In October 2007, Warner Home Video announced that they were taking over the home video license for the Peanuts TV specials from Paramount. They announced plans to reissue the previously released shows on "remastered deluxe edition" DVDs, and also to release DVDs of previously unreleased shows.

And now, Warner's first Peanuts DVD, a "remastered deluxe edition" of the Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown DVD, has arrived. The DVD includes the title show and two "bonus" specials, You're In Love, Charlie Brown and It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown. These are exactly the same three specials that were on Paramount's DVD release of Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown. So the logical questions are, "What's new on the Warner DVD? Is it really deluxe? And do I want to buy these shows on DVD again?"

About the Shows

Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975), where Charlie Brown pines for Valentine's Day cards, Linus pines after Miss Othmar, and Sally pines after Linus, assuming that Linus's large box of chocolates is for her, has never been my favorite Peanuts special. While the theme of unrequited love is central to many Peanuts stories, humor seems to be lacking in this show and instead it comes across as depressing and a bit mean. It does include a few amusing bits — Snoopy's Pawpet show, and Charlie Brown, Sally, and Snoopy's efforts at making their own Valentines — but on the whole, it's a downer.

You're In Love, Charlie Brown (1967) focuses on Charlie Brown's efforts to get the attention of the Little Red-Haired Girl during the last two days of the school year. It's a bit of a forgotten gem from the early days of Peanuts specials (it was the fourth special produced, following after It's the Great Pumpkin), and while of course Charlie Brown doesn't get the girl, it's more in keeping with the balanced tone of the comic strip.

In It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977), Charlie Brown and the gang compete in the local homecoming football game (with Peppermint Patty as the coach), and Charlie Brown worries about escorting the Little Red-Haired Girl to the homecoming dance. While some fans criticize this special for having the temerity to show the Little Red-Haired Girl on-screen (and give her a name!), I've always enjoyed it regardless, right from the start where Snoopy takes off like a helicopter and continuing through its fall football atmosphere and rather goofy ending.

What's New?

The major new feature on the Warner DVD is a 15-minute featurette titled Unlucky in Love: An Unrequited Love Story. It's actually a very nice little piece — half of it devoted to discussing the themes of love as they appear in the Peanuts comic strip, and the other half talks about the Be My Valentine special itself. The featurette includes new interviews with an impressive list of contributors: Jean Schulz (Charles Schulz's widow), Craig Schulz (one of Charles Schulz's sons), Lee Mendelson (producer of the Peanuts TV shows), Phil Roman (director of "Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown"), cartoonist Stephen Pastis, and authors Jonathan Franzen and Phil Cousineau. Their comments are both interesting and informative — including showing how some comic strips were translated into TV special material, and the genesis of the name "Miss Othmar" (not something I'd heard before). This featurette is definitely more than some video clips tossed together; effort and thought was put into it, and it shows.

Also new are Spanish audio and subtitle tracks for all three specials, in addition to the English audio and subtitles (Paramount's DVD release only included English). There are also a couple of hardly-worth-mentioning trailers for non-Peanuts DVD releases (but they aren't forced trailers, which I appreciated).

How does the video and audio of the two DVDs compare?

The video of all the specials shows some improvement on the new Warner DVD release, although there are a few concerns. (I never had any real quibble with the video quality on Paramount's DVDs, but there was room for improvement.) Be My Valentine has the most improved video — the colors are noticeably clearer, brighter, and the picture is sharper overall. The Paramount version looks muddy and seems to have a greenish tinge by comparison.

The two other specials, You're In Love and It's Your First Kiss, show more modest improvements, but in general they both look brighter and sharper. But there are a couple times when something seems to have gone wrong with You're In Love: the title card has a strong orange cast that the Paramount release of the show didn't have (not just the background is orange, everything is orange), skin tones sometimes seem off, and other colors too garish. It's Your First Kiss is slightly grainier than the Paramount version.

It's tough to say which is the better transfer for You're in Love, but both the other two shows are improved. Despite the improvements in color and clarity, none of the specials are completely pristine (nor were they in the Paramount release). There are still occasional dust specks and spots that come and go. It looks like while a new, and better, video transfer was done, they didn't do a frame-by-frame cleanup to remove all defects present in the film masters.

The audio is also improved on the new Warner DVD release. Nearly all of Paramount's Peanuts DVDs had inexplicably low sound volumes, requiring viewers to turn their TV volume up a lot compared to other DVDs. The sound on the new Warner DVD is at a more normal volume (although nothing approaching loud), and as a result, has somewhat better clarity. In all cases, the audio is presented in its original mono form. (I can hear some of you asking, "but what about the 'missing' dialog in It's Your First Kiss?" See below for the answer.)

One minor criticism I have of the new DVD is that there aren't any chapter stops in the shows (and thus no scene selection menus). How hard would it be to put in a few chapter stops so we could quickly jump to other parts of the show, instead of having to fast forward from the beginning? Hopefully Warner will fix this in future releases.

Should you buy the new DVD release?

If you don't have the previous Paramount one, definitely. I'm not sure why you waited, but now a better DVD is available! And even if you do have the older DVD, it's worth considering purchasing this new Warner reissue. The video and sound are improved, and the new featurette is worthwhile and nicely done.

I do question whether these additions warrant the "deluxe edition" label. While I'm certainly glad the DVD isn't a simple reissue and devoid of bonus features, the extras aren't really extensive enough to be what I call "deluxe" — that's a bit of marketing hyperbole.

But still, it is an improved release, it's reasonably priced, and buying the new Warner reissues will hopefully encourage them to continue to make new featurettes for their reissues, and to work on releasing the previously unreleased Peanuts specials on DVD. I'm happy with the upgrade from my Paramount DVD, and look forward to future Warner Peanuts DVD releases.

The Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown Deluxe Edition DVD was released on January 15, 2008, and retails for $19.98. The running time for all three specials together is 75 minutes.

The "missing" dialog in It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown

In It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, several times after Charlie Brown misses his kick during the football game because Lucy (of course) pulls away the football, Peppermint Patty berates him.

Diehard fans of the Peanuts TV specials know that after the original broadcast of this show, viewers protested because Charlie Brown was so obviously not at fault, and in subsequent showings and the Paramount video releases, the producers decided to dub out two of these incidents.

(They were removed by reversing the original audio and reducing it in volume, so if you record the audio and play it backwards, you can hear Peppermint Patty's original exclamations. We'll save you the bother and tell you that the two removed quotes are: at about 7 1/2 minutes in, "Okay, Chuck, you really goofed up on that play!"; and at around 15 1/2 minutes in, "Chuck, you can't do anything right!!")

Bad news and good news: the new Warner DVD retains these audio edits in It's Your First Kiss in the English audio. But they're intact in the Spanish audio... in Spanish, of course.