Boyd's

Background

Boyd's was a video distributor from Tooting in London. The company was the subject of a BBC Newsnight investigation into video piracy in 1980.

Logo (Early 1980s)

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Visuals: The camera begins to zoom out, with notable stalling, from a band of multi-coloured trails in the center of the screen, along with several white lines at the top. The trails are coloured hot pink, sky blue, yellow, green, and red respectively. As the camera zooms out, it reveals the white lines are in fact the text "boyd's" in a striped white font resembling Pump TriD, and the text "Videos and Video Films" is seen at the bottom of the screen. The camera then stops zooming for a few seconds before it steps back just a bit more, and it remains this way for several seconds. Around 25 seconds in, a pink screen fades in to cover the logo for 20 seconds, and by the time the screen fades out, another close-up of a card is seen showing the "boyd's" text without any trails, and now "Faisal's Enterprises Ltd." is seen below the logo. As the camera zooms out at a stalled pace, it reveals their address and phone number below in yellow.

Trivia:

• If one looks closely during the pink screen on the right, the slides are shown being swapped.
• A few years ago, the company still existed as "Boyd's Home Appliances", which could be found at the address featured in the logo.

Technique: Camera-controlled animation with the logo printed on a card. The pink screen is a chroma computer effect.

Audio: Outside of an audible click when the pink screen disappears, none.

Availability: The only two known releases were the UK pre-cert releases of The Mandarin Magician and Puma Man. This may have been seen on other pre-cert releases if possible, and possibly on some Virgin Video releases also.

Legacy: This logo is infamous for its animation and the fact that it involves switching cards.