Customer Reviews

Rocko's Modern Life: Season One

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Just as I hoped! Those who were unhappy with the Amazon MOD sets for Nickelodeon, mainly because many were only "Best Of" sets missing key episodes, can now purchase an actual proper stuido set. These DVD's are being made the old fashioned way and being released by Shout! Factory. The fact that Shout! now has the rights to this classic Nickelodeon show is a promising sign as far as I'm concerned. They often try their hardest to gather and create some special features for fans to enjoy and if nothing else at least this time you are getting the complete first season, all episodes included.

*Worked on by the man who would later create Spongebob Squarepants, Stephen Hillenberg, Rocko's Modern Life is a classic show from the best days of Nickelodeon and its animated series'. Rocko, our favorite wallaby, moves from down under and begins a new life in O-town. A small burb that is corporately owned by a company called Conglom-O, their slogan, "We Own You". With his new friends Hefer Wolfe, a cow raised by a family of wolves, Filbert, a paranoid obsessive compulsive turtle (think Woody Allen), and his dog Spunky, he has a series of misadventures trying to cope with the absurdities of modern day life. You can't forget his neighbors the Big Head's, Ed always had an agenda against Rocko and his friends while his wife Bev was always quite fond of Rocko, perhaps too much so.

Episodes Included:

1 No Pain, No Gain / Who Gives a Buck?
2 Leap Frogs / Bedfellows
3 Jet Scream / Dirty Dog
4 Keeping Up With the Bigheads / Skid Marks
5 Power Trip / To Heck and Back
6 The Good, the Bad, and the Wallaby / Trash-O-Madness
7 Spitballs / Popcorn Pandemonium
8 A Sucker For the Suck-O-Matic / Canned
9 Carnival Knowledge / Sand In Your Navel
10 Cabin Fever / Rinse and Spit
11 Rocko's Happy Sack / Flu-In-U-Enza
12 Who's For Dinner? / Love Spanked
13 Clean Lovin' / Unbalanced Load

That will be all twenty six 11 minute segments or all thirteen complete 22 minute episodes depending on how you look at them.

While I bought some of the Amazon MOD sets myself I'm still excited at the possibility of upgrading to proper sets, hopefully one's with extras. I avoided buying any "best of" sets other than the final season of Doug. Hopefully the reason Amazon hasn't released anymore Rugrats sets is because they will now receive proper sets too, though that is just my speculation. Until we find out about that for certain fans of Rocko's Modern Life can be happy knowing that this set is coming their way extras or not.

This has been a long time coming for us 30 somethings! I honestly never thought I'd see the day that I could share this awesome cartoon classic with my daughter! Now lets hope we get the rest of the seasons too! I already have Ren & Stimpy and now Rocko is coming out too! It's the 90s era of cartoon genius all over again! Life couldn't be better! .... Well a girlfriend would be nice too! lol

"'Rocko's Modern Life'? I used to watch that show all the time when I was a kid!" If you've ever had this conversation with someone, this set is for you.

Rocko's Modern Life is one of the classic shows from Nick's early lineup. It's kid-friendly, but has several more adult moments (a few of which were removed; more on that later). If you grew up watching this show, this is a great investment and a fantastic nostalgia trip.

PACKAGING
The box art is fairly standard fare (as you can see pictured above). The spine maintains a similar color scheme. It has a picture of Rocko on the bottom looking up. The back has the logo on the top and a large white space with some text describing the show and summarizing some episode concepts. There's also a large picture of Spunky (Rocko's dog) on the back. The standard information is provided on the bottom, including the notation that this show is closed captioned.

The case is clear plastic. Inside, there are two disc trays. Disc 1 features Rocko and disc 2 features Spunky. There's an insert advertising other DVDs available for Nick series. On the rear of the sleeve art are episode summaries which are very easy to read and use different color schemes to differentiate between episodes. Heffer and Rocko are pictured by these summaries.

