Your Thoughts: Sesame Street Old School DVD

[BEAR]

Why is this thing so hard to find. My mom said it was really hard to find when she was out shopping the other day. She got the last one on the shelf. Oh well...the important thing is I am getting it (YIPPEEE!!) but won't REALLY be getting it til my birthday in a few weeks.

 

[doctort13]

I received my set just this past weekend, and overall LOVE IT!

My 2 year old daughter has watched the entire set multiple times. She sings along with the songs she knows from the CDs we own, dances in front of the TV, and shouts with joy when she sees her favorite Muppets (Cookie, Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie).

My only complaint...NO CAPTIONS FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED! I must use hearing aids to hear, and rely on closed captions to enjoy television shows & DVDs. Why on earth wasn't this common feature included? All of the other Sesame DVDs that we own (which are MANY), include closed captions, so not including this very helpful feature is confusing.

I intend to write a letter to Sesame Workshop and let them know how this affects my enjoyment of this DVD set. I hope that future sets of "SSOS" are on the horizon, that include closed captions.

 

[Ziffel]

My SS Old School dvds came recently with my TEC season 2 dvds. I watched them all. It was great fun seeing five complete episodes from the first five seasons. Just like the good ol' days as a child in the early 70's getting to watch an hour long show of all the classic stuff, including the wonderful "Sunny days" theme song opening. A lot of the clips we've seen from being uploaded on youtube but there were a few "new" ones too like the classic traffic lights clip and Grover on both sides of the long ladder (also Grover and Herbert Birdsfoot with the peanut butter stuck in his mouth). I'm more in favor of entire episodes than individual clips, but using clips like "C is for Cookie" as part of special features like they did is a good idea. I hope future sets will continue to include at least five more complete shows. Oh and I muted the sound each time a segment was about to close in case the sketch with the red and green anything muppets doing the alphabet with that creepy music came up next. And sure enough, on the fifth disc (from the '73-'74 season) that clip came on! But I had it muted so I didn't have to hear it, just like back in the early 70's (except we didn't have a remote so I had to cover my ears at the close of each segment back then instead!)

Anyway, it's really awesome to finally have what we've been craving for so long: Classic SS on dvd! And I'm looking forward to watching these with my niece when she's a bit older. Even though she's only a year and a half, she already loves the muppets. And she carries her Elmo muppet around with her a lot now. Oh and that reminds me, my brother also bought her one of those new tickle me elmo's (called TMX, right?) Wow that toy is neat. It cracks up laughing on the floor and rolls around and stands itself back up. Only thing is, she's a little frightened of it at this stage! But in time she'll probably come to be fascinated with it.

 

[minor muppetz]

One nitpick about the booklet is that it points out that Jim Henson was the voice of the baker, and that Henson wasn't the actor who played him, but it does not say who the actor playing the baker was.

 

[Ziffel]

Maybe the actor was just an unknown name. So that if the booklet had said, "the baker was played by Clint Collins" people would be like o...kay.

One of the street scenes that was nice to see was Grover trying to do chin-ups. Because I remember seeing that when it first aired in the early 70's. I recalled his line, "I'm not strong but I'm wiry."

 

[Lone Wolf]

I just got my mine yesterday. And Amazon said it would be delivered no earlier than December 8th, and no later than December 15th -- and actually got it on the fourth! (Miracles do happen!)

My thoughts? I have to say that overall I'm very pleased to finally see a DVD release that does justice to classic SS. Although the season premieres were nothing I hadn't already seen (I managed to get my hands on copies of season premieres 1-8 that had aired on Noggin a few years ago) But seeing them here with much sharper picture and sound quality made me appreciate them all the more and I'm very grateful that SW has taken good care of and preserved them all these years. It was also great to see some skits that I hadn't seen before -- skits that for some reason were edited from the Noggin episodes. The bonus material was a nice touch as well. I had seen bits and pieces of the original pitch film on the A&E Biography special on Sesame Street, but this was the first time I'd seen it in its entirety and I thought it was pretty hysterical, with Rowlf telling Kermit all about SS and the muppet executive board trying to come up with a name for the show. I also thought the animated segments of that character Bob who introduced each epsiode of the show were a nice addition. Even though it wasn't authentic stock footage from the archives, they had the same sort of humour and edginess that characterised so many of the animated skits from that era of SS.

My only criticisms would have to be I would have liked there to have been a commentary feature with certain key players -- who are still with us today -- reminiscing on those early days of the show, or even one or two interviews would have been nice. I also wish those edits didn't have to be made. But on the whole, I'm very happy with this set and I hope there'll be more in the future. Yes, we the fans have been waiting a long time for this but that just made me appreciate it all the more. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to SW for making this possible (also I implore you to disregard some of the disparaging remarks from the more ungrateful fans that are starting to appear on amazon's reviews).

 

[jisforjump]

old school dvd

The only thing I did not like about the collection, is that they showed the same clips over and over again

 

[minor muppetz]

The only thing I did not like about the collection, is that they showed the same clips over and over again

Would you have rather thsoe scenes have been edited every time they were repeated? It does get a little boring, especially since all clips that get repeated are not Muppet clips, but I'd rather have them repeated throughout the set in different episodes (or epsisodes that originally had episodes repeated within the same episodes) then have more edits.

 

[minor muppetz]

Well, this set is starting to show up in stores more. When I finally found my copy, it was the only copy at Suncoast. Now, I have seen another copy at Suncoast and a copy at Best Buy.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I'm glad to hear that. So far I haven't seen any stores here in Canada that have it on the shelves. At least not yet, anyway.

We all want to see more volumes of classic SS like this one in the future and the only way to ensure that happens is for sales of this one to do well enough on the market to justifiy the expense and effort of producing more. And the best way to maximize sales is by making more people aware that this DVD set exists. You have to wonder how many other people there are out there who don't read this forum regularly, who don't necessarily consider themselves hardcore Sesame Street/Muppet fans, but nevertheless appreciate them enough that if they saw it sitting on the shelves while browsing or shopping, they might just be interested enough to buy it.

On the other hand, the first box set of The Electric Company obviously sold well enough for SW to release a second set, and did that one have much marketing exposure beyond the internet? I don't recall seeing that one in any of my local stores either.