February 25, 2019

Peanuts by Schulz: Springtime DVD - Very little is "all new"

As mentioned in the previous blog post, on February 26, 2019, Warner Home Video released another "Peanuts by Schulz" DVD containing a selection of 6-7 minute-long shorts based directly on the Peanuts comics strips. These shorts originally aired on the Boomerang Channel here in the United States.

After the previous four releases, 14 of those shorts remain unreleased on DVD. The last DVD release, Peanuts by Schulz: It's Only Love, claimed "18 all-new shorts," but really only had 10 new shorts.

This new DVD, Peanuts by Schulz: Springtime, says "15 all-new shorts" on its cover... which is an even more egregious falsehood, since in reality only 3 of the 15 shorts are new to DVD. The other 12 are repeats from previous DVD volumes. That's an abysmal value for the price of $9.99.

When the It's Only Love DVD was released with only half of the shorts being new, I was willing to consider that it perhaps it was just sloppiness. But with the release of the Springtime DVD, having only 3 new shorts while claiming they are all new, it's difficult to accept sloppiness on Warner Home Video's part as an excuse, and instead one has to consider if there are less charitable explanations as to why the cover misleads potential purchasers.

If Warner Home Video's goal is to provide themed collections of these shorts, that would be fine, if they didn't say "all new" on the cover. While we would be disappointed that they didn't include the last of the unreleased shorts, at least the cover would be honest. But instead the repeated use of "all new" when neither DVD has been all new is... suspect.

My recommendation is to avoid buying the Peanuts by Schulz: Springtime DVD, or cancel or return your order if you've already placed one. And refuse to buy any future releases in this series unless it can be proved they truly include all-new shorts.

For reference, the 3 new-to-DVD shorts on Peanuts by Schulz: Springtime are:
Being Nice
Birds of a Feather
Philosophy