The show was extremely basic and almost every episode was cookie cutter similar to any other. The lead character was Sigmund Ooze, a short green sea monster that was afraid of his own shadow. He runs away from home because he doesn't want to scare people and act like a thug at the insistence of his father, "Big Daddy Ooze" (the closest cross between Archie Bunker and a mob boss you're likely to find, even today), "Sweet Mama Ooze", and his brothers Burp and Slurp (who always beat him up). Sigmund comes across a couple of kids, Johnny Stuart (played by Family Affair's Johnny Whitaker with a large orange afro) and Scott Stuart (Scott Kolden, who went onto a very busy career as a sound engineer in Hollywood), who befriend him. The boys treat Sigmund as a good friend and hide him from his family as well as the authorities that would likely vivisect him in a laboratory somewhere. In return, Sigmund doesn't eat them although he causes a lot of problems (reminding me of the ALF show much later) as the trio try to live life unmolested by the general population.

Each episode seemed patterned after some movie or other story, each containing the type of moral message you'd expect from a kids television show from 1973 (it debuted in September on NBC if I remember it right). The costumes looked lower budget than many of the other Sid & Marty Kroft releases of the era and I find it interesting that Sid, in his commentary track on the series opener (The Monster Who Came To Dinner), offered up that the idea behind the series came from a clump of seaweed that he named Sigmund. Much has been made of the drug references of the Kroft shows and if this story doesn't support that theory, nothing will. In all though, the weekly exploits of the boys coming to Sigmund's aid, typically when his family bothered him, were pretty generic, just as the formula for the show managed to be. The show would end each week with Johnny singing a song, sounding highly processed as many teeny bopper singers are even today, with material ranging from John Lennon to knock off tunes almost identical to the Beach Boys and others of the time period. Sadly enough, the kind couldn't carry a tune and while I'm sure a lot of kids had their parents rush out and buy the albums he made, I'm certain they regretted it too.

Okay, there were no liner notes with my check discs so I'll just list the episodes as they appeared on the three disc set. I have no information about whether or not any of the songs were altered or deleted (it's been 32 years since I saw this show and the official website said nothing of alterations) but to be fair, I'd have paid extra to segregate the sounds since they were really lame. Here are the episodes on the discs:

1) The Monster Who Came To Dinner
2) Puppy Love
3) Frankenstein Drops In
4) Is There A Doctor In The House?
5) Happy Birthday
6) The Nasty Nephew (end of disc one)
7) Monster Rock Festival
8) Ghoul School Daze
9) The Curfew Shall Ring Tonight
10) Sweet Mama Redecorates
11) Make Room For Big Daddy
12) It's Your Move (end of disc two)
13) Trigger Treat
14) Uncle Siggy Swings
15) The Dinosaur Show
16) The Wild Weekend
17) Boy For A Day
If you have small children that like silly shows, I'll suggest this one as at least a Rent It although the lack of extras outside of three commentary tracks (on The Monster Who Came To Dinner, Make Room For Big Daddy, and Boy For A Day and a few interviews kind of sucked. The show was repetitive and often spent too much time trying to push Johnny Whitaker's singing career (unlike Jack Wild, who guest starred in The Wild Weekend, the kid couldn't sing a note). If there were any liner notes or decent packaging to be had, I wasn't privy to them so look for the boxed set to see if it listed any changes in the material but the episodes seemed to be fairly complete to me.

Picture: Sigmund & the Sea Monsters: Season One was presented in the same 1.33:1 ratio full frame color it was shot in back in 1973 by various directors for broadcast television. The picture held up well enough with accurate fleshtones, a sharp focus and no compression artifacts although my copy wouldn't play on my computer DVD player(s) and froze on a couple of episodes (eventually moving forward if I scanned or skipped backwards to just before an offending chapter; I assume this was a symptom of my check disc copies of the show since it happened each time I played them).

Sound: The audio was presented in the same monaural the show was shot in although a simulated stereo track may have been attempted on the set. I used headphones and didn't pick up any separation between the channels and the dynamic range was fairly limited throughout the show. The special audio effects were as low budget as I remembered them and the musical interludes were far worse with a hollow sound to each of them (sheesh could this kid kill a song…).

Extras: The extras on the three disc set included three audio commentaries on The Monster Who Came To Dinner, Make Room For Big Daddy, and Boy For A Day, with Sid Kroft on the first while Johnny Whitaker and Scott Kolden handled the second two. There was also a short interview with the young lads (now all grown up with Whitaker looking like a larger than life Skipper from Gilligan's Island) and a second interview with Si Rose; one of the Kroft's preferred producer/writer's. For me though, the absolute worst extra imaginable, and one I suffered through for this review, was a montage of a number of Johnny Whitaker's songs from the show. Yuck!

Final Thoughts: Sigmund & the Sea Monsters: Season One was a show I liked as a kid. Perhaps I was too whacked out on sugar coated cereal to notice the many weak attributes of the show or perhaps I've become jaded in the last three decades but the show was designed for little children so I can't say that I've remained in touch with the inner kid in me closely enough to appreciate this now as much as I did then. The technical aspects were pretty solid though and there were some extras, just not as many as I think should've been included, so check it out as a rental first unless you're dying to replace your complete series VHS set of this aged television show.