Best Buy thought it would be cute to send me the set today, at the price of it being poorly packaged, arriving with a broken case and the only protection inside the package being a chipotle napkin! (Disc inside was unharmed) 5 dollars of my order was refunded, oh well. I very much enjoyed the watch and will likely watch it again sometime this coming week. I recommend this set despite the false advertising. Here's some thoughts like I did with Avery V3
On the two newly restored cartoons: BEANSTALK BUNNY and CATCH AS CATS CAN look AND sound really, really good. Definitely top tier work on these work. Two scenes in BEANSTALK BUNNY are from a grainier source (Elmer's introduction and Daffy's reaction); evidently there is some master damage. CATCH's rather infamous ending fade starts about half a second later and is slightly slower, we see more of Sylvester smoking the pipe. Not much more to say
On everything else: Kinda mixed, but unlike Avery V2, the flaws do not hinder the viewing experience at all, for me. Opening titles are mostly redone, to my eyes. Some are indeed just cropped, some a bit more than needed. End titles are all cropped, and again, some a bit more than needed. Some seem to have minor touch ups to instill a bit more grain and color, but that's it. Color content is really good except on a few Post-AAPs (thinking HIP HIP HOORAY, and HIS BITTER HALF mostly). Audio is mostly subpar all around too, though still passable with a few sounding really good. The best of both are on UNRULY HARE, and the two Foghorn offerings, both having exceptionally nice color, grain, and sound (though I believe all three are still recycled). Grain is much more visible, and while still scrubbed to a degree, doesn't create a waxy image. The oddest looking one was DAFFY DOODLES, where color content was a bit all over the place, but considering it seems there was an experiment with Daffy's bill and feet, changing from a yellow to orange throughout, it made of been intended to some degree. Hopefully, future volumes are more consistent and completely redone, with rescanned audio. On a side note, its possible since no new scans were done that original titles could exist at UCLA for the AAPs with Blue Ribbons. Since most of the post-war ones do exist, its not unlikely
On curation and content: This is what makes up for any flaws presentation wise (even if you should be able to watch them without having judgements on their appearance). You never feel stuck on any director or character, each character come and go very nicely, I found putting the misc cartoons and Three Bears at the end a nice touch. While I found the Tweety and RRs entries a little weak, their still funny and leave more to be released in the future. With this in mind, it is not only a great set of "All-Star" Warner Cartoons, it is an excellent set at introducing folks to a deeper dive of the shorts, with a nice selection of shorts that may not be the first cartoon they think of with the characters, and for animation students to study, providing clearly what made each cartoon so funny.
Otherwise: I recommend this set highly, regardless of presentation issues. They still look pretty good, and it is a nicely selected array of classics. If it means future volumes with this issues fixed, then I look forward to even more sets. Keeping it to just their peak in the post-Schlesinger period to 1959 was smart, allowing for many classics with variety in director, and era. Art Davis' representation is appreciated, FOXY DUCKLING is a favorite and fits nicely as the one off due to being so anti-WB, showing how far some of them go. Bonuses being missing is about the one thing I'm really upset with, considering this being something of a first for a non-casual targetted Warners set (seeing Thad's storyboards for CATCH AS CATS CAN would've been excellent). Again, I recommend it highly for content and because it ain't as bad as one might bad
Edited by user
2023-05-28T00:27:50Z
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Reason: Added a sentence on the lack of bonuses