Pin ItColumbia Tristar has announced another retail release of The Best of The Muppet Show, previously only available through Time-Life's mail order service. While the last couple of Muppet Show DVD street dates from Columbia featured a pair of releases each, this time they're only doing a single:
The Best of the Muppet Show: Steve Martin (also featuring episodes hosted by Carol Burnett and Gilda Radner) is actually "Volume 6" in the Time-Life series. The Halloween-themed Volume #5 (featuring Alice Cooper, Vincent Price, and Marty Feldman) seems to have been skipped over on a retail release for unknown reasons. Those of you who are curious about Vol. 5 can still look it over, and order it from Time-Life if you can't live without it.
Back to Columbia's actual announcement: Volume 6 will hit stores on December 9th, at a list price of $19.95. The usual supplements can be found on this release: "Muppetisms," a photo gallery, trivia, and an easter egg. Presentation is exactly as we older kids watched it back in the day: full-screen and mono sound. This is good ol' family entertainment at its finest!
Pin ItColumbia has also quietly put together their first four retail releases into a box set that streets tomorrow (September 30th). For a list price of $70.95, you can get a nice gift set ("Great for the Holidays!") featuring complete episodes hosted by Elton John, Julie Andrews, Gene Kelley, Mark Hamill (and the Star Wars droids!), Paul Simon, Raquel Welch, Harry Belafonte, Linda Ronstadt, John Denver, Peter Sellers, John Cleese, and Dudley Moore.
If buying all of these as a box set doesn't thrill you, then be aware that Columbia is re-promoting all 4 of those volumes individually for the holidays as well. These should find their way into stores agressively on December 9th, along with the new release (Columbia is primarily targeting these DVDs as stocking stuffers). The list price separately is $19.95 each. But if you think you'll end up collecting them all in the end, you might as well get the box set and save $10.
