Century Martial Arts and The Panther Video Library
Century Martial Arts and The Panther Video Library
Century Martial Arts deserves a great deal of credit for offering the complete and classic Panther Video library on DVD and at incredibly low prices. In fact, many of the DVD releases that Century Martial Arts offers cost roughly $9.95. When the Panther Videos first came out they were $49.95! So, Century Martial Arts is owed a great deal of praise for keeping the library in circulation long after the original company collapsed.
A Brief History of Panther Video
Anyone who was an avid reader of the martial arts magazines of the 1980's and 1990's will never forget the loud and proud advertisements for Panther Videos. Panther was the first company to release martial arts instructional videos to the public and the volume of videos that they released was staggering. Panther's video catalogue boasted videos on hundreds of martial arts and each video series had a significant subset of volumes. For example, Joe Moreira's Brazilian Jiu Jitsu series ran upwards of 25 plus volumes.
The End of an Era
Sadly, Panther's dominance of the home video martial arts instructional market would collapse in the late 1990's and early part of this decade as many more competitors landed on the field and vied for much of Panther's shrinking client base. Additionally, with the advent of the internet there was no need for a start up company to purchase thousands of dollars of magazine ads so a number of "minor players" flooded the field with their own videos and, soon, DVDs. This saturated the market and essentially made operation of Panther impossible. Panther eventually closed up shop and sold the rights to its library to Century Martial Arts.
Century, Panther and the Modern Era
Sadly, a number of classic Panther instructional videos do not hold up well in the modern era. This is understandable as everything progresses including the proper way to produce a martial arts video. However, those who completely dismiss Panther's early work as being outdated are not being completely fair as there is much value on many of the tapes and the low cost that Century Martial Arts provides these videos for more than makes up for their "vintage" negatives.
Again, Century Martial Arts has done the martial arts world a huge favor by providing these great instructional videos on the market when many other early companies' libraries have faded into oblivion. If you wish to relive the classic era of instructional videos then browsing Century's website may be a wise move.