As noted in the January 19 news release (see below), Song of the South was assigned ISBN and UPC numbers. Many readers contacted me regarding this. Here are the results so far:
UPC #717951531032 : The first six numbers tell us it belongs to Miramax Home Entertainment. This prefix matches several recent Disney UPC numbers, seen on both DVD and VHS. UPC numbers are bought in 100,000 number chunks, and so far I have not noticed any order as to their assignment. A list of currently known UPC numbers for Miramax Home Entertainment can be found here.
ISBN #1-55890-501-4 : This number didn’t prove to be as helpful. While I have found several Disney VHS tapes that have the same first six numbers, so far I have not found any that were released later than 1998. One fairly close match includes The Mighty Ducks (VHS).
As an additional note, Amazon.com has Song of the South listed on DVD noted as “Not Yet Released”. This is old news. However, Paul Sauberer noted that on subsequent pages, such as Technical Information, it states “Coming Soon–Preorder Today”! Could Amazon.com get away with such strong words if it wasn’t true? Hmm… [UPDATE]: Amazon has removed the “Coming Soon” comment. Looks like it wasn’t true after all.