The Walking Dead Laser Disc Curse

**The Walking Dead Laser Disc Curse**

It's late evening at a major laser disc publisher in Southern California. A tired worker slaves at his computer. His job is to sort through thousands of laser disc titles with the grim task of removing those dead dogs that don't have a prayer of making it to plastic again. Sadly, His boss has tampered with the database so many titles still under license escape scrutiny. As a result, we all suffer the curse of the Walkin Dead titles! Titles either overpriced or just unwanted, they just barely make it to the first pressing run, usually with the help of a little "back door dumping" for pennies on the dollar. After that, the catalog listing stays "alive" because the publisher has the pipe dream that he might cash in once more on a license already paid for.

For consumers, Walking Dead titles mean backorders that will never be filled. For dealers, it's wasted time, money and ink on useless catalog listings, not to mention tracking hopeless backorders and issuing refunds. Even worse, the publisher may try to milk additional profits by reviving a Walking Dead title as a higher priced "special edition". The result is either dealers take a loss or consumers take the price hike on pending backorders.

To rid us of this curse, Starship has used it's sales and backoder history to determine which titles are Walking Dead. Once confirmed they are removed from our active catalog, and will only be listed at our Internet website for reference. This will improve Starship's backorder service, and make for a more realistic active catalog offering.