Syme Home Video

Background

Syme Home Video was the video arm of David Syme and Company, publishers of a newspaper called The Age. The video company, as with the newspaper, was headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria. It began releasing titles in the fall of 1982, and released special interest, comedy, drama, music, and cartoon videos, as well as the catalogue of Walt Disney Home Video. The company ceased operations in the summer of 1986, a year after its corporate parent was acquired by Fairfax Media.

(1982-1986)

Logo: We see a shot of a purplish floor with black horizontal lines against a space sky. Two stars shoot out toward us and a white wireframe grid turns upward toward the ground. A third star sweeps across the screen from the right, and the words "SYME" zoom forth and shine with a ping on the S. "HOME" and "VIDEO" then folds out from under it as the grid disappears.

Technique: The stars, the grid, the zooming.

Music/Sounds: An eerie synth that rises in pitch, which ends with a loud Charter Entertainment-like synth.

Availability: Rare; seen on old PAL tapes released in Australia and New Zealand.

According to the archives of its co-owned newspaper (The Age), titles released by Syme included the Australian Opera production of Die Fleidermaus, Fatty Finn, Doctors and Nurses. An Audience with Mel Brooks, and such Cannon Films items as The Last American Virgin and 10 to Midnight.
The archives of the same newspaper's future sister publication (The Sydney Morning Herald) note that other titles Syme released included The Devil's Advocate (an Australian film that bears no relation to the 1997 Warner Bros. drama), the Sutherland-Pavarotti Concert, Dark Eyes, episodes of The Prisoner, and Forty Thousand Horsemen, which appears to be the most recent of these titles, as it was reviewed in the issue of the paper dated 12 May 1986.
Don't expect this to appear on any of the Disney tapes that were released by Syme; depending on the tape, those only use either the first or second Walt Disney Home Video logos.