Ren & Stimpy - The Complete First and Second Seasons (1991)

What a great show

It's Ren & Stimpy! How could anything go wrong?! Chances are, if your interested in this, you already love Ren & Stimpy, and if you love Ren & Stimpy, go for it. It's got great episodes like The Cat that Laid the Golden Hairball, Space Madness, Svën Höek, Rubber Nipple Salesmen, Stimpy's invention (which contains Happy Happy Joy Joy), and it even has the Log commercials. What a great DVD.

The interviews are pretty good too, and they give you a new appreciation for the characters and the work put into them.

Definitely recommended. August 13, 2008

Before Beavis and Butthead, Southpark, Family guy and American dad... it came Ren and Stimpy

Beavis and Butthead, Southpark, Family guy and American dad are among the greatest animated shows to ever graced a TV. Nowadays people argue whether if Southpark is the second best ever, behind The Simpsons of course. However before Southpark and all the other shows that dared to "cross the line" on a weekly basis, there came a humble yet shocking cartooned aired by Nickleodeon in the early 90s, called Ren and Stimpy: Bottom line is, it was way ahead of its time.

John Kricfalusi along with other great animators as Bob Camp, Chris Reccardi and Vincent Waller, rolled through more than 20 episodes of pure genious matter to produce a very complex product not suited for everyone, as it always happens with most genious things that are not appreciated in their own time, and this is not something from the past 10 years. It also happened to Mozart, Van Gogh, Galois, as well as others. And it was because all of them dared to "cross the line", "think outside of the box". In Ren and Stimpy's case, they did it on every episode, in such a subtile way that it is simply impossible to appreciate it for anyone.

Ren and Stimpy basically had everything going on: the characters, the plots, the drawing, the animation, the soundtrack and music, the voices... even the subcharacters! Mr Horse, George Liquor, Powdered Toast Man, Log, Anthony's Dad, Kowalski, they were all second to none. Not that they out-shadowed Ren and Stimpy, but they had magic of their own. This is a show where you can basically tell that everyone got together everytime to create an episode and said "Let's do a flawless job". After all, a show that features Prince Igor, the Barber of Seville, Beethoven's 5th's 3rd movement, and Carmen over and over again in each episode just can't go wrong.

Pity is that as it also happened to Mozart, Van Gogh and Galois, great things are not meant to last. After Seasons 1 and 2 (which are the ones contained on this set) John K. was fired from his own creation and I'm not going to say the show went downhill from there because some of the episodes of seasons 3, 4 and 5 still have flahes of the orignals, but certainly they weren't the same quality. For instance, Mozart's requiem: you can easily tell where the man stopped writting and died, and from where his pupil took over to complete it, and he did a fine job. But it wasn't Mozart. All in all, as years go by Ren & Stimpy's will probably gain the status it deserved.

I give this product 5 stars but considered giving it 4 stars though, because indeed there is an error with the "Uncut and Unedited" advertising. I do consider that this mistake may not affect the fact that still it's good to have this show in my hands again. Sure Sven Hoek includes a few seconds of non-seen footage, but some of the other episodes are indeed edited and censored. Shame on whoever did that, because quoting Mozart once again, it is like "taking a note out of the paper of his work, will bring down the whole foundation".

There will be many other shows in the future, but none of them will be like Ren and Stimpy. August 6, 2008

Uncut? whatever.

I currently own this box set and was relieved that it was finally put to dvd but when i watched it I was disappointed that some of the episodes were still edited as well as the so called "banned episode-man's best friend" which seems to have mysteriously not made to ththird disk of the box set. I will say to get this dvd if you want to start a collection and if you are a fan of ren and stimpy, but if you are looking for a full uncut version with all the original scenes intact then this is not what you are looking for. To Mr. John K- if you see this please do your loyal fans a favor and give us unedited, uncut and complete ren and stimpy box sets, we deserve it. July 31, 2008

Classic

I've wanted to watch Ren & Stimpy again since they stopped showing it on TV where I live (which was several years ago). I got this DVD set and so far I've watched quite a few episodes, mostly the classic ones I remembered, and I really have no complaints. The picture and sound if definitely better quality than watching it on TV, and that's all I really care about. The stuff people have been complaining about on here, I honestly probably wouldn't even have noticed... I guess the cut-out scenes are a minor annoyance (I would have liked to see the bloody head fairy scene from Haunted House, which is missing), but I can't say it lessens the experience in any noticeable way for me. I might just not be enough of a hardcore fan I guess.

Ren & Stimpy really heighten my appreciation for old-fashioned cartooning and animation techniques, so they get 5 stars in any case. June 4, 2008

Way Funny

If you love Ren & Stimpy then this is the DVD collection you want. All the classic episodes are here. February 23, 2008

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