Little Red Tractor Stories (DVD)

Little Red Tractor Stories
 
 
I had to look after my nephew the other day and after two hours of Ben 10 and ATOM I felt very, very old. Cartoons were never this fast in my day!
 
True, at only 28, I'm not exactly harking back to the simple time of Mr Ben, but the cartoons seemed to slower, more focus on story, character, rather than just an animated equivalent of a Michael Bay film. I received this disk of Little Red Tractor Stories and sat down with my nephew, thinking he would watch five minutes and then get bored, there wouldn't be enough action, but no… He sat there and watched. It was telling him stories and he watched intently.
 
Afterwards, he didn't try and kick me or throw a toy at me in some form of play fight, he just carried on playing. It was a miracle!
 
Little Red Tractor Stories contains ten stories spanning almost two and half hours of time and are simple farming adventures such as helping a fellow tractor who got stuck, feeding certain animals and so on. These episodes are only twenty minutes in length and so it isn't anything huge and they are ideal for a bedtime story. The animation is reminiscent of things like Paddington and though it could be described as 'basic' I'd say 'simple and perfect'. The use of music, sound effects and the narration by Brian Glover and Richard Briers is wonderful. In between some of the episodes we also have live action of real farmers doing the real work which is an odd, but nice touch.
 
Children's DVDs very rarely have special features and there isn't much on offer here. A photo gallery is really just a slideshow of some of the pictures from the original stories. This could have benefited from being a See and Tell feature for the child to say what the animal or character was, but maybe the next volume will do this. Colour In Fun has downloadable pictures that can be printed out and coloured, which is a nice idea.
 
Little Red Tractor Stories is a lovely DVD for those kids who are too old for In The Midnight Garden, but too young for Ben 10 and the like.