Before RGB hit the air, a promotional commercial started making the rounds – this promo exists mostly as bits and pieces here and there, but Ectofiend took it upon himself to try and put this PR Humpty-Dumpty back together again. The results are a bit shaky, but not bad. Until we can find a complete, clean version, this will do nicely.
oh man! The look of this was just that much closer to the movie! What a find! Was this footage from a pilot episode?
Mostly early footage from the need-something-to-shop-around-stage of pre-production. The PR and marketing guys get involved and show has to distinguish itself from the movie in some way (for things like more identifiable characters or perhaps having to do with the “real” lawsuit) and you end up with the show as we know it.
makes sense, its a small trade to keep the name. And really in the end, by calling it the real Ghostbusters, it just bags on Filmation for being stingy. Funny seeing slimer in there as a villain, must have been REAL early production stuff… Awesome find
Great footage, and that Venkman looks more like Venkman than the final version of the cartoon.
Anyone noticed that our heroes were wearing the proton packs before riding the pole??
Thanks for sharing!!
Too bad that wasn’t an actual lost episode pilot. I’m sure its somewhere in Sony’s vault. It would be cool to watch with them in their movie attire. Still Real Ghostbusters rocked. Has anyone heard anything about making a complete set of the Real Ghostbusters series. There’s the 3 dvds of mixed episodes, but I’m waiting hopefully till I can get the complete series. Still watch all my old videos. The halloween episodes are still cool today.
Wow…man, that was cool.
Kinda interesting to see that Slimer was originally part of the horde of ghosts and ghouls near the end of what is now the RGB intro.
I got a feeling that somewhere, someone’s gonna find a full version of that.
There’s gotta be a full version, as all of the clips used in the various promos had to come from somewhere – and it’s so obvious that they all came from the same source.
I’m sure the original promo video isn’t very long. I’d bet that it’s two minutes, or at most five minutes.
The full version would make for a great DVD extra, but it’s not like we’re ever going to get that because Sony considers RGB & EGB to be “kids shows” and thus not worth putting out in “complete season/series” DVD sets. They obviously feel that season sets for “kids shows” don’t make money. Of course that’s not true as I’m sure that Paramount is making a nice chunk of change on those SpongeBob season sets (and even more on all those unnecessary individual releases they keep churning out). That’s a recent show that’s still popular with the little kids today, so to be fair to RGB, think of how well the Transformers sets sold a few years back when Rhino put them all out.
So yeah, Sony has a potential moneymaker on their hands, but chooses not to do anything with it. This is, of course, the studio that decided to release a Deuce Bigelow sequel and got themselves into trouble at least twice for their dubious copy-protection schemes (rootkits on CDs and ARccOS that prevents legitimately-bought DVDs from playing on legitimate DVD players). So they’re not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed… though some people might definitely agree that they’re tools
(Sorry for the rant…I felt inspired)
Hey there,
YEARS ago, 1989 (something like that) I saw at least two thirds of this completed unedited promo…
In the UK they released little pocket movie players that had mini film reels – Two of the reels I owned were of this promo – I was confused until about 1997/1998 when I saw images posted on the Internet explaining what it was intended for…
One thing I remember distinctly about the footage is that the guys are chasing Slimer who is in the truck, Ray fires the proton gun and falls off the back of Ecto-1, we then see Peter look out the window only to see Ray tumbling into the road – Peter and Ray pursue Slimer and the truck on foot while Winston and Egon crash through a woman’s house in the Ecto 1 – I can’t remember much about the trailer, but I still hope to one day see it in it’s entirety once again!
…maybe I should do an article about it in cereal:geek?
James.
Yes, yes you should. :p
The “video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sony Pictures Entertainment.” It’s really sad that Sony would have it removed considering they’re not doing anything with the footage. I mean, it’s not like they made the promo available to the public on DVD or anything.