Monday, October 27, 2014

Title Card Oddities



Here is a typical U.S. Acres title card. The design seen here and in many other establishing episodes of the first season set the groundwork for future title cards. Aside from the obvious differences in artwork, everything remained the same for each episode... or did it?



Here for the first time in over 20 years, we can see that in Season 6 (starting with this episode), the logo used in the title cards was modified to remove the characters, leaving just the U.S. Acres name. Notably, the stripes on the letter S are switched around. As this image comes from the original premiere, I can't say whether or not this was corrected during any reruns until I get a copy of one.

Of course, with the syndicated episodes all using the better known logo variant, it makes sense that fans who hadn't seen the unsyndicated ones would have made mistakes.



And now, here's the actual original title card, taken again from the premiere.



The title cards continued to use this characterless logo throughout the rest of Season 6. But when Season 7 rolled around, the characters were added back in.



Strangely though, towards the end of the series, at least one episode returned to the Season 6 variant. Unfortunately, I do not have any premieres beyond this episode, so I can't say whether this was just an exception or if the last 4 episodes also used the character-less logo.



Perhaps the most interesting title card oddity comes from Season 5's "Who Done It" in which the original U.S. Acres logo is overlaid on top of the international Orson's Farm logo! Anybody have any theories on how this might have occurred? Once again, I have no way of knowing whether it was corrected or not until a rerun copy shows up.



Image Credits:
Me: Banana Nose title card
Mimitchi33: A Little Time Off recreation
Peter Paltridge/Platypus Comix: All other images

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