While I don't have any real complaints about the packaging, I do have to point out an observation: there is a clear effort to associate this show with Spongebob Squarepants. There is a sticker on the front that names 3 of the voice cast who worked on both this and Spongebob, and the same information is provided on the back in the large text blurb. I can understand the desire to associate this show with the better-known Spongebob, but I can't figure out why it's here from a more practical perspective. Who's buying this? People who watched it as a kid or who otherwise have fond memories of it. Those people don't care about the show's connection to Spongebob. Again, not an issue, but it's still something I noticed.

MENUS
The menus are very simple, but effective. They divide up the episodes into their respective halves. They also have a Play All feature. The Season 1 title theme plays in the background.

VIDEO QUALITY
The transfer on this set looks surprisingly good. It's not perfect, but it's better than one would expect for a show like this. It doesn't seem to have been very thoroughly remastered along the lines of the cleanup performed on other shows of its day (Simpsons, for instance), but it still looks pretty nice.

EPISODES
The first season of Rocko was pretty memorable. Bev Bighead coming onto Rocko, the Elevator to Hell ride in the carnival, and the Suck-O-Matic are just a few of the best moments of the season. This is also a good time to mention that some of these episodes are censored insofar as very small amounts of content were removed. There's a scene in one episode for instance where Hef ends up getting hooked up to a milking machine. He clearly experiences "pleasure" from the machine, and later in the episode, is seen breaking up with it. These bits were removed by Nickelodeon. According to official statements from Shout Factory, this was all Nick would give them to work with. Again, while it's not good to have these scenes missing from a "complete" season set, it's not that big of an issue and is not something for which Shout Factory should be blamed. The vast majority of the material in these episodes is retained in all its glory (see, e.g., the "doggy style ride" in the dog bowl shop at the O-Town mall). The censorship should also not deter anyone from getting this set.

***EDIT***
Upon further investigation and review (someone can correct me if I'm wrong), the Heffer milking scene and its brief follow-up in that episode are the only things keeping this season from being an uncut release. Thus, the episodes are almost entirely UNCUT to the best of my knowledge with that material being the exception. Also, since I know it was asked on some forums, unless I'm mistaken, the episode "Leap Frogs" is uncut without any alterations to the sexual innuendo that caused it to be banned from Nicktoons airings.

BONUS FEATURES
None. Apparently Shout tried to get some stuff together but wasn't able to do so. There is still interest on their end in getting extras for future volumes. This volume, however, is sadly devoid of any bonus features of any kind. The only redeeming point here is that they didn't take any shortcuts in the packaging design, so while it doesn't make up for it entirely, Shout's inclusion of the episode summaries is a nice little gift to the fans that it didn't have to do.

OVERALL
If you're a fan of Rocko's Modern Life, pick this up. It's $15 or less, and is well worth the price. Help ensure that these sets keep coming by picking up this volume. Complete Season Sets (as opposed to "Best of" volumes) are always great for these shows, and it's wonderful that Shout is finally able to provide long-time fans with a great release of the show.

After watching the first few episodes, I thought nostalgia wouldn't be enough to make me finish washing the set. However, it got better and I found myself really enjoying it. The most disappointing thing is that the the funniest scene I remember from when I saw it as a kid was removed. In "The Good, the Bad and the Wallaby," there was a scene in which Heffer is erroneously attached to a milking machine and subsequently develops a romantic interest in it. Had I read the other reviews, I would have known it was censored, and probably wouldn't have bought it. I suppose if you're buying it for young kids the censorship is good, but I would guess the majority of people interested in the show are adults who want to see it as they saw it as kids. I will have to make certain season two has no cuts before I buy it.

The cuts are very disappointing.

Like many of the reviewers here, I've been a fan of Rocko's Modern Life since I was a kid. I still remember watching this wacky cartoon make its debut on Nick back in the fall of '93 and being totally blown away by it, and shown by my rating, this is one of those rare childhood cartoons that not only has aged well, but has actually gotten better with age!! The only other nostalgic cartoon series off the top of my head that achieved this was Batman: The Animated Series. This is so because when you get older, you can comprehend the hidden "adult" jokes.

LACK OF CENSORSHIP AND UNECESSARY EDITS

I'm glad that RML creator Joe Murray didn't pull any of the nonsense that John Kricfalusi did when Ren and Stimpy were released on DVD (I'm still angry about John K. messing with that show). The episodes on this DVD are almost exactly like you remembered from when you watched them as a kid. The only edit that I can name off the top of my head is the infamous "milking" with Heffer from "The Good, the Bad, and the Wallaby." Other than that, I couldn't notice anything out-of-place.

HUMOR

Rocko's humor is very impressive compared to other cartoons, since it's one of those rare cartoons where there's humor that kids will enjoy, and adult jokes that are very subtle to a child's mind, in that only an adult can spot them. For example, with the Rocko episode "Flu-Inuenza," I loved the episode for the gross visuals fleshing out Rocko's flu in graphic detail and the goofy things he saw when he was sick when I first saw it, but one of the adult jokes that I picked up on as an adult was when Rocko swallows a giant pill prescribed by a crazy doctor, but quickly finds out on the bottle a giant warning not to take it orally, I realized where he was supposed to insert it and I reacted with a giant "Holy s***!" laugh. Even though the following isn't a hidden joke, I'm shocked that in the episode "Carnival Knowledge," there's a ride called the Elevator to Hell, and "Hell" wasn't censored at all. With that said, I'm surprised the episode "Leap Frogs" was made at all, given that it's about Bev Bighead trying to get in bed with Rocko after she feels "inadequate" with Ed Bighead. Let's not forget the favorite fried chicken joint in this show, called "Chokey Chicken." I had no idea what it meant when I was a kid, but when I re-watched this show in my teen years, I totally understood what that meant and got a good "WTF" laugh from it.

CHARACTERS

The characters in RML are all top notch, in that not only are they wacky, but also relateable to people you'd bump into in real-life. I'm sure at least once in our lives, we've had unpleasant neighbors like Ed Bighead, a cane toad, whom in the show, is hell-bent on making Rocko's life miserable whenever he comes into contact with him (such as trying to get Rocko's house evicted in the episode "Keeping Up with the Bigheads"). My personal favorite character in the show is the turtle named Filburt. Filburt is very much like Woody Allen, except I find Filburt more funny. Filburt is very neurotic and is very easy to anger, and it's a riot to see him and Heffer fight because of the fact that they're polar opposites. Heffer is great as that lazy, freeloading friend we've all had in our lives, as he's such a glutton and is very dimwitted. This is perfectly shown in the episode "Bedfellows," where Heffer is kicked out of his home and takes advantage of Rocko's hospitality, eating all of his food and hogging his bed among other acts of selfishness. Even the minor characters have a positively-memorable impact on the viewers, such as Dr. Hutchison, whose a cat with a hook for a hand with a bright personality whose prone to subtle acts of wackiness. Let's not forget the central character, Rocko. Rocko is perfect in this show because he's portrayed as being the only "normal" character in O-Town (the town he lives in), while everyone else seems weird and crazy. Rocko gets stuck in real-life troubles such as getting stuck at the DMV and fighting to buy groceries during the last minutes of a giant sale, and while his misadventures are humorous, you do feel for him when he gets stuck in a jam. One of Rocko's best moments was his meltdown at Filburt in the episode "Rocko's Happy Sack" when he just missed a 99% off sale at a grocery store, where it seems like life is deliberately working against you in these types of moments.

APPEARANCE

The animation and artwork for RML is superb. The visuals are very surreal and have a myriad of bright colors, highlighted by heavy use of steep angles with the environment the characters interact with. Murray's signature style of drawing his characters fit the tone and style of the show like a glove, as they look so distorted and brightly-colored. The animation itself is very solid, as the movements the majority of the time are as smooth as silk, and can't recall any animated "hiccups" off the top of my head.

FINAL WORD

If you love surreal animated humor with hidden adult jokes, then Rocko's Modern Life is mandatory viewing if you missed out on this in the early 90's. If you love Rocko, don't hesitate for one second to buy this DVD set.

I've been waiting forever for Nickelodeon to release this. I just hope they intend to see it through and release the entire series, instead of stopping mid-way like Fox has done with King Of The Hill.

