Two new Peanuts by Schulz DVDs with some (but not all) new-to-DVD Boomerang shorts

Readers will recall that back in 2016, the Boomerang channel aired 104 shorts based directly on Peanuts comic strips, each about 6-7 minutes long.

In 2017, Warner Home Video released three Peanuts by Schulz DVDs that compiled those shorts. Between them, the DVDs contained 80 of the 104 shorts. The last DVD went on sale in October 2017... and for 15 months, there have been no further releases, leaving 24 shorts unreleased on DVD.

The good news: Warner has released a fourth Peanuts by Schulz DVD, and a fifth is on the horizon.

The bad news: We may still not get the shorts on DVD, even so.

The first new DVD, Peanuts by Schulz: It's Only Love, came out on January 8, 2019, and proclaims "18 all-new shorts" on its cover. (Unlike previous volumes, this one is a single disc.)

The problem is... that's false. Only 10 of the shorts on the disc are new. Eight are repeats, already released on the previous DVDs.

That makes Peanuts by Schulz: It's Only Love a pretty poor value, even at the normal sale price of $9.99, and it leaves 14 Boomerang shorts unreleased.

(Note that Amazon lists this DVD's title incorrectly... they call it Peanuts by Schulz: The Complete Series, which is most certainly isn't.)

The 10 new shorts on Peanuts by Schulz: It's Only Love are:

The Little Red Haired Girl
The Mysteries of Love
Nobody Likes Me
Not Your Day
Love is in the Air
It's Only Love
Go for It, Charlie Brown
A Fascinating Friend
Misunderstanding
Just for Love

(For a complete list of all 104 broadcast episodes, and a few additional details about the shorts and other DVDs, visit the Peanuts Animation & Video Page.)

The next DVD, Peanuts by Schulz: Springtime, is due out on February 26, 2019. Its cover claims "15 all-new shorts"... which can't actually be true, since there are only 14 new ones left to release. Will all 14 of those really be on this DVD? We don't know, since a list of the shorts that will be on the disc hasn't been announced yet. But given that It's Only Love didn't really contain 18 new shorts, and we already know that a claim of "15 new" for the February disc can't be correct, it would be wise to be skeptical.  [And indeed, it turns out this DVD is even worse: only 3 of the 15 are new.  See this blog post for more details and commentary.]

Memo to Warner Brothers: it's not that hard to keep track of which shorts you've already released, and you shouldn't be making fans buy repeats just to get some new ones.


Meanwhile, all 104 of the Boomerang shorts are available from iTunes and Amazon as digital streams/downloads, in four separate Peanuts by Schulz collections (or one big complete one). However, the shorts not released on DVD yet are spread out across each of the four digital collections, so you'd have to re-buy everything to get the rest of the shorts; and of course, you can't put the digital downloads on DVD. (For what it's worth, the digital downloads are available in high definition as well as standard definition.)

In fact, in another apparent attempt to confuse or mislead consumers, Warner has now added a fifth digital collection, matching the It's Only Love DVD, even though it just repeats shorts that are already in the other digital collections. Sheesh!