When my younger daughter Claire (age 6.5) saw me pull out that pink, strawberry-scented DVD case, she was excited for some more Strawberry Shortcake Berry Bitty Adventures.
In the latest DVD offering, Strawberry Shortcake: Sweet Sunshine Adventures, we get another of those great collections of episodes which could easily play as a single hour-long movie.
The DVD contains episodes seven through nine from season three of the Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bitty Adventures animated TV series:
- “The Berry Big Relay Race” – Season 3, Episode 7
There is a sparkleberry power issue that causes everything in Lemon’s salon to go nuts. The problem turns out to be affecting the whole town. The Berrykins are fixing the power cables, but the digging is causing lots of noise and disruption, so Strawberry, her friends and their puppies decide use the time to hold their own sporting event, a Berry Bitty relay race on land, on water and in the sky. Unfortunately the Berrykins shirk their responsibilities to sneak off and watch the race instead of doing the repairs.
- “The Berry Best Treasures” – Season 3, Episode 8
With the power still not repaired, the girls have another day off for more adventures. This time they decide to break up in teams and go on a treasure hunt. Each team writes three clues for the others to follow. Meanwhile Cherry Jam is trying to come up with a new song and is struggling to come up with the words and the Berrykins discover something frightening (not really) while performing the repairs.
- “The Berry Scary Fun Adventure” – Season 3, Episode 9
The Berrykins are still working on the power issue, so Strawberry and company go on a camping trip which includes a nighttime sleepover. The girls have loads of fun, but are confused why things keep mysteriously disappearing from the camp. They even get a surprise visitor.
What’s Included:
Episodes:
-
DVD:
- 480p Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78:1
- Audio: English Surround Dolby Digital 2.0, Spanish Surround Dolby Digital 2.0
- 3 episodes of the series (65 min)
- “The Berry Big Relay Race”, “The Berry Best Treasures”, “The Berry Scary Fun Adventure”
- English SDH, Spanish subtitles
- Closed Captioned
- DVD contains Digital Copy redeemable via iTunes, UltraViolet, Popcornflix or Google Play (Redemption Deadline 3/1/2018)
Digital Copy:
Extras:
- Printable Coloring Pages
- “Anything is Possible” Music Video (1:38)
- Meet Strawberry Shortcake & Friends (1:52)
Final Thoughts:
Claire really enjoyed this set of episodes, she giggled when Strawberry and Plumb got accidental crazy hairdos, thought the steeple chase on frogs was super silly and delighted at seeing the surprise special guest.
The way the episodes flowed right into one another in one cohesive story was perfect, it kept Claire rapt with attention throughout as she eagerly watched each episode to see what was going to happen next and find out if the Berrykins would ever fix that pesky power problem.
Like I alluded to in my review of Strawberry Shortcake: Berry Best in Show, I kind of wish the Play All button would have stripped out the opening and ending credits from the individual episodes so that they could be enjoyed as a single hour-long experience with the opening and closing credits only appearing at the very beginning and very end.
The picture quality of both the digital copy as well as the DVD are phenomenal, if I didn’t know better I would have sworn we were watching a Blu-ray and not a DVD; it looked that crisp and clear. The audio is nice and loud, meaning you can keep the volume levels low and the dialog is still easy to hear and the musical portions sound great.
The extras were pretty good. There are some printable coloring pages (always a fave), however I wish these would be available for download via the web instead of having to stick the DVD in a computer, especially with many computers no longer coming with media drives.
Cherry Jam’s “Anything Is Possible” song in the short music video is super catchy and one that my daughter loves from a previous Strawberry Shortcake episode.
Finally the short featurettes on Strawberry Shortcake, Cherry Jam and Apple Dumpling were brief, but fun. We haven’t seen any of the episodes of the Berry Bitty Adventures series featuring “adventure blogger and world explorer” Apple Dumpling yet, but now we really want to.
As I mentioned, a digital copy was included, which is always nice for taking these shows with us on our girls’ iPods. We elected to redeem the iTunes version, but there were several options to choose from.
Strawberry Shortcake: Sweet Sunshine Adventures succeeds in bringing smiles with an entertaining multi-part story. With several rainy days ahead in the forecast, I suspect this will be getting some more viewings soon.
