Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales

received it quickly

First off, the main feature here (Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales) is only 18 minutes long. But what this lacks in minutes, it makes up in quality, assuming you are a fan of "Peanuts", particularly of the early/mid 1960's. Although this was created in 2002, it's very true to the original Peanuts strips, as well as true to the original "A Charlie Brown Christmas" television special. Other than a brief appearance by "Woodstock", you might think this program was made in the mid 1960's (there's no internet or cell phones, no flat screen tvs, just the same things you'd have seen in the 1960's). Not only is this very true to that Peanuts era, it's very funny, in very much the Charles Schulz style of humor.The program is presented as 5 separate parts, "Merry Christmas" from the 5 different main characters here: Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, Sally, and Charlie Brown. But the 5 parts also work together as a unified whole. While each "featured" character is a little more prominent in their own segment, nearly all the characters are in each segment. And the 5 "tales" progress through a Christmas season, with ice skating, writing to Santa Claus, trying to obtain a Christmas tree, and finally arriving at Christmas Day in the final segment. So the 5 "tales" could be viewed as a single story.A great effort apparently went into making this very authentic, very true to the comic strip and the original tv special. The animation is so true to the comic strip, you might believe that Charles Schulz had drawn every panel himself. The humor is very Peanuts/Schulz too - many of the sequences/jokes are directly from the comic strip, and those which are original are completely in the truest style of 1960's era Schulz. The voices of the characters are also remarkably similar to the ones of the original 1965 Christmas special; although obviously they couldn't use the same voice actors that had been used nearly 40 years prior, they did an amazing job of finding new actors which sounded virtually identical to those used in the 1960's. Even the music is very much in the style of the original Charlie Brown Christmas, in fact at times they use some of the same music written by Vince Guaraldi, a new performance but very true to the original. I'll also point out that if you are familiar with the music from the original (1965) Charlie Brown Christmas, you'll find an additional reason to smile during this program.This program was created in order to be shown after the original "Charlie Brown Christmas", as a one hour (total) segment on television. The original was shown with very brief commercial interruption, making the actual content longer than most "half hour" tv shows. When "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is padded with a normal amount of commercials, it runs to about 33-34 minutes or so. Thus this program was created to fill a 26 or so minute time slot, with commercials. Unfortunately A Charlie Brown Christmas is now being shown without this as the follow up, so if you want to see it (and you should, it's that enjoyable), you'll probably have to see it on DVD.One more thing - as some here have noted, "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales" was a bonus feature for the 2004 release of "I Want a Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown" (on the ABC Studios label). However, the 2009 re-release of "I Want a Dog For Christmas" (on the Warner label) does not include "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales", which is the reason for this as a separate release. Also note that the bonus feature included here (about Linus and Lucy moving away) is quite good. Finally, I'll note that if you like the authentic 1950's/1960's feel of "Christmas Tales", you might also want to see "Happiness is a Warm Blanket" which is likewise very true to the original comic strip and original Peanuts animations (despite being made very recently).

As corporate television has changed from providing family entertainment to providing white noise, I am pleased to own this Charlie Brown Christmas special. It is honest, clean family centered entertainment that does not surprise with unneeded vulgarity, nudity, nor suspect situations. A nod to when Christmas shows were for the children!

One of my favorites

Listed and described as a double feature but it's not. My four year old thought there was a second video, and when I ordered it so did I, only to realize it's just a bunch of short clips. Very disappointed. The description needs to be revised! NOT worth the money

This is a really good quality bootleg DVD. The main menu is set up very strange. You have to navigate each episode one by one and at the end of one episode to the next there's this long screen of Korean writing that will not let you bypass or go back to the main menu you have to open the DVD player close it and go back to the original DVD menu to get to the next episode. There is no play all function like on a normal DVD. The picture and the sound quality is good and my kids enjoy it.

Product is what they advertised!

Great product

wonderful!

Poor quality cannot play very disappointed

I love Peanuts, but this DVD is absurdly short and is a total waste of money. There is about fifteen minutes of “Christmas Tales” supplemented with some random, non-Christmas themed bonus episode. All told you get about 40 minutes of classic animation with absolutely no flow. At the risk of coming off negative, I just want to let you know what you may be buying.

good gift for young kids

Sorry was great of course. But so short. By the time you get into it. It’s over. Good for a quick show with little time.