DiC Animated Christmas Blast [DVD]

Special issue of Sonic and Tails at Christmas. Everyone else does it; why not Sonic?

I thought Jingle Bell Rock and Twas the Night Before Bumpy were solid Christmas specials, but the others were creepy and a bit irritating. Usually I'm a fan of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, but this particular special had no redeeming qualities. Santa quits at the end and Sonic becomes the new Santa Claus? What? OOPS, spoiler alert.So, two out of the five specials I considered to be good. However I give this an extra star because the price is low.

At first glance, Shout! Factory would have a good idea making a release like this. Considering they seem to be the ones in charge of putting most of DiC Entertainment's cartoon library to the DVD format and doing it right, making a 2-disc compilation of the company's Christmas material sounds rather natural. Heck, it's a release I'd have liked to see from Warner Bros. and/or Nickelodeon.But they've by now announced the specials included on the set, listed here:# Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: "Sonic Christmas Blast"# What-A-Mess: "Santa What-A-Mess"# "A Hollywood Hounds Christmas"# Bump in the Night: "Twas the Night Before Bumpy"# "Jingle Bell Rock"That's it?! Only five shows? How exactly does this constitute as being two-disc-set material when it's barely even enough for ONE disc? Why couldn't Shout! Factory put more on this? I guess I can understand the exclusion of "Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas" since they lost the Inspector's video distribution rights to FOX (unjustly in my opinion), but frankly, I see no excuse as to why they couldn't put the Mario Bros. Christmas episodes ("Koopa Klaus" and "The Night Before Cave Christmas") and the "Sabrina: The Animated Series" Christmas Carol parody on this set. Maybe then the SRP of $15 would be justifiable. But no, instead we only get five specials that somehow manage to take up two discs. Adding to that, there don't even appear to be even bonus features to compensate for the lack of material, so unless you're an obsessive DiC cartoon collector (in which case you may have already gotten the individual DVDs these specials were released on in the past), I can't see any reason to waste more than $11 on this.