Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Alvinnn!!! Edition

The Alvin Collection is another group of episodes of The Chipmunks from their popular Saturday Morning series, Alvin And The Chipmunks. The shorts are not theme related as some of the other recent sets have been. The stories range from the film inspired Romancing Miss Stone to the globe trotting episodes like Maids In Japan or The Curse Of The Lontiki. They aired originally between 1983 and 1987, but many of them have sprung up in syndication up to the present day. There are 14 episodes in all, lasting a little over 20 minutes each.

The Chipmunks began life oddly enough as a singing group, of sorts. They were the brainchild of struggling songwriter Ross Bagdasarian and were named after the three chief executives at Liberty records. His own alter ego David Seville’s name came from his World War II Army station in Spain. The Chipmunks first appeared in a 1958 record called The Witch Doctor, but wouldn’t officially become The Chipmunks until later that year when The Chipmunks Christmas Song was released. It is for that Christmas music that I most remember the group. They first appeared as puppets on The Ed Sullivan Show. Alvin and the boys got their own television show in 1961. When Ross died in 1972, the Chipmunks would continue on under the guidance of his son. In 1983 The Chipmunks had yet another popular cartoon show and had appeared in countless specials and films. Today they are pretty much a hallmark at the holidays, and a Christmas song collection just wouldn’t be complete without them.

Video

Each episode of The Chipmunks is presented in its original full frame broadcast format. Colors are actually pretty good here, but the print suffers from a lot of damage. There are a lot of specks and other unfriendly artifacts covering the entire print. The animation lines often appear fuzzy. It looks as though no real restoration effort was made here.

Audio

The Dolby Digital Mono track is actually in better shape than the video, but not by much. The songs sound pretty distorted, and I can’t even figure out what they’re saying most of the time. Of course, that might mean the songs are in for a comeback with the younger audiences of today. With some modern music you either can’t understand them or wish that you couldn’t.

Special Features

Nothing.

Final  Thoughts

As I’ve mentioned before there is a lot of Chipmunks on DVD this month. The silly little rodents are always fun, but again I make the call for larger more inclusive sets. Season sets or common theme sets would be far more preferable. At least you get 14 here, so it is the largest of these collections so far. Season sets, Paramount. “It just might work.”