I’ve been thinking about writing this one for some time. Once again, this isn’t the sort of thing I usually talk about—this isn’t a specific show. Some movies were released under the Vault Disney label—my copy of last week’s feature, Pollyanna, for instance. In addition, though, there was a nightly collection that aired on the Disney Channel in the hours from late to early, when I was in college, and I watched that devotedly. (College students can do that; who else was it intended for?) I’ve been surly on the subject ever since they took it off the air.

The existence of the fabled Disney Vault is not in itself new, of course. When my mom was growing up, it wasn’t even unusual—what was perhaps most unusual was that Disney routinely released things from the vaults. I assume, indeed, that my classic story about Aunt Susie Crying While Watching Bambi came from a rerelease, because there was one in ’47, which makes more sense than that the story is from the ’42 original release when she would’ve been not even two. I saw Cinderella probably as my first movie in a not-drive in theatre, and I saw the last US theatrical release of Song of the South. For all the commentary about the Vault, at least it had a door. Other studios’ vaults didn’t, reliably.

This made less sense in the days of home video, and these days, you’ll get a long rant from me about how, if Disney’s serious in their planned streaming platform, it needs to have everything on it if they want me to pay. I feel as though the Disney Channel was flirting with something similar, before streaming was practical. Disney doesn’t release its films to the Criterion Collection, but the Vault Disney series got you something like it. If Disney committed seriously to the Vault Disney concept still, I would be an ardent supporter.

To give you an idea, let’s talk about what’s on my discs of things like Pollyanna and Old Yeller. (Yes, I own Old Yeller.) It isn’t just that the feature is preceded by a cartoon, though that’s awfully nice and I believe should be the industry standard for releases of movies that had cartoons ahead of them in their theatrical release. It’s the commentary tracks. The featurettes. The list of other things going on with Disney in that year. The collection of promotional materials. Does this sound like Criterion? Yes. The films are remastered as well, of course.

The nightly TV airing was not themed in any way beyond “here is stuff from the vaults,” which may have been a missed opportunity. But it was the first time in decades I’d been able to watch Swamp Fox, starring a shockingly young Leslie Nielsen. You’d get a feature of some kind; I remember watching Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN in the middle of the night once. Zorro, though as I recall it was shamefully colorized. An episode or two of Walt Disney Presents or The Wonderful World of Color. I seem to remember Spin and Marty, which doesn’t do much for me but triggers nostalgia in some people.

If I had to choose between the two, I’d definitely take the quality home video releases. While I wish we’d see more curated programming, and while I basically stopped watching the Disney Channel (except for Kim Possible) when they stopped showing Vault Disney, the fact is I don’t watch much TV these days at all. Disney does a pretty good job with its animated feature releases, which they continue to do every few years, unless it’s one of the more obscure or unpopular movies (they’re not going to do this kind of release for Meet the Robinsons), but they do some pretty bare-bones stuff for the mid-century live action stuff.

So much Disney is so iconic. No, I don’t expect a pristine Misadventures of Merlin Jones. But you could do a heck of a release of The Absentminded Professor. I’m pretty sure the only Herbie movie to get the treatment was the first one, and that would make for an interesting box set with a featurette about how the place of the Love Bug movies shifted over Disney’s history. I feel as though Disney is missing an opportunity to get a lot of money out of this idea, and that’s surprising to me; Disney isn’t much for missing opportunities to get a lot of money.

Hey, the semi-annual Barnes & Noble Criterion sale starts today; consider supporting my Patreon so I can get one of their well-packaged releases.