($15), which won an Emmy for its wildlife photography, uses a five-year-old narrator to tell the story of Alaska’s grizzlies. It’s available from Bullfrog Films, P.O. Box 149, Oley PA 19547. Information: 800-543-3764.