Yabba-dabba do-do? The Flintstones complete series DVD

by Keith McDuffee

Amazon.com

I grew up watching a lot of cartoons. I mean a lot. Some shows I caught in passing, never to watch again. Others I’d watch repeated times, sorta like people do nowadays with sitcom reruns. The Flintstones is one of those shows that fits in the latter category and, as proven to me by watching episodes in this set, I can still remember them vividly. God, the things your brain chooses to retain.

Recently Warner Bros. released The Flintstones – The Complete Series on DVD, and I gave most of it a run-through, including all of the special features. So let’s go over what I liked (yabba-dabba) and didn’t like (do-do) of the set.

Yabba-Dabba!

– The case the DVDs come in is awesome, especially for big fans of the show. It’s a very durable plastic “rock television” that opens to reveal two simply packaged books of DVDs, three seasons in each. The screen part of the faux TV is a vinyl hologram that shows Fred and the gang in the car; tilt the box and the scene changes.

– There are a lot of extras on the DVD sets, including a whole slew of commercials featuring The Flintstones (One-A-Day Vitamins, Welch’s, etc.) and the original pilot for the show, when it was going to be called The Flagstones (though it’s only three minutes long). I particularly liked the extra that detailed how to draw Fred Flintstone.

– All 166 episodes are included and nicely organized. You can easily find what episodes are included on each disc without having to pull out a book or remove each DVD to read its label.

– The set costs $129, which is about $160 cheaper than if you bough all of the seasons on DVD, one by one.

Do-Do

– From what I can tell from the special features on the DVDs, they aren’t any different than those included on past season DVD sets. So, in essence, this seems like just a cool repackaging of previous material.

– It doesn’t seem as though any cleanup was done of the episodes, though purists may actually like that. Most episodes still have stray artifacts like lint and dust, for example.

– Of all the extras on these DVDs, none include videos of the cast doing a read-through. I was really looking forward to seeing Alan Reed or Mel Blanc doing their famous voices. I understand they’re both no longer with us, but I figured there must be some archival footage out there somewhere to include. Thankfully you can catch Reed in this video:

Or maybe they could have gotten Scott Innes to do a few voices for them? I’m just sayin’.

– A very minor negative: the cool box probably won’t fit very well on your DVD shelves. The packaging is unlike anything else I’ve seen, other than the Mad Men metal Zippo box and the Star Trek: TNG plastic case. I’m sure there are stranger cases out there that I haven’t seen.

– A couple of the extras are very repetitive. The same points of history are discussed and even much of the same footage is included, making it a waste of time to watch. Of the commercials, I was disappointed (though not surprised) that the infamous cigarette commercial wasn’t included in the set. YouTube to the rescue again!

– There are some odd trailers included on the DVDs. At first I thought these trailers were going to be from the ’70s, when the shows first aired. Instead they are trailers of DVD sets that were going to be released at the time each season DVD set came out (“Coming in 2006!”). What the heck?

The Verdict

If you ever wanted to have the entire Flintstones collection and don’t yet have individual seasons, you can’t get much more complete than this. It’s possible a future release will come out that includes movies and specials (this one did not include anything other than the episodes and some special features and commentary on a few episodes), though I’m not sure it’s worth waiting for that. It’s also possible some cleanup would be done of each episode but, again, I wouldn’t bother waiting.

If you do own all of the Flintstones DVD sets, don’t bother with this unless you’re a hardcore collector or you’re planning on selling your old sets to someone else.