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Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends - The Complete First Season

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends - The Complete First Season

List Price: $39.98
Your Price: $29.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: For low I Q ers
Review: This collection of Rocky and Bullwinkle is a wonderful set. I really loved seeing all the other features like Mr. Peabody and Fractured Fairy Tales. My only peeve with it is the completeness of the set. Be warned: complete means complete from start to finish of each and every episode. There is only so many times I can watch the wacky parade at the beginning and the same end credits before they get tiresome. Hopefully, in the next set, they will show them only once.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: No subtitles, no closed captioning. Disappointing.
Review: These DVDs have no DVD subtitles or closed captioning. So if you're deaf or hard of hearing, stay away from this DVD set.

It's surprising to see Sony make this kind of mistake, especially since they did things right and captioned the old VHS tapes released some 10 years ago.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Will our heroes succumb to modern annoyances?
Review: Yes, yes they will. I hate, hate, hate watermarking and will not buy this set since I have been warned about it. It is incredibly irritating and distracting. Probably the major reason I do not have cable and buy so many DVDs. It is almost as bad as commercials (not referring to trailers, I like my previews) in front of movies and on DVDs. You want to talk about upset? It was when I came across a DVD that forced you to watch commercials. You could not even fast-forward, it was blocked!

OK, I'm better now. I never really cared for Rocky and Bullwinkle when I was a kid. Way over my head, I guess. Rediscovering them a couple decades later was great. The writing is clever and extremely funny. I would suggest if you ignored them as a kid (and can ignore the watermarking), to check them out. You may be as pleasantly surprised as I.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Am Loving This Set
Review: I am not a techie type. I am 45 y.o and grew up watching this show. I just finished watching disc one, and for entertainment and nostalgia, this is definitely a winner. Some of the humor I missed as a child, I now understand, and laugh continuously. As a casual non techie type viewer who grew up with this show, I highly reccommend this set. Now, I can't wait to go back to work on Monday and figure out how to use "moose eat squirrel" in a business conversation. I got the same nostalgia shot when I bought the "Schoolhouse Rocks" dvd set also. Go "conjunction junction"!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Moose Good, DVD Bad
Review: I love Rocky & Bullwinkle, it reminds me of my childhood. When I saw this wonderful DVD set I thought to myself, "Yes, I finally get to see the shows in the proper order." Because I never watched it in the right order as a kid. I was dumbfounded and dismayed when I played it and found that it had been watermarked with an R&B in the corner of the screen. The fact that it blinks on and off is extremely distracting. I would expect this on TV, they do it to make you buy the DVD. But, this is outragous. It is still the only DVD set of Season 1 of Rocky & Bullwinkle, so I guess its better than nothing (but not by much)!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hokey Smokes!! Moose and Squirrel is back!!
Review: First off Rocky and Bullwinkle likely will not entertain the kids of today who are used to the computer animations. But then, Rocky and Bullwinkle were never really for the kiddies, but the kid in all of us. So if you have never seen Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris, Natasha, Fearless Leader, Mr. B, Peter Wrongway Peach Fuzz (hum, what planet did you say you were from?) I doubt you will be thrilled. Animation was shoddy, but then Jay Ward wanted them that way. The heart of Rocky and Pals was the sharp wit and dry humour.

So devoted fans will dance at getting the first season. BUT, since they are devoted fans they will notice small changes in their fav toons and likely will get huffy.

So the 5 stars are for the fun having the gang back again, but I give them 3 stars for tinkering with perfection.

A great gift for that that Baby Boomer "kid" who never really grows up!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Won't make any new fans...
Review: ...But if you are already hooked on the Moose and Squirrel, you should probably buy this. Yeah, season one wasn't the best (animation even cheaper looking than it was in later seasons), and the non-story parts of the DVD (intros, etc.) are hacked to bits, but if this one doesn't sell, there'll be no reason for them to, a, release the rest of the canon or, b, listen to the legitimate complaints about this set and do better next time.

Also, the Peabody and Sherman's on this disk are probably worth the cost on their own.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Still superb after forty years!
Review: I want to make a strong statement: ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE is, to this day, the second greatest cartoon show ever made directly for TV. Until THE SIMPSONS (Matt Groening has cited the earlier show as a major influence), they were the greatest. For their inventiveness, humor, and voice work, they were unsurpassed. And their shows remain as fresh and as enjoyable today as ever.

The show probably had the greatest group of voice over artists in history (with apologies to the superb crew on THE SIMPSONS). The list of people working on the show is simply absurd. June Foray, "The Female Mel Blanc," considered by many to be the greatest female voice over artist ever, did the voice for Rocky, Natasha, and Nell Fenwick, the love of Dudley Do-Right. Bill Scott, one of the show's main writers, did the magnificent voice of Bullwinkle, as well as Dudley Do-Right and Fearless Leader. Paul Frees, whose voice appears in literally hundreds of dubbed foreign films, did the voice of Boris Badenov and many other characters, including Inspector Fenwick. But with those voices the show is merely getting started. The narrator for the show was William Conrad, who later was Cannon on the detective show of the same name, and had previous been the voice of Matt Dillon on the classic radio show GUNSMOKE (a role James Arness took over on TV). Hans Conreid stepped in to do the voice of Snidely Whiplash, and two of the greatest character actors in the history of Hollywood stepped in to do two key voices: the great Edward Everett Horton narrated the "Fractured Fairy Tales" and Charlie Ruggles did the voice of Aesop.

Creator Jay Ward primarily wanted to develop a show that he thought was funny, and in this he succeeded royally. The first season is presented here complete, although not purely, as noted by other reviewers. This doesn't mitigate the value of these episodes, but I am confused why they didn't use the original intros. Apart from that, the discs are filled with goodies, though not as many as in other sets, though this might be because such a larger number of the key people are no longer living.

I would like to recommend strongly anyone interested in Rocky and Bullwinkle look at the book THE MOOSE THAT ROARED: THE STORY OF JAY WARD, BILL SCOTT, A FLYING SQUIRREL, AND A TALKING MOOSE, by Keith Scott. This is a first-rate book that contains about all that we are ever likely to know about the show. Tragically, for a show that appeared only forty years ago, none of the creative core of the show is still living, and Jay Ward refused interviews about it late in life. But thanks to this book and thanks to what will unquestionably be a great series of DVDs (if the first one is anything to judge by), the legacy of the show will be well preserved.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A great opportunity... missed!
Review: I am a huge fan of being able to recapture your childhood via DVD releases such as this. I am also of a mind that the episodes offered should be presented as they were originally intended. To this end, I cannot recommend this DVD set for purchase. If it is available for rental where you are, try that.

I'm fine that they decided to call the set "Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends". In the forty-some years since the show aired, Bullwinkle is at least equal to Rocky in pop culture status. The producers of the set, however, have seen fit to alter the actual video footage to suit that change in title. If they had spent more time, and done it well, it may not be such a sticking point. Unfortunately, the change is very noticeable. The altered voiceovers are also distracting.

I love the original "Rocky & Friends" cartoons. And, the set does provide an opportunity to revisit those. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that we'll see a DVD release that has the respect for the material that the fans want and expect.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's a Classic
Review: The episodes are hilarous, getting 26 1/2 hours with all the additional characters makes this not only a great collector's set - it is also an amzing value - compared to some of the other "so-called" classics out there for a lot more $.

Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris, Natasha, Sherman, Peabody - on and on - hours of hilarious fun - the people complaining about the "R & B" bug or the music or any other minor detail should get a life and enjoy the fun - it's the shows that matter and here you have them - so enjoy- I can't wait for season 2.


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