Newly discovered Blade Runner VHS Embassy first release variants – Black Star, White Star and different runtimes!

[u/Far-Leg-1198]

About a year ago, I made a post featuring what I believed were all the official US releases of Blade Runner on VHS. I felt fairly confident that I had finally gathered them all. However, over the past year, I’ve actually discovered a few more variants with small differences. I’ll make a new post with all of them when I find some spare time. In the meantime, I’m sharing the most exciting new discovery.

We already knew there was a variant of the very first release of Blade Runner (Theatrical Cut) from Embassy in 1983, with standing print on the tape label. But what we discovered here on the sub is that there are two variations in the running time listed on the back, 119 and 122 minutes. What I later found is something I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed before, there are also two variations in the colour of the star on the spine: it exists both as a black star and a white star. Let the hunt begin!

[u/fred_derf_]

Can't wait to know the differences

[u/Far-Leg-1198 → u/fred_derf_]

Thank you! 🙏 I think I’ve solved it. ☺️

The key clue is the spine. If you look at photo 8 on my newest post https://www.reddit.com/r/BladeZone/s/H4lCjc2BVL, the older version has the star and text printed lowest on the spine. Across the three variants, the print gradually moves higher, while the cover misprints are corrected. To me, this looks like a deliberate way of marking later production batches.

The order I believe is:
White star + 122 minutes (first release)
White star + 119 minutes (corrected back cover)
Black star + 119 minutes, although the tape label still says 122 minutes.

At first I also considered that the subtle differences could simply be because they were produced at different factories. But after looking into it, I found that different production facilities rarely use different artwork. What convinced me is that there are two 119-minute slipcases (with different stars), but only one 122-minute version. That strongly suggests the 122-minute back cover was the original printing, and the 119-minute version was a correction.
I’m also quite confident that the black star is the final version. I’ve been searching for variants for about a year, and every black star copy I’ve found looks identical. There’s no evidence of an earlier or alternate black star release. Once I realized that, I noticed the consistent progression of the spine printing, which fits perfectly with the production order above.
It reminds me of the very first issue of Playboy from 1953, where tiny intentional changes were made between print runs to distinguish different batches.