I love the Peanuts cartoons. They make me laugh, they make me cry, and they serve as classic examples of just how good animated holiday specials can be. When Charles Schultz passed on a few years back, I was all choked up inside and it was like losing a piece of my childhood. Sure, I'm a manly man. My diet consists primarily of single malt scotch and red meat and I own seven different Don 'The Dragon' Wilson DVDs. I should be immune to cutesy animated cartoons like Peanuts but I'm the first to admit that I am not and it's a testament to Schutlz's work that it effects me the way it does. I also think it's cool when Snoopy dances. Paramount's latest collection of Peanuts cartoons consists of one new, post Schultz feature and two vintage features all contained on one shiny disc for your viewing pleasure. Here's the lowdown…

Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown! - Charlie Brown has been managing his baseball team for a long time now, putting in a lot of blood, sweat and tears even though they've lost an astounding nine hundred games in a row. The weakest link in an already fragile chain of players is Lucy, and when Charlie Brown is given the change to trade her to another team for Marcie, an ace player who may very well be able to bring them the wins they so desperately need, he has to figure out if winning is more important to him than friendship.

Charlie Brown's All-Stars - We all know that Charlie Brown has been a rabid lifelong baseball fanatic. It's long been his favorite game and it's long been one of his greatest passions. But when he finds out that the local league won't allow female or canine players to participate, he has to question the guys who run the league and stand up not only for his friends, but for his dog, Snoopy, as well!

It's Spring Training Charlie Brown - Once again, Charlie Brown is trying to figure out how to get better results out of his baseball team. Their record breaking losing streak is starting to get to him and he's starting to get pretty desperate. In a last ditch effort to get things back on track, Charlie Brown decides that they should get themselves some legitimate uniforms as they might boost the team's confidence and in turn, result in some wins. A local business owner tells Charlie Brown that he'll fund the uniform project for the penniless team, but before he's willing to shell out the cash, he wants to see them win a game.

OK, so it should be obvious by now that the theme is America's favorite pastime, baseball. For the most part, these are pretty amusing episodes, though the first one is the weakest of the three and Schultz's creative control is sorely missed in not only this but most of the newer Peanuts cartoons that have popped up since his death. It's not that they're bad; they're just not great. The older cartoons are wonderful though and hold up quite well even after all these years.

Video:

Seeing as these were originally intended for television broadcast, it shouldn't surprise anyone to find out that they are presented in fullframe, which his the way that they were meant to be seen. Picture quality is decent enough on the newer feature and the older ones, considering that they are thirty-year old cartoons, look pretty good as well. The DVD does bring out some of the flaws in the older bits, but those are inherent in the source material and you can't really fault Paramount for that, even if it's fun to try. Colors are quite nice and there aren't any compression issues worth noting, just a little bit of edge enhancement here and there.