Comparing the two holograms on the Windows 95 box

I noted some time ago that the Windows 95 anti-piracy hologram had to be redone at the last moment due to a complaint from a government (who remains nameless). They objected to the depiction of naked children on the box, referring to the anti-piracy hologram in which the baby is not wearing a shirt. Since the baby is depicted only from the waist up, they extrapolated that the baby wasn’t wearing pants.

There was a scramble to produce a new hologram, and just to be safe, in the new hologram the baby is wearing a shirt and overalls.

You can find pictures of the “clothed baby” Windows 95 hologram fairly easily, such as one appearing about halfway through Steve Sinofsky’s story about getting Office 95 to pass the “Designed for Windows 95” requirements.¹

Harder to find is the original “topless baby” Windows 95 hologram, but recently, I stumbled across a link to a short clip of the original hologram, that shows off the animation.

So now you can see what that unnamed government was upset about.

Windows 95 was released to the public 31 years ago today.

Bonus chatter: Windows NT 4.0 was released to the public 30 years ago today. And Windows XP was released to manufacturing 25 years ago today. I don’t know why things happen on August 24ths.

¹ I find it interesting that the Office team was frustrated at the “Designed for Windows 95” certification process, feeling that the certification team was singling them out more harshly. So much for the conspiracy theories that Office was given favorable treatment. It seems that they were given more stringent treatment.