This week’s TV on DVD offerings serve up plenty of laughs for both adults and kids as the complete eighth season of Comedy Central’s South Park is joined on retail shelves by Darkwing Duck Volume 1, Talespin Volume 1, The Tick vs. Season One and Winx Club Volume 5: Battle for Alfea Five.
South Park: The Complete Eighth Season is a three-disc set offering all 14 episodes from the 2004-2005 run. Noteworthy installments include ‘Good Times with Weapons,’ in which the boys get their hands on martial arts weaponry and imagine themselves to be brawny anime characters, and ‘The Passion of the Jew,’ which has the boys attempting to get their money back from Passion of the Christ director Mel Gibson, who is depicted as a babbling crazy person. The Paramount Home Video release lists for $49.99 and includes mini-commentaries by series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
Darkwing Duck Volume 1 comes on three discs and includes the pilot episodes and the first 25 installments of the Disney series, which started airing in 1991. The show centers on Drake Mallard, who defends the city of St. Canard as bumbling, egotistical superhero Darkwing Duck. With the help of his dense pilot sidekick, Launchpad McQuack, and his rambuctious adopted daughter, Gosalyn, Darkwing always manages t0 foil the devious plots of various bizarre villains. The Buena Vista Home Entertainment set carries a suggested retail price of $34.99.
Also from Disney comes the eagerly awaited Talespin Volume 1, a three-disc set with 27 episodes of the animated series from the early 1990s. The show casts Baloo the Bear from The Jungle Book as a 1930s Pacific Islands bush pilot who underatakes dangerous and comical missions with other Jungle Book characters. The four-part series pilot is included in the set, which retails for around $34.99.
A muscle-bound man dressed as a big, blue tick and a meek accountant in a moth costume serve as urban protectors in The Tick, Ben Edlund’s animated cult favorite that began its short run in 1994. The Tick vs. Season One offers 12 episodes on two discs that contain showdowns with such super villains as The Idea Men, Chairface Chippendale, Dinosaur Neil, Mr. Mental, The Breadmaster, El Seed, The Brainchild, Pineapple Pokopo, Proto-Clown and The Uncommon Cold. There were originally 13 episodes aired during the first season, but for unknown reasons Disney has elected to leave out episode #11, ‘The Tick vs. The Mole Men.’ Released by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, the set carries a suggested retail price of $34.99.
The magical showdowns continue in Winx Club Volume 5: Battle for Alfea Five. The Rainbow S.r.l./4kids Ent. anime-inspired series centers on a group of tween friends who attend the Alfea School for Fairies, the oldest and most prestigious fairy school in the magic dimension. Episodes contained on the disc round out the show’s first season, which debuted in 2004 in the U.S. during the 4Kids TV Saturday morning block and on Cartoon Network. Fans can pick it up for $14.98 or less.
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