I've ranted on and off since starting this blog about all the good things about Liberty's Kids (it provides an entertaining and somewhat accurate story of the events and personalities surrounding the Revolutionary War) and all the bad things (its distribution has been miserly and dysfunctional at best). Awhile back on a post I did ("And Another Thing About Liberty's Kids"), some kind commenter said that Liberty's Kids would be coming out on DVD last October and the set would sell for around 60-dollars. This, after I ranted about it selling for $500.00 through some educational distribution site.Anyhow, it's all good -- the fam just finished watching disc 1 of the Liberty's Kids 6-disc set, which is distributed by Shout! Factory. We're getting them from Netflix, just to see if it'll be worth buying the set. So far, so good -- there were 7 episodes on the first disc and they were all in order, a far cry from the doofy collections that came out in 2005, with only 3 random episodes on each ("The Boston Tea Party: The Movie," "Give Me Liberty," and "The First Fourth of July"). DJ is loving watching them all in order, and it seems like we might be getting the set, after all.
Okay, my only complaint, and it is a teeny-tiny complaint -- because, don't get me wrong, I am soooo, so happy that Liberty's Kids is finally in a boxed set put together by people who actually know what they're doing -- my only complaint, even after the joy and rapture of this event, is that I thought that maybe the episodes should have been kept intact, as they were shown on TV. Meaning, that the original fillers between the stories ("Continental Cartoons," "Ben Franklin's Newsbytes") should have been left as they were. As it stands now, they are lumped in their categories on the special features menu, and it is rather boring to watch them all at once because they fly by so quickly and have the same format. It was probably a decision that was made on whether or not to keep the story flow or the TV format, which had more of a variety-type appeal.
Anyway, that is a small, small complaint next to the major positive that is this collection, so...YAY!
Swiped the cover art pic for the new collection from Shout! Factory's site
