I heard you all begging for a sequel to my April 2024 post “Sports Blooper Compilation VHS Tape Superlative Review: Sports Funnies (1991)” and I’m here to make good. Today, we leap ahead in time one year to discuss the Marbowe Corporation’s “Sports Blooper Awards” tape. I used the version of it that was ripped and uploaded to the Internet Archive, but if you’d like to own it for yourself, it’s available for $6 on Ebay. The blurb on the back of the box (The BOTBOTB) twice takes space to remind the reader of the tape’s mere existence:

This likely reflects the Marbowe Corporation’s lack of faith in the product itself, as if they need to remind themselves that they did, indeed, create this tape. “Here it is! It’s all here! This product exists in concrete reality! We, the Marbowe Corporation, are real, and so are you!” The back of the box also indicates that this tape cost viewers $19.99 for about 33 minutes of video. This is a rate of about 61 cents per minute, which is a stretch even if the tape were stuffed to the rafters with gut-busting blooper hilarity, which it unfortunately isn’t.

The film’s title indicates itself as an awards show for sports bloopers, but this conceit is immediately abandoned and not really picked up until its final ~5 minutes. What we get from the start is this fellow, Toronto area sportscaster Mark Hebscher, who is charming and dapper enough in his tuxedo, monologuing in a sports memorabilia store. Hebscher is sort of a cult hero of Canadian sports television, from what my limited research shows me. He has a Wikipedia page, he’s written a book (with another due to be published this year), and he has fans dedicated enough to have compiled his segments from Sportsnight on YouTube (and, having now watched that video, deservedly so).

Hebscher is far better as a presenter and commentator than the sleazy guy from Sports Funnies, but he’s not given a ton of material to work with from within the memorabilia store. It’s tough to transition from “This baseball was signed by two legends, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, two of the greatest players ever to play the game.” to “Here are some people getting hit in the balls.” He’s also left out to dry by the video’s editors, a three-man team listed here:

as the montages he has to narrate over move at breakneck speeds with little identifiable logic guiding them. They really, really don’t let anything breathe. Part of the joy of a sports blooper is the aftermath. It’s not merely the guy getting hit in the balls, it’s the guy falling to the ground afterwards. They cut so quickly that we’re often left without that catharsis, as demonstrated in this Gratuitous Edits compilation:

Often they’ll just drop stuff in there, like there’s a clip from what looks to be Tex Avery cartoon in that video. Their sourcing of clips and definition of a “Sports Blooper” are both much wider than what we got in Sports Funnies, to both the benefit and detriment of the tape. For example:

This is home video footage of what appears to be a child playing golf in their backyard. It certainly counts as a blooper, but it’s odd to see what is ultimately America’s Funniest Home Video fodder sharing time on this tape with name brand sports stars. Like here’s Muhammad Ali and Larry Bird in the video’s opening credits:

There’s also grainy probably college football footage, as seen in our MEDIAN BLOOPER:

Classic. Quarterback falls on his ass dropping back to pass. It’s always funny; it’s a cornerstone blooper of American Football. It still happens, too. Not even thirty seconds of YouTube searching brought me this clip of a quarterback from my alma mater’s sad, sad 2024 season. This is a perfectly good baseline. There were far too many candidates to serve as this tape’s Least Blooper representative, though, and for so many unique reasons. For example:

LEAST BLOOPER (TOO GOOD)

There are too many straightforwardly amazing sports plays present on this sports bloopers tape. Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary against Miami is one of the best plays in the history of college football. Billy Sims’s jump-kick combo against the Oilers is perhaps less historic, but still an incredible athletic feat. That flip-throw assist from an anonymized probably-collegiate-but-who-knows soccer match at the beginning of the clip is amazing. I’ve been to a ton of soccer games and I’ve never had the good fortune to see even one flip-throw, let alone an assist.

LEAST BLOOPER (INELIGIBLE)

So this is a clip from a Japanese game show. If we start counting wacky Japanese game show bloopers as sports bloopers, then we lose the plot a little. These things are painstakingly constructed to serve as blooper fodder, foundationally built towards getting a man or a woman getting hit in the crotch and faceplanting in some mud. There’s no way that actual sports can hold up if they have to compete against these. It’s like how the NBA Slam Dunk contest is less impressive now because there are guys whose entire careers are built on doing impressive slam dunks for YouTube compilations.

LEAST BLOOPER (GRUE)

Combat sports and auto racing would seem to be fodder for sports bloopers, but they don’t work that well in practice. In most sports, somebody getting accidentally punched in the face is a blooper. In boxing, that’s the whole point. It’s very hard to distinguish between an intentional punch in boxing and a blooper. In most sports, two contestants getting into a collision is a blooper. In auto racing, two contestants getting into a collision can cause a massive fire and certain injury if not possible death. We’re barely fifteen minutes out from that kid hitting the camera in his backyard with an errant golf ball when this gruesome accident comes up. Somebody had to have been hit with debris in the crowd, surely, like an eyeball had to have been lost in this clip punctuated by penny whistles and a trombone gliss.

LEAST BLOOPER (MUNDANE)

That’s just a man with a flag. Not a blooper.

ULTIMATE BLOOPER

For all of my braying about the potpurri of blooper sources that we had here, it also gave me far too much good stuff to work with. I struggled to cut it down to ten! We have a little of everything: Guys getting punched in the balls, a horse running the wrong way, a bird messing with people on a golf course, somebody failing to slam dunk a basketball jumping off of a trampoline, a baseball guy trying to track a foul ball runs into a fence and tumbles into the dugout. It’s all here!

Wait a second… It’s all here! The VHS sleeve didn’t lie! It truly is all here! The ‘Awards’ conceit is flimsy at best, and I wouldn’t by any means pay twenty dollars for this, but I simply cannot deny the presence of bloopers and whoopsies and foul-ups here. In terms of overall quality, this is the best sports blooper tape that I’ve examined in this series. While this only means that it was superior to a tape that I really didn’t enjoy, I think it ought to have its day in the sun. Granted, if I continue at the rate I’ve been working, that day in the sun is guaranteed to continue from now until early 2027, which this tape does not deserve, but that’s my fault and not the fault of the Marbowe Corporation.

I’ll leave you with the Marbowe Corporation’s Vanity Plate, which is sadly just not going to give children any nightmares: