Hands up anyone who doesn't like Wallace and Gromit, or even know who they are?  Well hang your head in shame, pack your nap-sack and go live like a hermit in the hills of some uninhabited mountainside!   Shame....on.....you!  :)

For their DVDebut Wallace and Gromit take us on 3 cracking adventures, A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave.

MY first W&G experience was with the Wrong Trousers a few years ago when a friend bought me the Video for my birthday.  I wore that tape to death and The Wrong Trousers has remained my favourite W&G venture to date!

A Grand Day out, the first of the series, takes the boys into outer space, onto the surface of the moon in search for more cheese.  Wallace has designed a space craft for their trip.  All goes well until they are hunted down by a power tripping coin operated oven who is none too impressed the boys are stealing the cheese :)  

The Wrong Trousers, finds the boys low on money, so Wallace decides they should rent out one of their rooms.  Pretty soon a penguin responds to the ad and moves in.  Wallace loves the new flatmate, trusty 'ol Gromit is a bit suss... That penguin is up to something...but what?

Finally After many years of bachelor-hood, Wallace finds himself a girl in A Close Shave.  The Boys are running their own Window Washing service and one day the wool shop down the end of the street, owned by Wendolene calls them up to give her windows a scrub.  Meanwhile, the town's sheep are mysteriously disappearing. 

VIDEO
While each episode (shot in 4x3 only) looks great, A Grand Day Out was shot on 16mm and is not as impressive as the remaining 2, both shot on 35mm. 
Having only ever seen all these W&G's on ...gasp.... video tape these are a feast for the eyes in comparison and really bring the clay animation to life
Colours are quite good, but after you've experienced Chicken Run on DVD you know this particular DVD looks undersaturated overall.   Sharpness is well maintained, and results in a nice sense of 3 dimensionality.
There are a few nicks and scratches on the print source, but it's nothing too serious.  

AUDIO
Though all carry a Dolby 2.0 soundtrack A Grand Day Out is pretty plain Jane in the audio department, with limited music and basic dialogue and effects.  The other 2 are all action stations with orchestrated music and all!    (It would have been great if they received a 5.1 remix though).

EXTRAS
I do like the look of the menus, BUT the submenus are textless (unlike the main menu) and use Just icons to represent menu selections.
Quite frankly you may find yourself selecting the wrong trouse...err options.  The first time I navigated the menus I went into the A grand day out page.  From there I selected what I thought was the special features option, BUT up came the subtitles.  I saw the "camera" icon, and thought, well that must be subtitles"  but the "knitted Jumper" was subtitles. 

This niggle aside, you get

• a 15 minutes behind the scenes featurette,
• these silly little Christmas Idents (quite cute really, though nearly all have audio static pops)
• Photo Gallery (which I was flicking though and thought..hang about I've already seen these!!.. I guess that happens when they loop :)

Do I really need to make much effort to recommend anything to do with Wallace and Gromit, especially a DVD?  Didn't think so :)