DVD Review: Nickelodeon Favorites: Merry Christmas

Every year around this time, someone tries to come up with a children’s Christmas show to challenge the classics. It makes sense, after all the three biggies were all made in the sixties. But who ever tires of watching Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty The Snowman, or A Charlie Brown Christmas? Nobody in my house, that is for sure. But while these shows are obviously evergreens, they were never really designed with the preschooler in mind.

Enter Nickelodeon, the 31-year-old network for kids, and for kids at heart. While the network has released Christmas DVDs before, most of these have been of a single series. These include Dora The Explorer: Dora’s Christmas, The Backyardigans: Christmas With The Backyardigans, and Wonder Pets: Save The Nutcracker.

While each of those are certainly good DVDs for holiday fun, this year Nickelodeon have upped the ante a bit with their new Nickelodeon Favorites: Merry Christmas collection. The single DVD contains six full stories to keep the little ones entertained, and the whole set is nearly two and a half hours in length.

The DVD has Dora The Explorer “A Present For Santa,” Go Diego Go “Diego Saves Christmas,” Wonder Pets! “Save The Reindeer,” Blue’s Clues “Blue’s First Holiday,” Team Umizoomi “Santa’s Little Fixers,” and Ni Hao, Kai-Lan “The Snowiest Ride.”

The fun thing about each of these is how they involve your child in helping to make everything right for the holiday celebrations. For example, Dora and Boots want to bring Santa a present, but you must help them get to the North Pole. When Diego sees Santa’s sleigh caught on a snowy mountaintop, he needs assistance from our friend Linda The Llama, and your child too.

There are some nice lessons to be learned here as well. When Tolee is afraid to sled, Kai-Lan helps by getting him started on small hills. As his confidence grows, he moves up to bigger hills, and winds up having the time of his life. And then there is Blue’s Clues, who has been around for a very long time for a Nickelodeon cartoon. During “Blue’s First Holiday” we get to go back with Little Steve, Baby Joe and their friends, to the time that they all played their first game of Blue’s Clues.

Nickelodeon’s Merry Christmas is another fine holiday set from this always dependable network, and is great fun for the entire family.

Article Author: Greg Barbrick

Greg Barbrick is a Seattle native who was first published in 1988, in his hometown music magazine, The Rocket. Since then his work has appeared in print and online for numerous sources. He Googles himself so often that his mother told him it would make him go blind.
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