Elaborating further: it follows the same plot as the pitch pilot, with the three brothers going to the toy store so that Gordon can (secretly) buy a special doll for Human Kimberly. I also believe it's longer in length, as there's scenes from back at their house.
Sadly, I can't find that bible I mentioned in the last post, but it was out there at one point. ....
First of all, a copy of the comment for friends on screen readers and for those who prefer text:
8 years later, this definitely needs an updated video. New info regarding Amvest and its owner, Dante Pugliese, can be found readily on the internet. Long story short, there was much more to this story than crappy tapes and a dude in a hamster costume.
1. Pugliese was a shady dude who’s entire life was a series of bad business deals, massive losses, business bankruptcies, personal bankruptcies, lawsuits, C&Ds, and products that either infringed on copyrights or just barely made the mark for what a product is.
2. The two addresses for Amvest/Audiofidelity/Videofidelity are 937 Hazelwood Avenue and P.O. Box 86, both in Rahway, NJ. Anyone can get a P.O. Box. 937 Hazelwood Avenue is at least the size of a Target store, and there’s no way Pugliese was using that whole space. Something else was definitely going on there. The office is currently occupied by a company called Curiel, but I forget what they do. Guaranteed there’s no connection between the two besides the building.
3. Pugliese was the only employee. How on earth he managed to get Grandpa Munster to come in is a mystery, though rumor has it he was desperate for money. The “crew” on that tape was nonexistent, and Pugliese was the only crew. My guess is he either pulled the names from a source (phone book, year book, etc) or made them up. Not only would decent crew have made it more decent, but decent crew members would not have worked on that production. Th Rey would have known that they were messing with copyrighted material, and they would have known that they would get sued mercilessly. Also, they would know not to get anywhere near Pugliese, since he had a history of screwing people over and they’d know they’d be left holding the bag.
4. While Happy Hamster and Pugliese (who was the guy in the costume) wasn’t a pedophile, the intentions were still bad. When children signed up, the info of them and their families was then sold to “agencies” that took part in child beauty pageants and child modeling. While there’s no record of children actually being kidnapped, abused, trafficked, etc as a result of this act, Pugliese made no effort to assure it wouldn’t happen. Instead, the children and their families were ruthlessly marketed to, especially the kids, who had no comprehension of the fact that they were being had. Pugliese then earned kickbacks from whatever money was earned. While obviously the requests for the children’s names, pictures, and info about themselves could easily be mistaken for something darker, the real intention was to aggressively market to the kids and their families. Pugliese wasn’t trying to kidnap and abuse kids, nor was he trying to help others do it. At the same time, he didn’t care if it happened. All he wanted was money. Most likely, the info selling and kickbacks earned him more than all of his home video and music operations ever did. Also, few kids ever received the posters, tapes, shirts, and newsletters. Most likely there were less than 100 recipients in all.
5. Pugliese has a long history of gambling, to the extent that World Series of Poker has a page on him. The best he ever did was fourth place, and his other appearance on the site is hilariously lower. Long story short, just because he plays poker, doesn’t mean he can play poker. This most likely resulted in a lot of debt.
6. Pugliese has been sued by the owner of Alvin and the Chipmunks, the owners of several copyrighted items, and Disney. Between those lawsuits, business and personal bankruptcies, the mess involving selling children’s info, and probably the unpaid rent on the Hazelwood location, that’s the reason why Amvest is no longer in business. Ironically, Michael Jackson never sued over his music being exploited, nor did Columbia for the exploitation of Ghostbusters. Had either or both done that, Pugliese’s damage would have been cut a lot shorter.
7. Pugliese’s credit was awful, due to his extensive debt, his history of nonpayment, his losses of thousands of dollars, the loss of several homes and businesses, several lawsuits, several bankruptcies, and a nasty divorce. When he was down on luck, he had his son Michael, his daughter Jeannette, and his mother Florence bail him out. They all took out loans, mortgages, businesses etc in their name for Dante to run. All tanked, and all had their names and credit ruined.
8. After Amvest went bust (at some point between 1990 and 1996), Dante asked his mother for a loan to start yet another PD business, Passport Video. Florence countered with providing capital in exchange for all of the stock (1,000 shares), with Dante as the president. Much like some bigger PD labels at the time, Passport began licensing low-end content and creating their own content, though the latter was done by combining PD clips with on-screen graphics, sound effects, and narration. (Lucy: Queen of Comedy is one of their products.) Dante and Jeannette both have pages on IMDb, but don’t expect to see any masterpieces on there.
