As part of listing an item on Ebay, I have been researching the Kid Stuff D&D records. While these items are relatively common, there's not very much information about them available online.
In the 1970's and 80's,
Kid Stuff Records produced hundreds of albums for children. In 1984, it released 4 D&D products related to the toy line from LJN. Three were Read-Along Books (7" records/cassettes paired with picture books): Black Dragon Bog, Attack of the Assassins, and Quest for the Cursed Bone. The fourth, Quest for the Riddles, seems to only have been released as an 11" record.
These four items seem to have been manufactured by at least two organizations:
IJE Publishing, a division of Kid Stuff, at
450 N. Park Road, Hollywood, Florida 33021U.R.T.I. Records at
83 Jack Circle Chateauguay, Quebec, Canada. U.T.R.I. manufactured other albums for Kid Stuff as other albums for the adult market from a wide range of artists.
The books from IJE and URTI appear identical, without explicit publishing information. TSR is listed as the copyright holder. The back of the IJE books are printed with "Kid Stuff Records & Tapes, a division of I.J.E. Inc, 450 N. Park Road, Hollywood, Florida 33021." While the URTI books have a sticker covering IJE information saying "Manufactured by U.R.T.I, 83 Jack Circle, Chateauguay, Que, J6K 1V1 Canada".
Attachment:
Attack of the Assassins back (Medium).jpg
The records display more significant differences. This based on images available online which is admittedly an extremely small sample size.
The IJE records have blue and yellow labels and credit John Braden as the writer and producer.
Attachment:
record_IJE (Medium).png
The URTI records have an orange label and make no mention of John Braden.
Attachment:
PXL_20250315_022458567 (Medium).jpg
While much if not most of the Kid Stuff/IJE records had orange labels, it seems only yellow and blue labels were used for D&D.
Are there any records that don't fit this pattern?
Are there sales figures for the albums available anywhere?
Are there any examples of these albums/books being manufactured in any other countries? Were there UK versions?
John Braden wrote at least one other book for Kid Stuff,
My Little Pony: The Night before Christmas. Did he write anything else for TSR?
Any insights why Kid Stuff have licensed production to a Canadian company rather than exporting to Canada?
