Teddy Ruxpin was a huge part of my childhood. I got the original talking toy for Christmas in 1989, only a month before my younger sister was born, my dad taped several episodes off TV for me, I had a few of the episodes released by Hi-Tops Video, and of course I had many of the book and tape sets that went with the talking toy. So it might come as a surprise to some of you that I never saw The Treasure of Grundo when I was a kid. We didn't own this tape and my parents didn't rent it for me, because it wasn't available to rent at the video stores we went to. Of course I've seen the three episodes that are included on this tape as I have the complete series of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin on DVD, and two of the episodes on here are two that my dad had taped off TV. But I hadn't seen the tape before.
What I find interesting about this tape is how they decided to edit three episodes together into a single movie with no new scenes to transition between episodes. Which is fine since Episode 2 "Beware the Mudblups" begins right where Episode 1 "The Treasure of Grundo" ends, but then we skip to Episode 4 "In the Fortress of the Wizard" with the scene from Episode 3 "Guests of the Grunges" (I'll be reviewing that next week) where Teddy, Grubby, Gimmick, and Prince Arin meet the Wooly What's-It just so it's not weird for Wooly to suddenly show up even though his introductory episode isn't until the next VHS volume. Unfortunately they included Episode 4 on this tape, where they rescue Princess Aruzia from the Gutangs at the Hard to Find City, but then in the very next volume, they're still looking for the princess. I am so glad they aired the episodes in order, even through the reruns, because that would've been confusing if they'd aired the episodes out of order.
This tape contains the bulk of the original Teddy Ruxpin story told in the book and tape sets "The Airship" and "The Missing Princess" as well as the live action/animatronic TV movie, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin. It also highlights that "Guests of the Grunges" is a filler episode just so they could have five days worth of episodes to air as The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin aired Monday to Friday with many of the story arcs being four episodes with a standalone episode either at the beginning of the week or the end of the week. I think this is the only story arc that actually lasted for five parts. But this just shows that they could've just had Wooly be introduced and then have him take them directly to the Wizard's Fortress in the same episode as he does in the TV movie and in "The Missing Princess".
The episodes themselves are some of the best episodes of the series. And not just because I watched two of the episodes over and over again when I was a kid either. They're some of the best episodes ever because this isn't Transformers or Ninja Turtles and with it being more adventure oriented while most cartoons based on toys in the '80s were action oriented, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin had to find inventive ways to keep the story interesting for the kids, who maybe saw the cartoon, didn't have the talking toy or the book and tape sets, and didn't know what Teddy Ruxpin was. And to me they succeeded. There's plenty of action in this show, but again, the focus is more adventure than action, kind of like how while there's some action in the Indiana Jones movies, the focus in on the adventure rather than the action. Plus the episodes are a wonderful introduction to this world that Ken Forsse created 35 years ago.
The packaging is pretty cool too. It mirrors of the cover design for the original hardcover books that were coming out for the talking toy at the time. And while most VHS releases of TV shows would use the name and logo of the show on the front covers, rather than the name and logo of the franchise (if it's part of a franchise), as you can see from the image at the start of this review these tapes use the "World of Teddy Ruxpin" name and logo from the book covers. Which is interesting and actually pretty cool in a way because it shows consistency between the two mediums the Teddy Ruxpin franchise has.
I think the thing I like most is the extras included in the first seven tapes in this series. Not just the items included in the cassette boxes, but also the extra content on the tapes themselves. The live action intros and outros are the most iconic thing about these tapes for me because they aren't included on any other home video releases this show has had. What's cool about them is that in the outros, Teddy shows off the items that are included in the cassette boxes. For this tape it's the Kids' Emergency Calling Card, which includes a slot for a quarter so that the kids who had this card could use it to use a pay phone if needed. Yeah, this is such an '80s and '90s thing since we have cell phones now. But it's a nostalgic thing as well.
I'm not going to rate these tapes because it wouldn't be fare to rate this part of my childhood. Plus I want to do this differently than I do my other reviews. So, no ratings for these tapes. Period. However, I do want to say that Teddy Ruxpin gave me hours and hours of entertainment when I was a kid and to this day I will pop in an episode when I just want to have fun watching something. I'll be back next week with Volume 2, Guests of the Grunges which will probably be a longer review because it's the first Teddy Ruxpin VHS I ever got when I was a kid and I have very fond memories of it. So stay tuned.
Thanks goes out to Vincent Conroy for not only providing me with digitized copies of these tapes but also for providing me with high quality scans of the VHS covers as well. Check out his Teddy Ruxpin fan site, The Grundo Gazette at: https://www.grundogazette.com/
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