DVD Review: Sesame Street Blowout

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STUDIO: Sesame Street
MSRP: Silly Storytime: $7.99, Travel Songs & Games: $11.99, Wild Words & Outdoor Adventures: $13.57, Penguins & Friends: $12.99
RATED: All: Not rated
RUNNING TIME: All: 50-ish minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:

 

The Pitch

Just a few titles for which your two-year-old will wake you up with a shotgun and a blowtorch if you don’t get for her.

The Humans

Various.

The Muppets

Elmo, Bert, Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, Mr,. Snuffleupagus, Grover, etc.

The Nutshell

Each of these discs are little snippets of the eternally entertaining and educational children’s program, Sesame Street.  The feature songs for driving in your car with the little one, exploring the outdoors, telling stories and exploring penguins and their habitat.

 

The Lowdown

Funny thing happened several months ago.  The wife came home with a disc from the company lost and found: Sesame Sings Karaoke, one of the many DVD titles offered by Sesame Street.  So we plug it into the portable player, and the little rapscallion in our dwelling had to have that thing 24/7.  I’m fairly certain she’d get up at night while we were asleep, go into the kitchen, whip up some nachos and grab a white wine and check it out in the wee hours.  I can’t prove it, but I know somebody was into my tortilla chips.  Anyway, long story short, she played the shit out of that disc.  Of course she’d also beat the hell out of the player, so even when the disc got irreparably scratched, it didn’t matter.  She was going to ride that DVD to hell and back.

 

So basically, I had to get some new Sesame Street titles for her.  And that’s what I did with these four discs: Elmo’s Travel Songs & Games, Wild Words and Outdoor Adventures, Silly Storytime, Penguins and Friends. Now I haven’t watched Sesame Street in decades (which decades I’m not going to say), but these have all the things I can vaguely remember that I loved about watching that show as a tike.  And I resolved long ago that if I ever had a kid she’d never watch one friggin’ second of Barney.  That’s about the only resolution I’ve ever kept to date.

So in these four titles, it’s generally the same formula: the regular Sesame Street crew, Bert, Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, Mr,. Snuffleupagus, Grover and the humans engaging in various skits that involve counting, letters, teaching about animals and the way the world works and of course, plenty of songs.  The discs are anthological, pulling segments from episodes that have aired with common themes like traveling and nature.  There’s also skits that involve animation and claymation and some retro bits that I can remember catching as a wee lad myself.  And of course Elmo is generally running shit on the Street.  I’m of the pre-Elmo generation that watched Sesame Street, and I know Elmo’s been the man for quite a while.  You can liken him to a one-man member of the Bloods gang that took over the turf and has been reppin’ it ever since.  Southside Crips like Grover, Bert, Ernie and Oscar still ain’t managed to take back their hood.

 

There are also celebrity guest spots.  The Wild Words and Outdoor Adventures disc has Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Debra Messing, Cameron Diaz, Meredith Vieira and Jimmy Fallon (in a musical number!), all talking about animal stuff like habitats and camouflage. 

Segments:

Elmo’s Travel Songs & Games,

• Driving with the Twiddlebugs
• Are We There Yet?
• Go Before You Go!

Wild Words and Outdoor Adventures,

• Baby Bear Hibernates
• Big Bird’s New Habitat
• Wild Nature Survivor Guy (Jimmy Fallon)
• Elmo investigates a grasshopper’s camouflage ability

 

Silly Storytime,

• The Tale of Rapunzoe
• Sleeping Grouchy
• Jack and the Green and Growing Beanstalk
• Little Red Riding Hood

Elmo’s World: Penguins and Friends

• Penguins
• Frogs
• Horses

Sesame Street has been teaching kids good stuff like this for over 40 years and they’re always well done.  Coming from the parent’s perspective, you know, those of us who are going to have to listen these discs about a quarter million times between now and first grade, these are very enjoyable.  My daughter definitely thinks so.

 

The Package

Each of the packages are single disc offerings.  The video quality is going to dip somewhat with the older clips.  But there were some in there that I’ll be damned if I didn’t remember.  Audio is solid for all in Dolby Digital.  There are special features on the Wild Words & Outdoor Adventures and Silly Storytime discs: Alphabet Jungle and A Wish For Grover Animated Storybook respectively.

All:

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars