This holiday season, consumers will have an opportunity to enjoy some of their all-time favorite animated Peanuts television specials in a whole new way, when Warner Home Video (WHV) releases the Peanuts Holiday Collection on Blu-ray™ hi-def format for the first time on October 5, 2010. Peanuts Holiday Collection, which is comprised of three beloved specials including A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown will retail for $42.93 SRP.
Available separately on October 5, WHV will also offer consumers Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales, which will retail at $14.97 SRP. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving will be released on Blu-ray™ hi-def format for the first time on September 7, 2010. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving will retail for $24.98 SRP.
Peanuts Holiday Collection BD features a set of three of the most popular and memorable Peanuts seasonal classics and loads of bonus episodes. The specials will come in a Blu-ray + DVD Pack which includes both the Blu-ray and DVD editions of the specials.
Peanuts Holiday Collection BD Featured Specials:
* A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving – In this Emmy® Award-winning special, Peppermint Patty invites herself to Charlie Brown’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Marcie and Franklin are soon added as dinner guests. Charlie Brown admits that his culinary skills are limited to “cold cereal and maybe toast.” Snoopy and Woodstock transform the ping-pong table in the backyard into a dinner table. As the guests arrive, they are each served two slices of buttered toast, some pretzel sticks, popcorn and jelly beans. Patty is outraged at the meal and berates Charlie Brown until embarrassed and dejected, he leaves the table and goes back into the house.
* It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown – This Emmy® Award-nominated special, finds the Peanuts gang outfitted in costumes, ready for trick or treating and crashing Violet’s Halloween party. Charlie Brown is in a ghost costume (with more eyeholes cut out than needed), Lucy dressed as a witch and Snoopy in a World War I flying ace costume. Linus decides to steadfastly hold vigil in the pumpkin patch as he awaits the Great Pumpkin.
* A Charlie Brown Christmas – In this Emmy® and Peabody Award winning classic, Charlie Brown is upset by how commercial the Christmas holiday has become. To coax him out of his holiday blues, Lucy suggests he direct the school’s Christmas pageant and decorate a glorious tree. Charlie Brown concedes. The tree he finds however, is puny, prompting everyone to ridicule him.
Peanuts Holiday Collection BD Bonus Episodes:
* The Mayflower Voyagers – In this bonus episode from the This is America, Charlie Brown series, the Peanuts kids become pilgrims sailing to the New World aboard the Mayflower and endure the first hard winter on Plymouth Plantation.
* It’s Magic, Charlie Brown – This bonus episode finds Snoopy putting on a show after he checks out a book on magic tricks from the library. With Marcie and Sally as his assistants, he performs many tricks (some that work and some that don’t) before an audience. The grand finale features the biggest trick of all, making Charlie Brown disappear. To everyone’s amazement, Snoopy makes him invisible but doesn’t know how to bring Charlie Brown back. Will Snoopy find a way to reverse the trick?
* It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown – This bonus episode is the second Christmas-themed Peanuts episode since A Charlie Brown Christmas. Holiday preparations include Charlie Brown selling wreaths door-to-door to make extra money, Peppermint Patty sweating out an important book report and the entire crew appearing in a Christmas pageant.
Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales, which originally premiered on ABC in 2002, is comprised of a series of delightful animated vignettes, each of which showcase a different member of the Peanuts gang.
The rarely seen Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown? is also featured on this release. Charlie Brown and pals face the departure of Linus and Lucy, who must move when their father is transferred to a job in another town.
WHV will also release the Emmy® Award winning classic A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on Blu-ray™ hi-def format for the first time. This release will come in a Blu-ray + DVD Pack which includes a Blu-ray and DVD. Special features include a bonus episode, The Mayflower Voyagers and a new featurette titled The Making of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. This featurette takes a look at the final installment of the Peanuts holiday trilogy and what it meant to its creators.
“To many, watching these seasonal specials on TV each year has turned into an important tradition. We wanted to capture these programs in one beautiful collection and preserve them in gorgeous Blu-ray definition so that they could be shared with future generations,” said Amit Desai, WHV Vice President of Family, Animation & Partner Brands Marketing. He added, “Peanuts Holiday Collection is a must-have DVD compilation. It features some of Charles Schulz’s greatest work and we are proud to offer it to consumers.”
Other classic animated Peanuts specials available in stores now from WHV include It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown BD (available in a Blu-ray + DVD Pack which includes a Blu-ray and DVD in a standard definition edition), Peanuts Holiday Collection (standard definition edition), I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown Deluxe Edition (standard definition edition), A Charlie Brown Christmas BD (Blu-ray™ hi-def format and standard definition editions) and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Deluxe Edition (standard definition edition).