The cover of LBT 11 has triggered a discussion on wether people like it or not in the network54 forum. I consider this an interesting topic in general. What do you think of the LBT covers in general, which do you like or dislike?
As this is a message based on mainly my personal opinion I beg your pardon for any subjective statements on the look of the covers, and you are all most hearty invited to give your own oppinions which naturally are likely to be different from my own.
In general I think one can say the covers have changed a bit since LBT 7. From LBT 1 to 6 the characters on the cover looked pretty much like they looked in the movies. From LBT 7 on they began to look different. They had more (sorry if this sounds too storng, but my dictionary didn't provide me with any more polite term for the additional curves and different propotion sto be found on the characters since LBT 7) puppy fat. This was not a constant developement though. I refer to Ducky on cover number 7 and 10 while she looks alright on number 8 and nine. Littlefoot looks okay on number 9 while he sports "puppy fat" on number 7, 8 and 10 (and he is going to on number 11 with his face there being ripped from number 8). Cera has that lack on each single one of these covers (just look at her cheeks) while surprisingly Spike shows very, very few changes, though the color of his backplates and the crest on his back changed from dark- to lightgreen and finally to light brown (almost beige) on the covers.
Petrie went through some of the most scary changes looking like the old bat he resembles to on most products that bear the seal of the land before time collection. To be precise: Petrie got bat like wings, hairs on the head and the throat and a crooked beak on the covers of LBT 7, 8 and 9; while they mercifully spared him the large rings below the eyes and the wrinkles at the neck some of the "land before time collection seal product's Petries" sport with. With all my criticism of LBT 10 I have to give the cover of LBT 10 credit for letting Petrie look more like Petrie again.
I don't mean to talk on the characters outward appearance in the covers only, but also on the arangement of the characters and what else is to be seen on the cover. This brings us to the fact that covers don't always look the same in every country. The cover of LBT 7 for example looked better in US than it did in Germany. The US version showed the stone of cold fire and a volcano in the background. It gave an idea of the content of the story and made curious to learn more (which I think ought to be the basic idea of any cover). The German version however showed the characters (aranged just like in the US cover) in front of a clear sky looking out of a sort of frame of flowery jungle. It had NOTHING AT ALL to do with the story! However, even in the US cover I missed Pterano who seemed to important to me to keep him out of the story.
Here are the two different covers (sorry, they are tiny) so you can compare them yourself:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/malte279/LBT7.jpg[/URL]
http://mitglied.lycos.de/malte279/LBT7D.jpgAnother cover of which there were two different versions is the cover of LBT 3. In some countries (including Germany and I think the US) the cover showed the bullies in the foreground with Hyp sinking in the mud and Littlefoot and the others on (in Petrie's case above) a log in the background. Other countries had the maincharacters in the foreground at that lake they had found with the sun rising in the background and the bullies sneaking upon them between the reeds. Personally I prefered the lighter picture at the lake, which also gave reference to the water problem while the other one was mainly focused on that one scene with Hyp sinking in the pond. Here are the two covers:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/malte279/LBT3.jpg http://mitglied.lycos.de/malte279/LBT3-2.jpgPlease note that whenever I'm talking of the covers of the land before time 2 to 6 I'm refering to the earlier versions of the covers like they can be found at
www.landbeforetime.org, not to the new covers shown at
www.landbeforetime.com. I do not like the new cover versions which contain less than the older covers, make a bat of Petrie and puppies of the others. The new LBT 4 cover doesn't even include Ali!!!
I think my favorites were the old covers of number 2 and 5 both of which show references to different parts of the story (Chomper with the egg, Chomper's parents, Ozzy and Strut / Chomper, the island, the Big Water the swimming sharptooth). It's the same with LBT 4, and to a certain degree with LBT 6. By the way, did you notice Ichty holds a binocular in the cover of number 4? It was mentioned in the forum before.
A drawback of the cover of number 10 was that most of the longnecks in the background (except for Bron, Pat and Littlefoot's grandmother) have been used more than once, with just a little change of size or color.
Much more can be wrote about the covers, but I'm afraid I begin to lull everyone here to sleep (I hope this essay will even be read). So what do you think of the covers? Which are your favorites or least favorites? And are they for particular reasons?
