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Apple's Ghostbusters-themed video from 1984: Blue Busters

Apple's Ghostbusters-themed video from 1984: Blue Busters

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Stanford University recently granted the Associated Press a tour of items that were originally destined for an Apple-curated museum that Steve Jobs cancelled when he returned to Apple in 1997. Among those items is an unbelievably campy video from Apple's 1984 sales meeting, featuring a team of "Blue Busters" rescue nerdy-looking folk from the doldrums of their IBM computers with Macintosh-powered busting machines.

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blue busters
blue busters

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he halted plans to build a museum containing artifacts from the company's archive and instead donated all the materials to Stanford University, who has held onto them in an undisclosed location ever since. Stanford recently granted The Associated Press a tour of the collection, and among the myriad books, photos, marketing materials, and legal documents in the collection, there's one in particular worth its weight in gold — a 1984 video from an Apple sales meeting parodying the iconic Ghostbusters theme song. In it, a team of "Blue Busters" rescue nerdy-looking folk from the doldrums of their IBM computers with Macintosh-powered busting machines, complete with alternate lyrics and an authentic-sounding backing track.

It's truly difficult for words to do this ridiculously campy video justice, but fortunately you don't need to find Stanford's Apple archive to see it — the video's been lurking on YouTube for several years now. According to a commenter who claims he was at this sales meeting, Apple kicked off every sales meeting with movie parodies, including a Back to the Future-themed video for 1985's meeting. We've seen similarly over-the-top videos from Microsoft in the past, but something this old is definitely a rarity. We'd love to see the full collection someday, but Blue Busters (complete with a cameo from Woz near the end) will have to do for now.