Peanuts Holiday Collection - Deluxe Edition

Warner Home Video
75 Minutes

List Price: $44.98 (Check Price at Amazon.com)

Available 9/23/2008

The Peanuts Holiday Collection includes It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. All three are also available separately.

Disc 1 Contents

• Upfront Ads (3:18) (can be skipped by selecting the Menu or Skip buttons)
  
  • "Wizard of Oz" anti-piracy ad
  • Jack Frost on DVD
  • A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on DVD
  • A Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD
  • Peanuts Holiday Collection on DVD
• Features
  
  • It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (25:13)
  • It's Magic, Charlie Brown (24:15)
• Special Features
  
  • Featurette: We Need a Blockbuster, Charlie Brown!
  • Trailer for Wiggles: You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
  • Trailer for Scooby Doo and the Goblin King
  • Digital Download Code for 2 songs from iTunes

Disc 2 Contents

• Upfront Ads (5:09) (can be skipped by selecting the Menu or Skip buttons)
  
  • "Wizard of Oz" anti-piracy ad
  • A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on DVD
  • A Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD
  • Jack Frost on DVD
  • Scooby Doo Interactive DVD Game
• Features
  
  • A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (25:17)
  • The Mayflower Voyagers (24:15)
• Special Features
  
  • Featurette: Popcorn & Jellybeans: Making a Thanksgiving Classic
    
  • Trailer for Scooby Doo and the Goblin King
  • Trailer for Fred Claus on DVD
  • Trailer for Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 6
  • Trailer for Popeye
  • Trailer for Smurfs Season 1 Vol. 2
  • Digital Download Code for 2 songs from iTunes

Disc 3 Contents

• Upfront Ads (5:09) (can be skipped by selecting the Menu or Skip buttons)
  
  • "Wizard of Oz" anti-piracy ad
  • A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on DVD
  • A Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD
  • Peanuts Holiday Collection on DVD
  • Jack Frost on DVD
• Features
  
  • A Charlie Brown Christmas (25:26)
  • It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (22:57)
• Special Features
  
  • Featurette: A Christmas Miracle: The Making of A Charlie Brown Christmas
    
  • Trailer for Scooby Doo and the Goblin King
  • Trailer for Fred Claus on DVD
  • Trailer for Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 6
  • Trailer for Popeye
  • Trailer for Smurfs Season 1 Vol. 2
  • Digital Download Code for 2 songs from iTunes

Disc 4 Contents (packaged with Disc 3)

• Audio CD

  • My Little Drum
  • Linus and Lucy
  • Hark, the Herald Angels Sing
  • Christmas is Coming
  • Für Elise
  • Greensleeves

About the TV Specials

This package contains three of the highly entertaining Peanuts specials that aired on television in the 60's and 70's, and have become an annual holiday tradition for many families.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is one of those enduring classics that have stood the test of time. Originally broadcast on television in 1966, this has become a yearly staple in the lives of many kids, and adults who used to be kids and who grew up watching this every Halloween.

For those unaware or in need of a refresher, the Peanuts gang is getting ready for Halloween. While everyone else is going out for "tricks and treats," Linus is heading for the pumpkin patch in the hopes of seeing "the Great Pumpkin," which is the Halloween equivalent to Santa Claus for him.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving was originally broadcast in 1973 and has the gang getting together for a Thanksgiving feast. The only problem is that none of them can cook anything beyond toast and popcorn!

Perhaps the best known of all the Peanuts specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas is a true holiday classic that stands the test of time. This first holiday special was first aired in December 1965 and it set the bar for all the rest of the specials that followed.

The following review covers all three shows. Where necessary, distinctions will be made to highlight any differences between them.

How Does it Look?

Presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the video looks fantastic! Could I go looking for edge and block artifacts? Probably, this is line-drawn animation and that's notoriously difficult for the MPEG-2 format on DVD to handle, but through casual viewing, I did not notice any distracting artifacts.

How Does it Sound?

The sound quality is mono, but that's to be expected from TV shows of the 60's and 70's. The audio is well done though, without any shrillness or other sound issues.

Extras

Along with the main feature, each title also contains additional Peanuts gang shows. It's Magic Charlie Brown, where Snoopy takes up magic as a hobby and puts on a magic show for all the Peanuts gang. The Mayflower Voyagers tells the Thanksgiving story in a way that kids can understand and appreciate. Surprisingly, it doesn't mince words when it comes to the hardships endured by the Pilgrims. Finally, It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown does the sequel thing. While not on the same level of story and animation as the main features, they're going to be fun to watch for kids of all ages.

Each title contains a featurette. We Need a Blockbuster, Charlie Brown! is a short documentary that describes the challenges faced by Charles M. Schultz, producer Lee Mendelson, and animator/director Bell Melendez in following up the hugely successful Christmas special. Popcorn & Jellybeans: Making a Thanksgiving Classic and A Christmas Miracle: The Making of A Charlie Brown Christmas are standard making-of shows. Kids won't get much out of these featurettes, but they are brief and mostly interesting to watch.

Packaged with A Charlie Brown Christmas is a sampler audio CD containing six songs from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on CD.

In the package for each show, you will find a code that you can redeem in the iTunes Store to download two tracks from the CD's "Charlie Brown's Holiday Hits" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" by Vince Guaraldi. The downloads went easy after agreeing to the purchase terms and conditions put forth by iTunes, and the 128kbps protected AAC sounded pretty good, even though iTunes needed to boost the level of the "Great Pumpkin" tracks by about 6dB through the SoundCheck process.

Conclusion

Every home should have a copy of these TV specials, and I don't care if you don't have any kids! You'd have to be completely void of any childlike innocence not to enjoy these classics. Since you'll be able to get quite a bit of use out of them, I have no reservations about recommending this box set for purchase.

All three shows are available separately, but given the price break of buying them together, I suggest buying this box set instead.