When the girls (now ages 4 and nearly 7) saw the ad for the new Strawberry Shortcake ‘Berry Big Help’ DVD during a commercial break from My Little Pony, they got really excited. They own a number of the Strawberry Shortcake DVDs and books and enjoy following the adventures of Strawberry and her fruit-themed friends.

While it is not a series that they watch all the time, they love these DVD episode collections, so needless to say, when they heard that they were going to get to review it for Uncle Kyle’s website, they were ecstatic.

The DVD contains the following episodes:

“Babysitter Blues” – Season Four, Episode 1
Lesson: Asking permission.

When Strawberry offers to babysit the adorable, but mischievous Baby Berrykin for the Princess, little does she and her friends realize how big of a task it’s going to be chasing after this cute little color changer.

 

“A Stitch In Time” – Season Two, Episode 1
Lesson: Knowing when to ask for help, and how to refuse too much help.

Raspberry wants to design a very special outfit for Strawberry to wear for her poetry reading, but she gets a little more help than she expected thanks to her secret Fashion Elves (Orange, Lemon and Blueberry). However, she quickly starts relying on the help and soon realizes that it is no longer really her design anymore and wishes that she hadn’t taken the help for granted and done more herself.

 

“Fish Out of Water” – Season One, Episode 1
Lesson: Manners and Knowing when it’s time to let things go.

Despite Strawberry’s insistence otherwise, Orange takes in a found baby fish to care for as a pet. Soon the (once little) new pet starts growing a lot (just as Strawberry had warned) requiring much more work than Orange can handle. She is in way over her head as her pet becomes more important to her than manners.

What’s Included on the DVD:

Episodes:
DVD:

• 3 episodes of the series (66 min)
  

  • “Babysitter Blues”
  • “A Stitch in Time”
  • “Fish Out of Water”
• Widescreen 1.78:1
• Audio: English DD 5.1, Spanish DD Surround 2.0
• English SDH, Spanish subtitles

Digital Copy (Redemption Deadline 9/25/2015):

• iTunes SD Digital Copy

Extras:

• “Sunshine Girls” music video
• 3 Printable Coloring Pages

Final Thoughts:

My girls always have a fun time with these Strawberry Shortcake DVDs and I like the fact that beyond the entertainment value, each episode tries to teach a valuable lesson. Whether they are being taught to ask permission, or to know that it is okay to ask for help, it is nice to see that they aren’t watching mindless drivel and that at some level they are still learning.

The girls were captivated from start to finish and enjoyed getting up and dancing along with the ‘Sunshine Girls’ music video so much that they requested an encore. They were a bit bummed that the DVD only came with three episodes instead of the usual four, but the digital copy is a nice value add, and certainly something I can see them requesting to watch on either the family iPad or their iPod Touches.

The picture quality of both the digital copy as well as the DVD was fantastic, the dialog was easy to hear and the musical segments were rockin’.

The extras were a little lacking, but pretty much the standard for these Strawberry Shortcake releases, with just the aforementioned music video and some printable coloring pages, both of which were big hits in our house. The one extra that the girls still keep hoping to see is a ‘fake’ outtakes reel as they’ve seem to become the go to special feature on all of these kids’ DVDs these days.

Berry Big Help was a success and once again, the whole family enjoyed the episodes of Strawberry Shortcake included on the DVD and it will certainly be getting numerous additional home and in-car viewings in the future.