Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers: The Complete Series Blu-ray

Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers
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I’ll admit it. I had a fan-girl freak out moment when I saw the news that Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers was getting the Blu-ray treatment and that it would be the complete series. I still remember the disappointment I felt back when it was made clear that the Rescue Rangers DVDs would never get the Volume 3 needed for the complete series to be available, so when the Blu-ray was announced, I felt more excitement about CDRR than I’d felt in more than a decade.

Of course I purchased it the moment it was available.

It’s been displayed up on the bookshelf in the living room alongside various other memorabilia, unopened, since the day it was acquired. Last week, however, I decided it was time to open it up and take a look. For those who have not yet made the purchase, here’s what I found:

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There’s really not much to say here. The box art looks nice, but there isn’t any art inside the case or on any of the discs. It’s just a very basic press with the series logo and the disc number. There isn’t any sort of episode list or any indication of which episodes appear on which discs. While I didn’t have high expectations, not including any sort of reference about the contents of the collection was a bit of a surprise.

A couple of nights ago, I watched one of the discs for the first time. The Blu-ray boots up to the modern Disney animation logo and then it goes to a simple splash screen with the option to watch all episodes, or choose from an episode list. The ending credits theme from the earlier episodes plays on repeat in the background.

Hmm… maybe I should show instead of just tell.

As far as I can tell, the episodes play in their original aspect ratio and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. I haven’t had a chance to play the Blu-ray and DVD side by side to see if there’s any difference between the two, but I can say it is better than the version that’s streaming on Disney+ (more on that later)

And here’s another bonus clip - the bonus being the AMAZING frame the clip ended on, becoming my new favorite screenshot.

So back to Disney+… I was able to capture the same frame on Disney+ and on the Blu-ray so I could overlay them for a more accurate comparison. The Blu-ray is the better version. It’s displayed in the original aspect ratio allowing us to see the entire frame, compared to the Disney+ version which uses a cropped 16:9 format.

And that’s a wrap!

Summary

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk
Trim_Moment

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Oh wow when did these come out? And I can see these blurays will play in my region. I had to buy my dvds from the states so they were locked to that region. And finally all of the episodes. It ticked me off not having a complete set. I will have to buy.

Its great they kept the original aspect ratio for the bluray at least. As you’ve shown, they cropped the disney plus version. I’ve actually seen the opposite when they’ve tried to do HD releases of shows that weren’t originally meant to be played widescreen

(that should play at the point I’m talking about you don’t need to watch the whole thing)

I’ve tried to update most of what I have to at least bluray when they become available. If anyone was interested, Star Trek the next generation on bluray was perfection.

The bluray for Avatar the last airbender was also great. The dvd had so many blurred or ghosted lines but they’re all gone in the bluray.

Anyway I’m going off topic again. Thanks so much for bringing this to my attention @Ducky

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Oh wow when did these come out?

The set came out in January 2022, but as an exclusive for Disney Movie Club. Then it got a retail release in February, but both releases only in the US.
But hey, not hard to import, thanks to it being Region Free.

Its a decent set, though a pain to find the episode you want without a guide. Apparently, they’ve listed them all in production order, rather than the same line-up on the DVDs or Disney Plus/Broadcast order. They could’ve at least make alternative disc covers/menus.

Also sucks is the lack of bonus material which they could’ve put some effort in. The uncut movie version of the pilot, the “excellent adventures” behind the scenes featurette, am early sneak peek of the upcoming movie (which this was clearly released as a tie-in for), or even just some bonus shorts from either the classics, modern or the Park Life show would’ve been fine.

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The video quality is excellent! I didn’t realize the Disney Plus version cropped out that much. Presentation could have been better, but I’m happy it got released at all.

Did you watch many episodes? Seer No Evil is still my favorite.

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Wow, finally! I too was severely disappointed when they only released the first two seasons on DVD back a million years ago. I was able to catch up on some of the non-DVD episodes on Disney Plus, which made some of the old discussions from the message boards back then make more sense. I had never seen the episode with Foxglove for instance. I might have when I was a kid but didn’t remember it. When I first rediscovered CDRR, I had strong memories of the characters and their personalities, but not of any specific episodes. I’ll have to get this so I can finally see the whole series and earn my Rescue Rangers nerd cred.

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JUST LIKE CASSANDRA PREDICTED!

I’ve only watched a few so far, really just to get an idea of what the differences were between how the episodes were presented on disc vs on Disney+. Seer No Evil is a good one and I think it still holds up. By contrast, I watched The Case of the Cola Cult again and it didn’t seem to be as good as I remembered.

I don’t know why, but my comfort episodes seem to be Catteries Not Included and Piratsy Under the Seas. Actually, you know? Strike that. I just realized that I do know why those are my comfort episodes! Crime-busters was the first Rescue Rangers VHS I owned as a kid, so those two episodes were the ones I had the most access to. I think I recorded Case of the Cola Cult off the tv, and eventually got Undercover Critters with Adventures in Fat Squirrelsitting and the dumb Booby episode.

Hmm...

It seems Undercover Critters is to blame for my fondness for Boobies and Fat Squirrels

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I actually watched that about a week before you emailed me because someone had made a youtube video about the episode, so I thought I would refresh my memory. It was probably a mistake as I still get the stupid song stuck in my head. Especially that one line “it’s bottled in pensacolaaa”

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I’d also seen I think only three episodes as a kid, on the same VHS Ducky had, it sounds like, based on what I recall. Might be forgetting something, though. When I watched the whole series later, around the time I joined CnDO, it was on Youtube – but this was many years ago, and I don’t know if the series can still be found there.

[checks Wikipedia]
Ah, okay, apparently I had two VHS…es? I’m realizing I don’t actually know the plural of “VHS”. VHS tapes; there we go. Crimebusters and Super Sleuths, so I would have also, which I do now vaguely recall, had Pound of the Baskervilles. (And the remaining episode, which I did remember, was Out to Launch, in which Gadget successfully builds an SSTO spacecraft in a junkyard on short notices without even most of her tools. Also, I think I may also vaguely recall that, when I watched that again years later, trying to figure out how the human spaceplane worked may have been somehow part of what led me to CnDO. Not sure… For all that it’s more recent, my memory seems to have decided a number of details of that time weren’t that important to keep.)

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Ordered a copy from a place called importcds.com, cheapest place I could find it, it was $35 with shipping. Can’t wait to finally watch all the episodes from season three that never made it to DVD.

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