STUDIO: Warner Brothers
RELEASE DATE: September 23, 2008
CREATED BY: Charles M. Schulz
FEATURES: Another Story Featuring the Gang: "It's Magic, Charlie Brown"
All-New Featurette: "We Need a Blockbuster, Charlie Brown!"
Another Story Featuring the Gang: "The Mayflower Voyagers"
All-New Featurette: "Popcorn & Jellybeans: Making a Thanksgiving Classic"
Another Story Featuring the Gang: "It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown"
All-New Featurette: "A Christmas Miracle: The Making of A Charlie Brown Christmas"

This holiday season is going to be better than most for one simple reason - Peanuts. It's almost hard to believe, but we're a little less than a month away from Halloween, which is, of course, quickly followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas. What better way to spend the holidays than the way you used to as a child, with Charlie Brown, Linus, Woodstock, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty, and the rest of the Peanuts gang? Peanuts is timeless and it only feels more so with every passing year. For decades, children have been growing up watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and A Charlie Brown Christmas every year and now all three TV classics are included in one beautiful box set from Warner Brothers. It's early and we'll be inundated with dozens of holiday releases over the next three months. Very few, if any, will match the joy that you and the entire family will get from the Peanuts Deluxe Holiday Collection.

Start with 1966's It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, a personal favorite of mine that was recently released on its own and is now available with its Peanuts holiday brethren in the collection. Will this Halloween be the one when the Great Pumpkin comes? Honestly, my early childhood memories of Halloween almost all include The Great Pumpkin. I think we had it on tape because I remember it so vividly. It's hard to believe that such vivid memories come just from the annual airings. In it, Linus spends every Halloween in the pumpkin patch waiting for the arrival of The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown has the most pathetic ghost costume ever, and Snoopy continues to battle the Red Baron. The improved video and audio on this deluxe edition is fantastic and fans will even find another Peanuts cartoon in which Snoopy has a magic act that makes Charlie invisible and a featurette about the making of the show.

The Collection moves on to 1973's A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, the title in the set that I was least familiar with but maybe that's because my family was too busy watching football after eating turkey and mashed potatoes. In the 25-minute show, Peppermint Patty invites herself an her pals to Charlie Brown's house for a turkey party. Charlie hosting a turkey day? All he can make is cold cereal and toast. Linus, Snoopy, and Woodstock come to the rescue to save Thanksgiving. Once again, Warner Brothers polishes up the Peanuts gang with improved video and audio and include another short film, this time an episode from "This is America, Charlie Brown" in which the gang become Pilgrims aboard the mayflower and spend the first winter on Plymouth Plantation.

You can end the holidays and the year with the great A Charlie Brown Christmas from 1965, which is actually the first TV special, chronologically. A perennial classic, Christmas features Charlie in his typical, "Good Grief" doldrums. At Christmas time? No one can be grumpy at Christmas time. At least not in a TV special. Charlie gets a pathetic, tiny Xmas tree, but the holiday has a little magic for Mr. Brown and the rest of the gang. A Charlie Brown Christmas is over forty years old but not only have the themes remained timeless, it looks and sounds great in this set too. Kids will be watching this TV special ten, twenty, a hundred years from now. Once again, you'll find an extra short - this time about Charlie selling wreaths door-to-door - and a featurette about the making of the TV special. The whole set is a must-have for any holiday or Peanuts fans this year. Charles Schulz may be gone but his timeless creation lives on.