Disney continues its series of excellent Walt Disney Treasures with another wave of releases.  This time Mickey's faithful pet, the last of their big characters, gets a much deserved set with The Complete Pluto Volume One.   Like the other sets in this series, the discs boast restored audio and video, and includes several cartoons that haven't been seen in years because of racial stereotypes.

Pluto is different than the other Disney stars.  While Donald, Mickey, and Goofy are anthropomorphic creatures, Pluto isn't.  He's a dog, through and through.  He doesn't talk, and though his actions are exaggerated, he generally behaves as a dog would.  He's a puppy at heart.  As a matter of fact, he was originally billed as "Pluto the Pup."  Of course, he doesn't look like a real dog.  He's a runner limbed cartoon character, which along with his dog like behavior gives him a lot of his appeal.

Much of the humor in Pluto cartoons revolves around slapstick, like many cartoons.  With Pluto though, the animators have gone to a lot of trouble to show you what the dog is thinking, and that contributes to the humor as well.  You can almost see the canine wheels turning in his head as he sees another dog with a juicy steak or bone that he covets.  While his plans are never anything an actual dog would do, digging a bone-shaped hole to trick Butch the Bulldog for instance, they aren't human plans either.  Pluto tries things that dogs would do, if they had just a little bit more intelligence.

While not as laugh out loud funny as the Goofy cartoons, these are more humorous than the Mickey cartoons in general.  They are more kid friendly than some of the other entries in the series too.  After bailing early on when I reviewed the second Mickey Mouse in Black and White set, my eight year old was reluctantly persuaded to watch this set.  After a few shorts he remarked "Wow, these are really good!"

There are several highlights in the set.  Lend a Paw is a color remake of Mickey's Pal Pluto which won an academy award.  In this short Pluto rescues a kitten from drowning only to have Micky pay more attention to the cat.  Pluto tries to get rid of the cat, with disastrous consequence.

I also liked the cartoons that dealt with the military.  Private Pluto, where Pluto has to guard a pill box against saboteurs only to find that it has been infiltrated by a pair of chipmunks that are using the howitzer barrel to crack nuts, was really funny.  The same can be said for The Army Mascot, in where Pluto tries to become a mascot after he sees how well they are feed.

Some of these cartoons are repeats from other Walt Disney Treasure volumes.  The Chain Gang appeared on Mickey Mouse in Black and White Volume One.  In my opinion they should have left this one off.  It supposedly contains Pluto, but in reality there is one shot of a pair of hound dogs chasing Mickey that vaguely resemble Pluto.  These dogs don't have his personality or characteristics, just similar features.

On Ice appears on Mickey Mouse in Living Color, Volume One and Beach Picnic is also included with The Chronological Donald, Volume One.  I don't mind these additions since not everyone buys all of these sets, and they help show the evolution of Pluto's personality.  I can't understand why they didn't include Playful Pluto though.  This short is the short where Pluto's character emerges as the thoughtful dog that we've come to know and love.  It has the  fly paper scene where Pluto gets caught on a piece of sticky paper and has to extricate himself. This was mentioned several times in the extras as a pivotal short for Pluto but it isn't to be found on this set.  It is included on Mickey Mouse in B&W, Volume 2, but such an important cartoon should have been included in this set too, especially if they are going to duplicate shorts between volumes.

Like the Mickey Mouse in Black and White set, they have included a pair cartoons with negative stereotypes of African-Americas and foreigners in a special section entitled From the Vault. There is an introduction (non-skipable) by Leonard Maltin where he explains why these cartoons are segregated, but defends their inclusion in the set. Though I can't understand why they included A Gentleman's Gentleman in this section, I'm glad they did release these shorts.  A very nice tact that I hope Disney, and other studios, embrace.

There is a play all which presents the cartoons in chronological order, and selection menus arranged both by title and chronologically where you can pick a single cartoon. Like the other Disney Treasure tins, this is a great set that would be an asset to any video library.

This set includes:
 
Disc One:

The Chain Gang 1930
On Ice 1935
Pluto's Quin-Puplets 1937
Beach Picnic 1939
Bone Trouble 1940
Pluto's Playmate 1941
Canine Caddy 1941
Lend A Paw 1941
Pluto, Junior 1942
The Army Mascot 1942
The Sleepwalker 1942
T-Bone For Two 1942
Pluto At The Zoo 1942

Disc Two:
 
Pluto And The Armadillo 1943
Private Pluto 1943
Springtime For Pluto 1944
First Aiders 1944
Dog Watch 1945 Canine Casanova 1945
The Legend Of Coyote Rock 1945
Canine Patrol 1945
Pluto's Kid Brother 1946
In Dutch 1946
Squatter's Rights 1946
The Purloined Pup 1946
Pluto's Housewarming 1947

From the Vault:

Pantry Pirate 1940
A Gentleman's Gentleman 1941

Audio:

The audio portion of this set was presented in two channel Dolby Digital mono. The sound was excellent, if you take into consideration the age of the recording. There wasn't much dynamic range, but hiss and dropouts were very minimal. There are captions for the hearing impaired

Video:

The video quality is very good, especially given the age of these films.  I have seen cartoons from this period that looked much worse. These were all made on nitrate film which starts to deteriorate the minute it is printed, and to have all of these films in such good condition is remarkable. A few of the early cartoons have some speckling, probably on the original cells, and there is a little grain evident in some of these shorts. The colors are bright and vivid really making these cartoons a joy to watch.  The detail and crispness of the image is amazing though. I'd be willing to bet that most people who saw these when they were originally released weren't presented with an image this good.

Extras:

Like the other sets in this series, Leonard Maltin does an introduction to each disc and is featured in the interviews.

Life and Times of Pluto: a nine minute featurette that talks with a pair of Disney animators who worked on Pluto cartoons during Disney's golden age; Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.  They talk about how Pluto evolved and how his character emerged.

Pluto 101: a twelve minute short where Maltin interviews Anderas Deja, an animator at Disney who has carefully studied Disney animation.  He talks about why Pluto is funny, and even show how he draws the dog.

Pluto's Picture Book: a half hour segment of Walt Disney's Disneyland from it's first season.  To promote The Lady and the Tramp, Disney broadcast a tribute to Pluto along with some promotional segments of the feature movie.  Included on the second disc are the Pluto segments of this show.  It is unfortunate that they didn't put the entire show on the disc, as I would have like to see the parts that they cut.

Pluto's Pal Fergy: No this has nothing to do with the Duchess of York, it is a ten minute segment that pays tribute to Norm Fergeson, the animator that supervised many of Pluto's cartoons.

Final Thoughts:

This is a fun and funny set.  I have enjoyed all of the Walt Disney Treasure series, and I'm glad to have this set in my collection.  Kids will enjoy these cartoons more than some of the Mickey Mouse collection since these have more slapstick and broad humor, but adults will like the elegance and class that the Disney studio always brought to their shorts.  Highly Recommended.