Walt Disney Classics

The Walt Disney Classics was a series of VHS releases of Disney animated features that spanned from 1984 to 1994, with its very first release being Robin Hood. Many Disney animated features made their home video debuts through this series. It is often referred to by fans as the "Black Diamond" collection, referring to the shape of the black diamond-shaped "Classics" logo seen on the spine of each video's case and at the beginning of each tape.

The opening starts off exactly like the Walt Disney Home Video logo with Mickey Mouse in a Sourcer's apprentace outfit on Fantasia standing on a blue spotlight on a black background. Mickey has a hat with the stars and the cresent moon flashing one by one. Then a magic spark flashes and appears above Mickey's hand. We zoom past mickey as the spark swirls around. The spark then begins to write Walt Disney in the normal corporate font in blue. As we zoom out. the background begins to turn dark blue, and a black diamond with matallic edges  fades in from a far point, and slowly begins to zoom in as Classics fades in blue at the bottom of the screen, before that and Walt Disney  settle on a diamond, which has zoomed in to a very comfortable distance. The edges begin to glow white, and then a magic comet swishes into view from the bottom left of the screen, circles behind the diamond, then flies to the top right of the screen, and passes in front of the diamond before flying offscreen. leaving a trail of pixie dust that changes the Walt Disney Classics text to bright gold, and adds a purple tint to the diamond's edges, and the logo shines. Sometimes there are variants. On the 1988 video of Cinderella, the logo is in a blue and black gradiant with a more matallic looking diamond. On the VHS releases of 101 Dalmations through The Fox and the Hound, (hte last release of the Classics line) the logo looked even more blue than the previous logo and it fades out earlier than before.

The music is a wonderful, majestic, gradually rising electronic fanfare with synthesizers playing, and a sizzling noise when the comet flies off. Starting with 1992 VHS of The Rescuers, the music became distored and more muffled.