Your Thoughts: Sesame Street Old School Volume 3 1979-1984 DVD

[minor muppetz]

Ever since I read that this set only has five extra clips per season, I thought it'd be cool if Sesame Workshop put out a single-disc release of segments from 1979-1984, maybe call it "Old School Lite" (I'd like to see such a single-disc release of bonus clips from the first 15 seasons). It would make a good exclusive bonus disc at a place like Best Buy.

I'm surprised to see that Waving Goodbye is from season 12. Michael Earl's Muppet Wiki pages says that Michael Earl originated Polly Darton, and he was on the show when this segment was made (I believe Michael Earl added that info himself). I wonder if he gave up the role early or if maybe they thought Polly needed a natural-sounding woman's voice. I wondered if maybe it was a mistake (like how Henson Ball #3 is included as a season 15 segment when it really originated in season 2), but then when looking at the Waving Goodbye to You with my Heart page at Muppet Wiki I saw that it has a 1980 copyright date.

Does the booklet contain a listing of credits like the first two, or are all the credits only in that pdf file? And does this booklet include an interview with any Muppets?

It's great to see that an Aristotle clip is included, even if it is one that's on sesamestreet.org.

 

[Oscarfan]

I'm surprised to see that Waving Goodbye is from season 12. Michael Earl's Muppet Wiki pages says that Michael Earl originated Polly Darton, and he was on the show when this segment was made (I believe Michael Earl added that info himself). I wonder if he gave up the role early or if maybe they thought Polly needed a natural-sounding woman's voice. I wondered if maybe it was a mistake (like how Henson Ball #3 is included as a season 15 segment when it really originated in season 2), but then when looking at the Waving Goodbye to You with my Heart page at Muppet Wiki I saw that it has a 1980 copyright date.

I'm pretty sure Michael just did the puppeteering for her, not the voice. "Waivin' Goodbye" is clearly Fran singing.

 

[Drtooth]

I don't mean to sound rude, that's a very "fair-weather fan" mentality.

I agree, but I do see the disappointment. Hopefully volume 4 will be much like Muppet Show volume 2... more care will be taken to clear the rights that time. There was always cuts in the Old School volumes for strange reasons (though, eh... if there's one cut they SHOULD have made, it's replacing Dollhouse with something not on 3 episodes already). The problem I see is that if they were able to clear Star Wars characters, they should have made time to work out rights with the Theme song. If SW doesn't own it, who does? I can't believe Lucasfilm is more generous than song rights. And frankly, they negotiated that clip just in time. Still, if it meant we would have to wait a little longer if they could get their own theme song , I don't think we really would have minded.

I just want an insider to tell us what the problem was. We used to get those guys a lot around here. Now, not so much.

But I'm still buying this.

 

[Oscarfan]

While I don't care for the edits, I'm actually glad "Honk Around the Clock" made it onto the set; it's my favorite all-time Sesame song. "I Want to Count" isn't one of their best spoofs anyway and they don't do any actual counting until the ending vamp.

 

[Drtooth]

It's not that Honk Around the Clock isn't rare, but I love it too. It's not too disappointing that we don't get the Cab Calloway thing... it's probably online. If anything, the only real disappointment is that there's no Les Mostley or Deena and Pearl, but I guess if we pester SW nicely, they'll put one on Youtube or something some day. Not make or break.

I'm still really psyched about this, cuts and all.

 

[Oscarfan]

Me too; I just wish Amazon would ship it already.

 

[minor muppetz]

The problem I see is that if they were able to clear Star Wars characters, they should have made time to work out rights with the Theme song. If SW doesn't own it, who does? I can't believe Lucasfilm is more generous than song rights.

It seems character rights must be easier for Sesame Workshop to obtain than song rights. The previous Old School volumes and the 40th anniversary set managed to clear quite a few, many by choice (as opposed to them appearing in episodes selected which if they couldn't be cleared would mean something would have to be cut). Of course, many of the outside copyrighted characters who have appeared on the show appeared in multiple segments. I wonder if clearing one appearance for DVD automatically clears all other appearances for further use (then again, I know that The Best of the Electric Company Volume 1 features appearances by Spider-Man and Road Runner which are cut from volume 2).

Part of me feels that if volume 4 comes out I'd like it to have 5 or 6 random episodes from the first fifteen seasons plus a selection of bonus clips and bonus street stories, as opposed to the season 16-20 premieres. But on the other hand, if volume 4 has the premieres, we'll finally know what happens in the season 16 premiere, and we'll get the episode where Snuffy is revealed as real (the last of the season premieres that Muppet Wiki does not know what was cut on Noggin).

I don't think I was particularly looking forward to anything that's cut from this release (you could say the same about volume 2). And yet most of the Noggin edits and replacements are clips I'm not too familiar with. It was mentioned that Noggin cut one Geometry of Circles clip. I wonder which one it is. I'm sure it's hard to describe them individually, but I hope it is one that's not in either of the other episodes to have it.

Looking at an episode menu, it looks like each chapter stop only has 5 selections. Every episode on the previous two volumes has 9 chapter stops each (I actually counted and checked a month ago). It doesn't really matter either way, but at the same time, I don't think chapter stops add to disc space or money.

 

[Phillip]

So are the opening/closing harmonica theme cues removed as well? What about the funding credits?

They are still there. The closing music and credits are removed though. So each show ends with the familiar "Sesame Street is a production of the Children's Television Workshop" voice over. Followed by the 70's PBS animation and then a 2012 Sesame Workshop and Muppets Studio copyright for the Kermit footage.

In any case, call me overtly obsessive and fanatical if you will, but their inability to clear their own theme song has left me inclined to not support this release. Perhaps if there were a big assortment of bonus clips with some real lost gems, I might be willing to overlook the omission, but as it stands, I will not be buying this DVD.

It's just my opinion, but at first I was shocked the theme was gone too. But it isn't as bad as it sounds, espescially since 1316 didn't include an opening theme song any way. Once you see all the great clips in DVD quality the missing theme song may become much less of an issue.

 

[minor muppetz]

It's just my opinion, but at first I was shocked the theme was gone too. But it isn't as bad as it sounds, espescially since 1316 didn't include an opening theme song any way. Once you see all the great clips in DVD quality the missing theme song may become much less of an issue.

I had no idea one of the episodes didn't have the theme in the first place (I wonder if it had to do with the first week of season 11 being edited into the hour-long "Sesame Street Goes to Puerto Rico" special). Speaking of the DVD quality, I am impressed by the quality of the behind-the-scenes footage, and that's just going by the stills in the review (I don't recall the behind-the-scenes footage looking that crisp on the 40th anniversary set).

 

[Phillip]

Wow, it looks like none of the bonus clips include The Count or Herry (unless they are part of "the cast" in Trash Outta Heaven). Considering Jerry Nelson's recent passing it's a shame that there seems to be a lack of bonus clips featuring his characters.

More Jerry Nelson is always a good thing. However, keep in mind that these clips were already selected before Jerry's passing. Some special things in honor of Jerry are being planned for 2013. I'm hoping for a tribute album.

On the last two pages of the booklet, there's a group shot of several Jerry characters: The Count, Mr. Johnson, the Two-Headed Monster, Sherlock Hemlock and Herry. It's no coincidence these friends are all together.