The Pebbles & Bamm Bamm Show – The Complete
Series + A Pup Named Scooby Doo – The Complete First Season (Warner Home
Video)
Picture:
C+/C Sound: C Extras: C/C- Episodes: B-*/C
Please Note:
*Though it is listed as “Complete” and all episodes are here, all shows
on the 2-DVDs of The Pebbles & Bamm
Bamm Show are missing smaller segments and despite all of our efforts, we
were not able to track down specifics.
What is missing includes music numbers and the Wiggy character doing
amusing things with the Horoscope and that latter omission is particularly
disturbing. We will return to this part
of the subject when we find out what happened.
After a
show has been a hit, filling in the past and future and in the case of many a
franchise, it has meant their creative end.
One big difference is that in decades past, any such coverage was honest
and mature, especially as compared to the approach beginning in the 1980s of
the lesser equivalent. Recently, Warner
Bros. has issued two shows from their Hanna-Barbera (aka H-B) holdings that
define the differences of this model. The Pebbles & Bamm Bamm Show
arrived in the early 1970s and imagined what happened when the famous tots
became teenagers. This included friends,
school and other hijinks.
A Pup Named Scooby Doo is the far more recent and silly
show where everyone is a pre-teen and the same gang from the original show has
been around since birth, as if the Mystery Machine was their womb and they are
infantile as we get treated. Prior to
the 1980s, you’d get Sylvester Jr., but by the 1980s you were getting this or
Scrappy Doo. You can see who the very
idea kills comedy, jokes and originality.
The difference is that this version is only in its first season while Pebbles & Bamm Bamm was only about
two.
That show
also had some chemistry with the title characters being voiced by Sally
Struthers and Jay North, but then the older H-B series always had that
chemistry, even at their worse. Some
complained that Bamm Bamm was too much of a dork and without explanation while
Badluck Schleprock would be seen as politically incorrect today despite no
malice intended, but the show is really the most underrated animated sequel
series H-B ever did, though I also liked The
Scooby Doo Movies very much, a show long reissued on DVD.
Pup is a
poor show, but even cut down, Pebbles
& Bamm Bamm is worth a look, but by Blu-ray, it needs restored and the
cut parts added back.
The 1.33
X 1 color image on each is not consistent, but Pup is especially color challenged and littered with aliasing
issues. Pebbles & Bamm Bamm actually has better color and definition,
if not the best vintage reissue of an H-B series Warner has issued to
date. The Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono on both
is weak and both have sounded better before on TV and cable. Extras on Pebbles & Bamm Bamm are simply the four episodes made for the
Flintstones Hour, but this set deserved much more and where are those missing
scenes and a featurette on why they were removed. Pup
has an interactive map of the town they are growing up in (yawn!) and pencil
tests in making the show.
- Nicholas Sheffo