When it has came down to Nickelodeon back in the 90's, they've really made the most enjoyment of their animation. With gems like Ren & Stimpy, the classic Doug (which later was rebooted thanks to Disney,) and the classic Rocko's Modern Life. The cast here, laid the groundwork for the team that would later take part of the network's most successful cartoon franchise, Spongebob Squarepants in 1999. But when Rocko's Modern Life came around, it was one of the most clever and funny cartoon series ever developed, with a dash of surreal humor that was worth every laugh. Now after years in the vault, it finally is on home video again, but is it worth the money? Yes & a dash of no from the wallaby of O-Town.

Rocko's Modern Life Season 1, brings in the joy and humor that made Rocko one of the funniest characters in Nickelodeon history, with the mishap adventures and predicaments with his friend Heffer. The DVD set includes all the episodes from its 1993 season, with incredibly funny episodes like Spitballs where Rocko & Heffer attend a baseball game, hoping to get Rocko another Foul Ball, after it was destroyed in Ed Bighead's rage, and Unbalanced Load, in which Rocko & his dog Spunky go to the laundromat to get Rocko's clothes cleaned, but there are so many ordeals including a group of villains called the gripes that steal and destroy clothes, and a Hippo woman that takes offense at Rocko's accidental moves. While the cartoons are funny, and a great trip back in time, there are a few episodes that have been edited out, like The Good The Bad & The Wallaby, where while Heffer is sleeping in the barn, he actually gets milked by a milking machine, and falls in love with it. Even the part that he says goodbye to it, was taken out (in a non-sexual way.) Still, most of it has been unedited for the grace and pleasure just like it was the 90's with Rocko is the blue-patterned shirt.

All in all, thank goodness it didn't end up like Ren & Stimpy did on DVD, which really had a lot of removals that made it feel like there was a loss in the wait being worth its value. Rocko's Modern Life Season 1 is a good buy for anyone who loves classic and distinctive animation that Nickelodeon made delightful nearly 20 years ago. I still love Rocko's Modern Life, and I definitely think this is a nice buy for anyone that loves classic Nickelodeon entertainment, that has either been a huge fan, or new to what made Rocko, Spunky and company one of the most enjoyable cast of characters on television. The O is still in O-Town, and it definitely is fun to watch the good, the bad and the fun of the wallaby.

Price: B

Remastering: B 1/2+

Overall: B

Finally, Rocko's Modern Life, Aahhh!! Real Monsters, Hey Arnold & Angry Beavers are getting released properly on DVD! It's about time Nickelodeon! Thanks Shout!

The only problem is that Shout Factory has stated that Rocko's Modern Life is the edited version that's being released on dvd. This disappoints me slightly...but at least we are getting a dvd!

Here is the statement left on Shout Factory's website, "Please note that the only available masters for this show are the rebroadcast episodes, some of which contain minor edits for adult content".

first of all rocko is a amazing show now that i got that out of the way lets get started! this set includes all the season 1 episodes spread across 2 discs and its brought to us by our lovely company shout factory and all the episodes are in order and play fine but it loses 1 star due to the menu not having a play all selection it just has all the episodes listed all jumbled up. other than that...BRILLIANT SET!!!!

Finally, "Rocko's Modern Life" is available for retail sale, after all these years. Before Spongebob and the Bikini Bottom gang swam in, shows like "Rocko's Modern Life," "Hey Arnold!," and "Rugrats" ruled the airwaves. Unfortunately, there are no special features, but I, like many fans, don't care. After all, it's nice just to be able to purchase this series to have for years to come. If the lack of extras bothers anyone, rest assured that there MAY be some included in the follow up, season two release. (Joe Murray, creator of the series, says special footage is still pending.) I'm so grateful to Shout! Factory for putting this, and numerous other Nickelodeon gems, on DVD. Now, I just need some more "Clarissa Explains It All" & "The Adventures of Pete & Pete," and official releases of "Rugrats" & "Doug," along with subsequent volumes of the already made available shows, to continue with my classic Nick collection.