Change in covers for the three core 1E books, good or bad?

[thedungeondelver]

Always thought this would be a cool adventure cover.

Village of Hommlet right there, brother

[JRT]

The new covers made people notice the books in the store, but the books themselves were the same as they'd always been.

Not to mention that as TSR added better artists for D&D and for the modules especially where covers were concerned, I suspect they wanted to make sure that all their art had the same level of professional quality. The look of the old covers really jars with the art on the newer products and items using the new trade dress, so I think in this case it was seen as something required to not make the older AD&D manuals look "outdated", and to have a consistent look and feel. (Both versions of the Red Box had a common theme in design and art).

It's the same reason the really old modules were re-covered (and in some cases combined) circa 1980.

[Terrex]

The new covers made people notice the books in the store, but the books themselves were the same as they'd always been.

Not to mention that as TSR added better artists for D&D and for the modules especially where covers were concerned, I suspect they wanted to make sure that all their art had the same level of professional quality. The look of the old covers really jars with the art on the newer products and items using the new trade dress, so I think in this case it was seen as something required to not make the older AD&D manuals look "outdated", and to have a consistent look and feel. (Both versions of the Red Box had a common theme in design and art).

It's the same reason the really old modules were re-covered (and in some cases combined) circa 1980.

It's interesting you bring up the module re-dos. I always owned the new covers for G1-G3, D1-D2, and T1. That always sort of bothered me. So recently I acquired the better mono-covered ones on ebay. They were the first official D&D modules I purchased in decades. Yeah, great business model...