I am an unabashed fan of the Peanuts – the comic strips, the books, and the cartoons. I’ve gotten every DVD in the series without fail. But I thought a bit before I picked up the newest one, Peanuts 1960’s Collection. This new DVD set collects, for the first time, the first six Peanuts cartoons, all of the ones produced in the 1960s. In and of itself, that’s great. The problem I had with it was that three of the six cartoons had already been released on prior DVD releases! Was it going to be worth it for me to get the last three?

Well, I’m writing this review, aren’t I?

I’m not going to get into the cartoons I’ve already reviewed, expect to tell you what they are and point you to the reviews I’ve written. This set includes the classic, original A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Halloween hit It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and the first tale of the little red-haired girl, You’re in Love, Charlie Brown.

Of the three cartoons new to DVD,we start with 1966’s Charlie Brown’s All Stars. Charlie Brown’s classic baseball issues come to light here — his team is sick and tired of losing every game, and many of his players are on the verge of quitting when the owner of a local hardware store offers to sponsor the team. The prospect of a sponsor, better equipment, and real uniforms is enough to lure the rest of the kids back, but the rules of their new league may ruin everything. What’s great about this cartoon is that it shows just who Charlie Brown is — the way his loyalty outweighs his competitive nature is wonderful, and helps with the basic morality and good core of the comic. The baseball comic strips are some of the most legendary pieces of Peanuts lore, and of the few cartoons that specifically featured the game, this is easily the best.

Next is the second best of the three, He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown from 1968. In this cartoon, Snoopy’s behavior has been lacking as of late, so Charlie Brown plans to send him to obedience school. Snoopy rebels, however, and winds up hiding out at Peppermint Patty’s house while the gang back home starts to mourn the loss of their friend and shortstop. This is a nice little piece that goes into the relationship between Charlie Brown and Snoopy, as well as pulls in a few random bits from the comics, like Patty’s friend Ray. This takes place at that weird era in which Peppermint Patty didn’t yet know that Snoopy was a dog, instead believing him to simply be a “funny looking kid with a big nose.” It makes her treatment of him a bit more amusing when you remember she doesn’t really know who she’s dealing with.

The Peanuts gang closed out the 60s with 1969’s It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown. As the gang returns to school, they are given an assignment to write an essay about what they did over the summer. Charlie Brown and Linus reminisce about how they wound up in the summer camp from hell, full of bad food and constant torment from the girls, who utterly dominate them in every event. While Charlie Brown losing isn’t at all a new idea, the brutality of the girls is pretty intense in this special. Not only that, but they’re well-organized as well — they manage to taunt an entire paragraph of dialogue in perfect unison. Amazing.

The set includes a featurette on the legendary Vince Guaraldi, who composed the music for all the Peanuts cartoons. It’s a nice look back at the career of one of the lesser-lauded heroes of this golden age of TV animation.

The 60s were good to Charlie Brown and friends. Even the least of the cartoons on this set are better than most of the stuff that came afterwards. The writing was sharp, and the cartoons are funny. One may understandably hesitate to pick this up if they have the other DVDs, but the new stuff, in my opinion, is worth it for the hardcore fan… like me.