Pat & Mat: the TDK collection

NOTE: In case you haven't read them yet, I started my discussion of these DVDs in two previous posts. Here's a post about the different masters of the same episode over the years which showcases just how much better TDK's masters are. In my most recent post (link), we saw how the Japanese audience experienced Pat & Mat in cinemas from 1999 to 2001, which must have been a big incentive to produce a DVD collection of the episodes.

This is an overview of five Pat & Mat DVDs released in 2001 by TDK Deep Impression. First of all, I have to yet again thank Jürg Schaeppi, without whom I would never get to know about these DVDs.

So, after a couple of years of theatrical shows, the time came for the series to receive a DVD release. This was one of the earliest, if not the earliest (I don't have data on South Korean DVDs) release of episodes produced prior to the 1990s on DVD. As this lovely promo found on eiga-chirashi.jp shows, the DVDs (and VHS tapes, as the collection was also issued in that format) were released on November 29, 2001, a week after a similarly high-profile release of another classic series from the same studio, Pojďte pane, budeme si hrát, which you should definitely check out.

The contents

Záhradka: episode masters over the years

Here's a blast from the past: a VHS tape! Some of you have surely already forgotten this relic of the past. I still used VHSs about ten years ago, mostly to record cartoons. Nowadays, my VCR is, although still completely usable, retired. I have had this tape for many, many years, since around 2003. It was part of a 7-casette collection which included the first 35 episodes of the series. Let's see its covers:

I am sure you recognized the promotional photo as being from Střecha. Indeed, that's the final episode on this VHS. It is preceded by, in order, Obraz, Záhradka, Dážď and Hrnčiari. However, this is not a post about this VHS or my VHS collection, for that matter. The topic of this post concerns the second episode featured on the VHS, Záhradka (or Zahrádka in Czech - or The Garden in English). In fact, what I will be talking about today is how this episode has been presented on home video and other official releases throughout the decades.

Pat & Mat DVD by aiF Studio (1999)

My thanks for this post go out to Jürg Schaeppi of the Pat & Mat Fansite, who has enabled me to see this DVD for the first time.

There have been many Pat & Mat DVD releases over the years, but this one is probably the most interesting. It is also the first. In 1999, DMP (Digital Media Production) from Prague released a DVD with ten episodes produced by aiF Studio.

Here is the original press release posted by the DVD's manufacturer Digital Media Production, found on an old version of their defunct website that can be accessed through Wayback Machine. It came out in support of the DVD's premiere on DVD Hall '99 which was an event opened in Prague on October 4, 1999.

The most successful Czech puppet series was created between the seventies an nineties in aiF studio. It was created by popular Czech caricaturist Vladimír Jiránek, experienced director Lubomír Beneš and composer Petr Skoumal. Pat and Mat are neighbors. Their friendship is strengthened not only by their desires to always produce, do or repair something, but also by the awkwardness that makes everything go wrong. Luckily for them, there is no lack of humor and cleverness with which they always cope with their clumsiness.
The two-handymen grotesque is being introduced for the first time in DVD format. These are the episodes present: Billiards, Safe, Windsurfing, Biscuits, Model Builders, Paving Brick, Convertible, Parquetry, Cyclists and Pipe.
The DVD Pat and Mat can be ordered via DVDexpress for 790 CZK.

790 CZK feels quite a lot to me, but maybe it wasn't as expensive 20 years ago. However, in Jürg's words, it was indeed crazy expensive. A further stumbling block was that he had to order the DVD from a Czech company and wait a few weeks for it to arrive to Switzerland. It seems the DVD was never made available outside of Czechia, which is a real shame as it was envisioned as an international release. This is already evident from the cover, which has the episode titles in nine languages: Czech, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Polish and, finally, English - which we know is a market the studio was especially looking to break.

1999 was a very tough year for aiF. It was actually its last, as the studio oficially declared bankruptcy on August 24. If you already haven't, I would advise you to read my post about the episode Karty and the studio's bankruptcy before continuing. It can be found here. You read that correctly - the DVD came out a month and a half after its producer bankrupted. This makes me believe it was in production for a longer period of time. The shadow of Karty hangs over every corner of this release. Even on the cover you can notice the hammers-pliers wallpaper that appears on Mat's walls in the episode. Later, there's even explicit mention of it. However, let's see what this DVD had in store for us way back in that time. I have to say that is one of the more ambitious Czech releases of the series, which says a bit more about the ones that followed. A lot of effort was undoubtedly put in it.

The DVD opens with a lovely claymation reproduction of aiF's logo that I had never seen before. Maybe it also popped up in Karty, who knows. What follows then is the 1992-94 series intro, but with the title cards updated. Instead of me describing it further, Rakso 98, a friend of this blog, has made a tour of it with various menus shown. This is the intro (when you watch it, only one warning message plays):

aiF filmed clay logo