I just want a volume 3 PERIOD... even if they follow the same "first episode of the season" jazz. But seems they want to make a 40th anniversary disk set a LOT more... and I'm sure it will have all the same bits we've seen a hundred times, a monopoly of celebrity appearances (if Songs from the Street was any indication), and a few actual rare bits that actually are rare.
If Henson #1 is the only rare bit on there I'll be happy, though I hope it has a boatload of rare bits (or clips that were rare before sesamestreet.org launched). There are a lot of clips that I view as "classic" that I don't think have had any video/ DVD releases in america.
By now I think it would be hard to think up an "Ultimate Sesame Street DVD Collection". I remember when the first Looney Tunes Golden Collection came out I fnatasized about a Sesame Street equivilent (and started a thread about it here long ago). There is a lot of great material that'd make good special features (This Way to Sesame Street, the remaining test pilots, the original cut of the pitch reel, A Walking Tour of Sesame Street, the 1999 Sesame Street Unpaved special... I have a feeling the last one won't be on the set, since at least three of the segments included there were nominated when Amazon allowed for fans to vote on a clip for the DVD). My ideas of selectiosn for an "ultimate" set have changed since more stuff has been released on DVD (though my wishlists occassionally double-dip from past releases).
But there are a lot of ideas that'd be great for companion pieces. I don't expect a big line of 40th anniversary DVDs, but stuff that would make great collections include:
- 40th anniversary sketch collections highlighting certain individual main characters (Big Bird, Grover, Bert and Ernie, The Count, etc)
- A one-disc collection highlighting big fan favorites who are no longer on the show (Sherlock Hemlock, Roosevelt Franklin, Biff and Sully, Don Music, etc)
- A similar one-disc collection focusing on the most obscure characters of all-time (Professor Hastings, Leslie Mostly, Deena and Pearl, Shivers the Penguin... I think Bruno is a bit in-between here and the idea just mentioned above)
- While not really neccessary as an anniversary collection, it'd be interesting to see a collection of classic clips entitled "The Random Classics", featuring a random assortment of clips from the first 20 seasons, most of which generally aren't seen as "classics" (some true classics might be needed... I'd want each or almost every disc to include a Monsterpiece Theater sketch, and in my opinion almost every Monsterpiece Theater sketch known to be from the 1980s are classic).