Teletubbies: Dance With The Teletubbies / Here Come The Teletubbies [2000] [DVD]

Dance With The Teletubbies
The British countryside has seen few raves like this one--our favourite Teletubbies are shown dancing through Teletubby Land with a few of their friends and, of course, their many rabbits. The "Stepping and Standing Dance" leads things off, followed by the "Walking Dance", "Running Away Dance", "Splashing Dance", and so forth (thankfully, we're spared from "Riverdance"). Of course, all this dancing--and even some clips of real children performing a few jigs--can wear a little thin on the patience of any child or parent. While younger children may want to perform some of the moves themselves (the "Tip Toe Dance" looks semi-appealing), everyone else risks becoming bored. The Teletubbies work best when, just like the typical preschooler, they all act differently, performing unique tasks (check out the effective Here Come the Teletubbies). On this video, they're all line dancing. There is some genuine weirdness for more mature Tubby aficionados: a vacuum cleaner starts dancing and a computer-animated bear does a convincing Grateful Dead-inspired number. But, for almost everyone else, it can't beat the TV show. --Jason Verlinde, Amazon.com

Here Come The Teletubbies
Here come Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po! The colourful, chubby, futuristic foursome get up to lots of adventures in this early collection of Teletubbies stories, with plenty of the wonderfully intriguing sounds--from the giggles of the Sun Baby, to the slurping sounds of Noo-Noo, to the "tuning" noise of the loudspeakers--that are the trademark of this BBC show, expertly created to capture the attention of babies and pre-school toddlers. Here Come the Teletubbies is the perfect first video to introduce youngsters to the show, with lots of short stories containing some Teletubby favourites--the tubby toast machine goes berserk and throws toast everywhere, the magic rain cloud appears and makes puddles to splash in, a surreal, computer-generated animal parade marches across the valley, Po makes a trail of tubby custard all over Tubby land and then falls over all the time. There are, of course, two short films of real-life children, from the TV-tummy of the Tubbies, that make this such fun for older toddlers too. --Alison Jardine