Shout! Factory Hey Arnold! The Complete Series on DVD

For my oldest daughter’s birthday, we bought her a portable DVD player (mainly so we didn’t have to watch her kiddie shows on the TV all. the. time.).  It is also nice to take along on long car trips, and so she can go in her room and watch a movie or a show without being bothered by her little sister.

One problem – my daughter has a short attention span and is constantly skipping from part to part in her movies.  The TV shows that she watches actually keep her attention for a full episode, but those DVDs are expensive and only contain a few episodes each.  Wouldn’t it be great to get an entire children’s TV series on DVD for a great price???  Shout! Factory has done it with a DVD set containing all 99 episodes of the classic Nickelodeon cartoon show Hey Arnold!

Hey Arnold! was on the air from 1996 to 2004, so it was a little past my childhood, but I did watch episodes every now and then.  The show is about a boy, Arnold, who lives with his grandparents in a boarding house, along with his pet pig (and a bunch of other animals) and some interesting tenants.  Arnold is nine years old and in the fourth grade.  Other characters in the show are Gerald (Arnold’s best friend), Eugene (classmate who is constantly getting hurt), Harold (class bully), Helga (a unibrowed girl who is really mean to Arnold but only so she can hide the fact that she is madly in love with him), and Phoebe (Helga’s best friend).  The episodes generally involve the characters facing some predicament or a problem that Arnold has to solve with the help of his friends and family.

I watched some of the episodes with my daughter.  The show is cute and kept her entertained (and I found myself laughing along too), and she now has some favorite episodes that she likes to watch over and over again.  Helga is my favorite character on the show, with her secret crush on Arnold, the poems she writes about him, and the that she keeps in her closet for her favorite “football head.”

While I like the show and am glad to have found something that interests my daughter, she is at the age where she likes to imitate some of the things that the characters say and do, so I will probably pick and choose which episodes I feel are fine for her to watch right now.  There was no bad language or adult humor that necessarily make the show inappropriate for younger children, although there was some very mild fighting and bullying, as well as some story lines that I am not sure a three-year old would understand.  All in all though, I think this is an enjoyable show for families.

The DVD set (containing sixteen discs) was released as a Walmart exclusive on August 19, 2014 and can be purchased online or in stores.  Shout! Factory also has a wide variety of DVDs and Blu-rays for sale on their website, including new releases, TV shows, and family-friendly movies.  Be sure to check out Shout! Factory on Facebook and Twitter for news, upcoming releases, giveaways, and more!

*Angela received the products mentioned above to facilitate this review.  All thoughts and opinions are her own.*