Chuggington:
Chief Wilson (Anchor Bay
DVD)/Dora's Ice Skating
Spectacular (Nickelodeon
DVD)/Guess How Much I Love
You: Hidden Treasure
(2011/E1 DVD)/The Hive: A
Very Buzzbee Christmas
+ Buzzbee's Family
Adventures (Cinedigm
DVDs)/NFL Rush Zone:
Season Of The Guardians - Volume One
(Gaiam Vivendi DVD)/Sesame
Street: Fairy Tale Fun!
(Warner DVD)
Picture:
C+ (NFL: C) Sound: C+ Extras: C+/C/D/D/D/C+
Episodes: C+/C/C+/C+/C/C+
Here
are the latest round of children's titles...
Chuggington:
Chief Wilson is a six-episode set of the show that is as good as
any of the DVD singles in the series to date, but running only over
an hour, the length is its weak spot. However, the shows are fun and
we get more extras than usual including a very nice sticker activity
booklet inside the DVD case, while the DVD adds PDF DVD-ROM Coloring
& Activity Sheets, two Spotlight character clips and a bonus
Badge Quest/Chug Patrol episode.
Dora's
Ice Skating Spectacular has Dora The Explorer getting ready for
winter (and the holiday season by default, we gather) where she has
to stop an Ice Witch from stealing everyone's skates! Wonder if she
was p[art of the crowd that closed so many actual fun rinks since the
1970s? Two bonus episodes are the only extras leaving this single
only running about 70 minutes.
Guess
How Much I Love You: Hidden Treasure (2011) is the first time we
have seen The Adventures Of Little Nutbrown Hare and this DVD
single offers 7 child-friendly episodes running 80 minutes and tends
to have a healthy family attitude rare in today's market of so much
phony would-be family product. There are no extras, but this is a
respectable release.
The
Hive: A Very Buzzbee Christmas
+ Buzzbee's Family Adventures are our first look at a
charming, fun, pleasant CGI series about a family of bees that tries
to teach positive values to young viewers and each DVD has ten
episodes with 88 minutes total, so even if neither DVD has no extras,
they are on the side of the fullest of the releases here.
NFL
Rush Zone: Season Of The Guardians - Volume One is the odd
release here, an unsuccessful attempt to make a superhero franchise
out of the many football franchises the organization runs. The idea
is that five young people get superpowers from combinations of the
great skills of all the teams in the league, but it is simply done,
is never convincing and what if one character has represents several
teams that are having horrible seasons? Does he or she lose their
powers and possibly land up in the hospital with injures or worse?
Done
in the style of the DC Comics animated series of late, some real life
players guest as themselves in animated form in some episodes, but
how that will play when they are long retired later is anyone's
guess. There are no extras, which is not surprising for something so
badly thought out and even cynical. Hmmm.
Finally
we have Sesame Street: Fairy Tale Fun! which brings
some funny skits together dealing with spoofing nursery rhymes as its
main program, then adds more in the extras for 2 hours of such
programming on one DVD. That's the most we get here of all these
releases and that also means the most laughs. It just wish it was
not as overlapping and so obvious.
Extras
include the special CinderElmo, Abby's Flying Fairy
School and Kermit News skits tied into the same classic.
All
the image quality on these DVDs look fine save the anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on the NFL disc, which is softer and
less consistent than expected. The rest of the DVDs offer better
versions of the same picture aspect ratio save Dora and
Sesame, which are 1.33 X 1. All entries have the same
consistent sound quality and all are presented in lossy Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo that I just fine for the type of release they are.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
