Soapclassics stopped production of ATWT & GL DVDs

Last week, soapclassics.com sent an email to regular buyers that their contract with P&G is up and once current stock is gone no more can be bought. I would have written my thoughts about this when I got the message initially, but I feel an entry at that time would have been ill-advised. Anywhere so here goes.

My first thought is: I hope get more of an explanation than a few tweets and an email. I know I'm not the only one who spent over a hundred dollars with them in the last year.

I'm frustrated about the whole situation, especially since another set was planned for Guiding Light that seems like it won't ever be released. It would have been a Christmas DVD mirroring the As the World Turns one that came out last year. Depending on what was on that DVD, I most likely would have enjoyed that one the most, as I have a collection of holiday classics of all sorts on DVD and the ATWT version was great.

I'm also disappointed as a lot of people have posted that they were interested in buying things, but waiting until they had the money. Now they won't ever get the chance.

Things I wish had been handled differently over the year Soapclassics sold DVDs. Some of these things are minor, but I've seen comments around the web, so I'm going to summarize those I agree with about what happened.

1. While I like the element of surprise, having no release schedule or idea when new DVDs would come out wasn't all that great. If people didn't have their budgets to buy something they couldn't. I bought everything they sold with the exception of the new special As the World Turns set, as beyond the new packaging it is the same content I already bought and the script from its final week.

2. That said other than the advance warning about the stopping of production, most of the time the early purchasers didn't get an advantage as coupons usually came a week or two after a new set was released. Some of my friends had their disks on their way in the mail having yet to receive them, and then Soapclassics gave a coupon to those who waited to buy. That didn't make anyone happy.

3. If you weren't part of the online soap community or happened to see the early ads about the As the World Turns sets in a magazine, you would never have known they existed unless you stumbled upon them accidentally once they started selling on amazon.com. There were free things they could have done to try to get people interested and stay interested between releases using social media for example so at least the people who knew about them would keep them in mind.

4. Occasionally tapes would be misplaced or there would be issues making it impossible for it to be sold like the soundtrack. This I can't blame on them, but it is frustrating.

5. There is also the issue of inaccessibility of the material. While I love old material and am fascinated by watching programs from before my time not everyone is like that. A lot of viewers won't buy something without knowing much about it, and that must have hurt sales. For sets that had mainly older material, I wish that SoapClassics would have given longer summaries. (For episodes starting in the mid-90s, there are write-ups online, so this isn't really an issue.)

I wanted Soapclassics to be successful, so we'd have new "old" episodes available for years to come. I had hoped in the future that we'd get not just As the World Turns  and Guiding Light sets, but also some featuring the other three soaps they had the rights to Another World, Edge of Night and Search for Tomorrow. I'm glad that I was able to afford and purchase all of the sets I was interested in buying from them. I'm just sad for those who could not.

There were some episodes I never thought I'd see that I did thanks to Soapclassics, and I appreciate that. I just wish things hadn't ended so soon or so abruptly. The hours I got of enjoyment though cannot be replaced and won't be forgotten.