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Mini-DVD Review: The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show (March 25); Solomon's Weekly Rant

It is Saturday, so that must mean it is time for mini-DVD review and Solomon's Weekly Rant! First up, are the mini-DVD reviews. Today week we take a look at Warner Home Video's The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show: The Complete Series. The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show was about Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm of The Flintstones in their teenage years. The whole gang is still there, though...Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty. Sitcom stars Sally Struthers and Jay North provide the voices for Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm.. See my mini-DVD review of The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show: The Complete Series:

The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show: The Complete Series (Warner, $26.98) brings us those two lovable toddlers from The Flintstones back in a series when they are teenagers in high school. Sitcom stars Sally Struthers (All in the Family) and Jay North (Dennis the Menace) provide the voices for these two teenagers in this series, with the classic voices of Fred (Alan Reed), Barney (Mel Blanc), and Wilma (Jean Vander Pyl) all back from the original series! Gay Hartwig provides the voice of Betty in this series. She also would do the voice of Betty throughout the '70s in various Flintstones incarnations. In this series though Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are the stars and you see them with their teenage friends Moonrock, Penny, and Wiggy. Cindy and Fabian play their rivals. The show ran for 16 half-hour episodes in the 1971-72 season. The show returned for 4 more episodes as part of The Flintstone Comedy Show in 1972-73.
Let's now move on to the packaging. We have a thin outer box that holds a very thin digipak case, similar to the recent Smurfs release. The front cover of both the box and case are the same, we see Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm in a car with their friends Moonrock, Penny and Wiggy. Hanna-Barbera Classic Collection is on the top in a green background. The title of the show is below that in a little rock-style billboard, with a mention below that that this is The Complete Series! On the bottom it says 2 discs...16 episodes. To the back of the box we go, we get a nice synopsis of the series in a brown billboard type with Fred coming out of it (Pebbles is right by it, too), along with a list of the special features in a little rock. We also see Bamm-Bamm lying down below the billboard. When we open the case, on the left we have a disc-by-disc breakdown of what we can expect episode title wise and extras wise. The left also has a nice purplish background with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm playing instruments. On the right side, we see both discs...overlapping each other, ugh...I hate that. Both discs are colorful and feature a Bedrock setting...Pebbles is on disc one and Bam-Bamm on disc two. When you remove both discs from the case, you see their friends playing instruments. The back of the case has another nice Bedrock setting with other characters such as the Grusomes even.
The menu screens are very nice. But first, auto trailers for Dr. Seuss, Smurfs starts off disc one before the main menu comes. Options for the main menu are: Play, Episodes, Trailers (disc 1 only), Languages, Bonus Episodes (disc 2 only). We also have the theme song playing in the background. Trailers has more shows to preview from the Warner library, including Flintstones seasons 2, 3 and 4 DVD trailers. Languages has an option to turn on English subtitles. Episodes have a list of episodes obviously.
The video and audio is very good. I'm not sure if these are remastered, like Smurfs were, but it sure looks good! The show ran for 16 episodes as its own series. Those episodes run 20 minutes. Highest is 20:03 and lowest is 19:44, but most are 19:59/20:00. There are no chapter stops for these. I hate when we don't get chapter stops. Also, we get the orange H-B Taft logo after the end of the credits along with the swirling H-B logo. The bonus episodes are on disc two under Bonus Episodes (as stated above). These four episodes ran during segments on The Flintstone Comedy Show (AKA The Flintstone Comedy Hour). The first bonus episode runs 21:30, and features two mini-episodes, so we get 2 chapter stops. These feature Pebbles & Bamm Show opening and closing credits. The final two bonus episodes run 11:59 and 11:44 and feature opening and closing credits that says The Flintstone Comedy Show. Nice to see that!
I highly do recommend this set for any Flintstones fan, fan of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm and classic animation in general. I'm sure many of us grew up with The Flintstones, but have never seen this series. It comes on from time to time on Boomerang and has been played on Cartoon Network as well. I've seen a few episodes only but am glad I have the complete series on DVD!. The set is good and it probably is as good as it could get. I'm glad they included those 4 episodes from The Flintstone Comedy Show, so we have every single episode of this incarnation. So we have The Flintstones complete on DVD and now The Pebbles & Bamm Show. So if the pattern continues, I bet we get The Flintstone Comedy Hour/Show on DVD next! There were so many TV series that followed (Fred Flintstone and Friends, The Flintstone Kids, etc), TV specials (The Flintstones: Little Big League, The Flintstones: Fred's Final Fling, etc) and TV movies (Jetsons Meet the Flintstones, A Flintstones Christmas Carol, etc) from this series, so I hope Warner realizes that and gives them all to us, because I'm sure any Flintstone fan would want them all. But for now, let's join in on the teenage fun of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm on this series on DVD! Give it a chance and we might get every incarnation of the Flintstone family on DVD! Yabba Dabba Do!
-- Reviewed by Pavan
(4/5 stars)

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Related links:
SitcomsOnline.com Full DVD Reviews Page
The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show TV.com Page


Solomon's Weekly Rant
Saturday, March 15, 2008
"Media Overboard on Spitzer Case; Page 6 a Joke; BET Screws Up"
By Solomon Davis

The media coverage of the girl who was with New York Governor Spitzer in February has just been crazy this week and I want to know when is it going to end? They have been digging into this girl's life all-week because she is good looking and I know most people don't care where she went to high school and where she grew up in New Jersey. She seems to be getting good with this story as her music has been played and she might be posing for magazines. And because of who she slept with she will probably become famous and get her own reality show in the fall of 2008 titled How To Get Politicians in Bed or something.

Page Six in the NY Post reported on Thursday that The Rachel Ray Show could be probably be canceled due to low ratings and it turns out that was a false report. A representative from King World stated that the show did very well during the February sweeps period and that the show is under contract until 2010, which means it's not going anywhere. So I can no longer read Page Six because not only did they get the Rachel Ray story wrong, they also were wrong about King World syndicating a show for Marie Osmond in 2010 which made the entire Page Six article on Thursday a waste of eyesight. Why post gossip crap on a newspaper? I can understand the Enquirer, but the Post?

BET has been the cable channel of the month with their recent pickups and has not done a good job presenting the shows to viewers. However, recently they used the wrong closing credits for part 2 of a Diff'rent Strokes crossover episode with Hello, Larry. TNN never did that when they aired Diff'rent Strokes in 2001 so why is BET doing it in 2008? Maybe Sony has something to do with it, I'm snot sure. And with the show Thea, BET aired the first episode two weekends in a row for some reason. They did air episode 2 last weekend in one of the four slots, but episode one aired three times last weekend, in addition to the two times it aired the previous weekend. On the listings it said we were supposed to get episodes 2 and 3, but instead we got episode 1 three times and episode 2 once. So I'm really interested in seeing what episode of Thea they air this weekend and hope it's not episode 2 three times like they did episode one the previous week.

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