Your Thoughts: ABCs with Elmo

[minor muppetz]

Well the new DVD Preschool is Cool: ABCs with Elmo has come out today. I am watching it right now, and so far it's a bit mediocre. So far all of the segments shown involve the whole alphabet, instead of individual segments, but a picture from "A's Anatomy" is on the back of the package. Also on the back cover is "Letter of the Month" club (I wasn't expecting any street stories in this).

I have a feeling that the bonus "African Alphabet" segment is the only Kermit clip on here. The segment fades to black and a copyright credit for Kermit appears (if he was in the main program I wouldn't have expected that credit to appear after the clip... Though I wouldn't have been surprised if that credit appeared in the credits of the main program regardless).

 

[minor muppetz]

Well, I'm done watching, and Muppet Wiki now has a full sketch listing thanks to me. I'll give it three out of five stars (or five out of ten stars).

With the exception of A's Anatomy, all of the segments are about the whole alphabet (most of which I haven't heard of). It includes two street stories: The letter of the month club (which was released on one of the TV Fun Pack releases) and "Hurry Up, You're Running Out of Time" (Guy Smiley's most recent appearance... And he sounds a lot of Eric Jacobson's Grover). I sort of wish I knew it would be mostly alphabet segments, I would have liked it to have had more individual letter segments like Super K Cereal and maybe American I (in addition to a countless amount of classic letter sketches). Before getting this I was expecting a second release of D-Dance, and I am surprised that's not included.

Maybe it's just me, but the picture quality for African Alphabet is a bit brighter than I''m used to seeing.

 

[Muppet Frog]

I like the part where they got a classic Kermit song as a bonus feature.

 

[minor muppetz]

The title sequence is a little funny. Elmo reads the title, "ABCs with Elmo", and then Grover adds "...and Professor Grover!"

And until then, I didn't realise that it makes more sense to call it "ABCs with Professor Grover", since he is the teacher.

Sigh, and they changed Professor Grover's cap and gown colors from black to gold. The color has been consistient for so many years.... Why change them now?

And this DVD appears to have four segments that have been released on DVD already (two of which were on the 40th anniversary set). It has ABC Hip Hop and African Alphabet which were both on the 40th anniversary set in addition to other videos, plus Indie.Arie singing the alphabet (which was in The Best of Elmo 2), and "The Letter of the Month Club" street story (the whole episode was in one of the TV Fun Packs).

 

[minor muppetz]

I have a feeling that if a counting equivilient is made (and I'll be surprised if one isn't) it'll be mostly generic counting and math segments. I would expect such a release to have the recent "Counting Booth" street story, Joe Hundred Guy, Counting Vacation, Ernie and Bert counting to 100 by tens, maybe the season 39 math magician street story. And for a bonus classic segment I would expect either Born to Add, Count it Higher, or the two-part segment where The Count sleeps at Ernie and Bert's apartment.

And if Warner isn't interested in releasing nostalgic collectible Sesame Street sets then I wish they would eithe rhave Sesame Workshop mix old and new within the main program or put in more classic clips as bonuses (since WB took over we've only gotten classic clips as bonus segments, and only one per release, and only on two DVDs so far). Heck, both of the "bonus classic segments" could have easily been part of the main programs as opposed to bonuses without looking too confusing.

 

[Drtooth]

If I needed any more evidence that WB wants to release cheap little Elmo DVD's for mommy to buy to shut up screaming kids for a half hour, this is it. Really. No effort. Are there at LEAST new scenes of linking footage?

Other than the Ernie and Bert clay thing, there is NOTHING any Muppet fan should want or care about coming out of WB. Typical, since they manage to blow off EVERY fan of anything they own... except DC comics.

 

[minor muppetz]

Are there at LEAST new scenes of linking footage?

Yes there are. The linking plot has Elmo helping Professor Grover teach kids the alphabet at a pre-school, where they look for objects that start each letter of the alphabet (and at one point Grover thinks that a long word is a letter... I think the word is something like "wozacamunga"... I wish these SST DVDs would have english subtitles on them). And the pre-school classroom is a real classroom, not a set, and there are a few scenes of the characters interacting with real live kids. I know some fans like it when Muppets are out in the real world, though in this case I don't think it would make much difference whether it was real or a set.

And actually in my opinion Muppets in the real world is hit-or-miss. I usually like it when the Muppets of The Muppet Show are on location, and Traveling Matt on location is great, but when it coems for Sesame Street, I don't feel too excited when the Muppets are out on location instead of sets or cgi backgrounds. I like that they used real world locations in Follow That Bird and the various specials of the 1980s (and I'll group Big Bird's birthday special here even though that's from the beginning of the 1990s), and I like the real world locations seen in the direct-to-video 25th and 35th anniversary specials, but this and the various Murray Monster outdoors scenes don't really do it for me.

 

[Drtooth]

Actually... that sounds pretty cool and worth a look, but definitely not worth buying. At least if there's linking footage, they're doing something MORE than just taking recent segments and slapping them down on a DVD.

Still...I'm wondering if the lack of classic stuff is even due to the WB at all. I wonder if SW just doesn't want to do that sort of thing anymore. I really wish they could sublicense older things to another company, though.