Tempo Communications was an entertainment publishing brand created in the 1980s. A children's media focused subsidiary of music label Multiple Sounds Distribution, Tempo published across VHS, compact cassette and (in its later guise as Abbey Home Entertainment) CD and DVD.
About[]
Tempo was notable for being one of the first VHS publishers of animated series, issuing releases for everything from Transformers and My Little Pony to The Shoe People and Spot. Alongside this, Tempo were almost dominant in the children's audio book market in the late 80s and early 90s, creating adaptations of both animated series and children's literature. Tempo's audio book releases covered a huge gamut of licenses to accommodate age ranges from the youngest learned readers through to pre-teens. Titles ranged from big budget American series such as Thundercats and My Little Pony to British TV licenses including Worzel Gummidge and Danger Mouse and some more literary titles, like The Wind In The Willows and Enid Blyton's various series. Although largely adapted from animated series, most Tempo releases were true audio books, featuring prose stories read by a single narrator (occasionally complemented with other cast members for characters voices and wallah). There are a couple of exceptions to this. Releases for Danger Mouse and Count Duckula use the soundtrack from the animated series episodes they were adapted from, simply with some narration shoved in. Two Thundercats releases are imported from the American company Peter Pan (without the American introduction replaced), which also use the cartoon episode's soundtrack.
Tempo's audio book releases were broken down into the following, confusingly similarly named, categories. It's hard to discern what reasoning was used to decide which licenses were put into each range, which all ran largely concurrently.
Involvement with Mr. Men[]
Tempo Communications released "The Christmas Rescue" on their videotape, The Greatest Ever Christmas Video.