Dark gray then? Excellent. That makes it easier than if there really was some blue in there.
Your current version has a mistake. The ratings box uses the wrong font, (causing some letters to be a little taller then others) and has a drop shadow beneath the text. (which the original did not have)
That's not a drop shadow, that's just the original text on the original scan of the VHS box underneath it that you're seeing (I have the opacity of the scan at 50% which makes the printing on it look shadowy; it wouldn't be in the final file of course).
The thing about some letters being taller than others is just an Adobe Illustrator rendering anomaly (the picture I posted is just a screenshot of the file opened in Illustrator); they are all the same size because it is typed from a single font, and if you zoom in (within Illustrator on the actual file) or print it out or export it to a raster file or whatever, they are all the same height.
You're right that the new "Parental Guidance Suggested" font that I used is not an exact match for the font used on the original box. I wasn't real happy with the whole PG box anyway. The only thing that matches as well as I like is the "some material may not be suitable for children" font (which is ordinary Helvetica [albeit with custom kerning], like nearly everything else on the whole VHS box).
The 2006 MPAA Handbook that you linked to is nice because it is official and it is vector (I actually already have that file as it happens, because of a project I did a few years ago where I needed the rated R logo). The problem with it is, it uses plain old Helvetica for both the upper and bottom boxes, while the logo on the VHS box only uses regular Helvetica for the bottom box, and some type of condensed (narrow) font in the upper box. Helvetica Condensed was the closest I had so that is what I used, but I don't consider it final. I'll see what else I can find.
One distinguishing characteristic about the original upper box font on the VHS box is the fairly straight sides to the letters (look at the "G" and the right side of the "D" for instance), so maybe that will help me find the correct font eventually. If all else fails I could simply trace (vectorize) the letters myself (it wouldn't be the first time I've done such a thing by any means; that's how I made the CBS/FOX Video logo for example), but in order to do that, I would need an extremely high DPI scan of it (because it is so small on the VHS box), like 1200 DPI at least. Hopefully I can find the right font though, because tracing/vectorizing letters is quite a pain.
I'd also like to find the highest quality versions of the photos that are on the back of each box. I have some 300 DPI ones that I cut from someone else's VHS-to-DVD sleeve project, but they were already JPGs and I don't know how many times they went through JPG compression before I got them. They look good, but I'm just wondering if there are better versions available? Scanning them directly from the VHS box is not a good source, because the scanner picks up all of the color halftone dots from the offset printing process. I don't know where the ones I already have came from (they weren't scanned from the VHS box at least, which is a good thing) ... maybe screenshots from HD versions of the movies?
Edit: I think the font is just an extra condensed version of Helvetica (which would make sense, because the MPAA has always used Helvetica in their ratings boxes). If I squeeze Helvetica Condensed to make it as narrow as the original font, it is a pretty close match. I need to see if I can find some versions of Helvetica that are more condensed than what I already have.
Edit 2: This is Helvetica Medium Condensed, slightly narrowed:
The weight is perfect, but the sides of the curved letters (like G and D) are still not straight enough. Helvetica Compressed has the straight sides, but the weight is far too heavy. Very annoying. If a medium version of Helvetica Compressed existed, I think it would be dead on.
