Hmm, i'm not sure they've been out of print. We bought all 3 of those (Totoro, Kiki, Laputa) fairly recently. I'm sure we got "Castle in the Sky" within the past 12 months. And i regularly see all 3 both at the neighborhood video store and at Kinokuniya down in Chinatown. Maybe Disney just updated all of the packaging and added new features?

I am shocked -- shocked, i say! -- that you didn't just grab all of them at once.