9. When Dante and his wife Michele got divorced, Michele sued for his money from Passport, only to discover there was no money. The company had traded owners on paper for years, there were several stock certificates of dubious authenticity, there was barely any real money, and yet the company was expected to make millions in the coming years. Also, Passport allegedly had two offices in two different states, as well as three presidents.
All in all, Dante Pugliese was a slime, whose bad business practices go back to 1962, when he was 24 years old, and while I can’t find info on him within the last ten years, he’s probably still up to his same old shenanigans today. Also, his mother was dying during his divorce about 15-20 years ago, but no death notices could be found for either Florence or Dante. Also, there’s tons of death notices for several Jeannettes, but none of them appear to be Dante’s daughter. Much more than a fly-by-night video label and a guy in a hamster costume.
Looks like a tumblr user, VCR from Heck, is also looking for the tape.
I suppose we could try looking for other people who were involved with the shady modelling agencies or one of the former kids who signed up. (If we have proof kids' information was being sold, then we have proof something happened to the information.)
Edit: Someone on the original video said that the t-shirts were popular at a Washington, DC pizza place, but I'm pretty sure they're just making a pizzagate joke.
It looks like it might still be for sale on Walmart's online store and on Amazon, which both use photos saying they include the disk. Are there multiple printings?
"Weekend? It's Monday already."
LMWF God: (noun) a person who posts a lot on this forum
I really have no interest in this (you likely wont hear from me again on this topic) but I managed to dig up some information.
It seems that some videos have already been archived. The problem with finding the rest is as follows: the website no longer exists and even if you were able to find the missing .mp4 links, you would not be able to open them. It also seems that this was the only place where they were hosted (a different situation from the Kamen Rider WindWave radio programs that I archived recently, where the original website was down but they started hosting it on another website which still exists).
So it seems that what was lost will likely stay lost. Another reason to work on preserving what we have now so that we don't have to waste tremendous effort trying to find it again in the future. Good luck with your project.
Thanks for the help. I figured that was the most likely situation.
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On a Quinton Reviews video, he mentions that there has not been an archive of all the iCarly website's videos. (starts at 2:11:30) To his knowlege, there isn't even a list of all the videos that were on the site. (There's also no project to collect them on this forum, at least, not one I could find.)
Toys are not media, so can we get an admin to move this to off-topic or something?
You can use the "report thread" button to make move requests. I already did for this one. Lucy (kobochat) goes over the concept in the pinned thread "Reporting Posts".
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LMWF God: (noun) a person who posts a lot on this forum
Sorry for not responding sooner PikaFusion, I'm just a new member in the forum,glad that you're participating. Now I believe too that it was,in fact a bootleg toy,but this one is a bit different. Any other bootleg or unofficial toy that I have came across,can be found online (ebay for instance) but this one was lost. I remember that that the store sold many things,not just toys,which confirms the theory of the toy being unofficial.
What kind of shop was it? Do you have examples of other bootleg toys, or other toys purchased from the shop? (Those could help narrow down where the toy was sold.)
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We don't have a page on Dwarf Nose yet, mostly because of the difficulty in searching for material in a language the majority of our users do not speak. Your page is quite detailed. Thank you.
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The only thing I can find Office Prion making is a pachinko machine. I've found documentation saying that they worked on 3D TV shows and pachinko machines, but information on their projects is scarce. Their website largely only archived text, not images.
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LMWF God: (noun) a person who posts a lot on this forum
The seller hasn't even checked the tape. It makes me wonder if the price was set that high as a joke. They're selling the tape as a blank. You can buy blank JVC VHS tapes from Amazon for $30 CAD before shipping.
i think this person has no idea how to list tapes at a decent price as they've got a few other tapes listed right now going for $40-60usd at *minimum* and in the descriptions for all of them they state that they've never checked the tapes on these either and don't know if they're working!!! you'd think if you're selling a tape you don't want to check (and don't know if it's working) you'd at least reduce the price heavily
Yeah. Some people don't think that kind of stuff through. Did the seller get back to you?
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LMWF God: (noun) a person who posts a lot on this forum
I like the idea, but I feel like we'd need strict definitions on what goes into each category. What makes content "hard to find"? To one person, it could be something that's only available in a betamax in a warehouse. To another, it could be something that's only available on another country's Netflix. Keeping categories broad means there's less room for edit wars.
How would "unidentified" be used? It looks like a cool idea.