It’s time to Wiggle... again!

And this time it’s a double dose of those long-sleeve t-shirt (skivvies have necks, OK?) adorned blokes Greg (the yellow bloke), Murray (the red bloke), Anthony (the blue bloke) and Jeff (the sleepy purple bloke). This presentation features two of their 1998 videos stuffed lovingly on to one little shiny disc, as the review title just may suggest these are Yummy Yummy and Wiggle Time!.

The four kiddie-world equivalents of The Beatles do what they do best, performing a multitude of their mostly original ditties accompanied by the requisite hyper-bouncy dancing (these guys know more moves than Toni Basil!), all the time with glued-on grins – they must look at their bank balances before shooting these things! Their usual buddies are along for the ride, too. Wags the Dog, Henry the Octopus, Captain Feathersword and the rather gorgeous Dorothy the Dinosaur all bob up (and down and up and down and...) on various occasions, plus their friend Paul the Cook even pops by (who some may recognise as one Paul Hester, of Crowded House fame). Add to the mix some dancing kiddies, and little in-between intros where the blokes tackle, with suitable Wiggly aplomb, such things as cooking (avec colour-coded chefs hats, naturellement!), painting with eyedroppers, dodgy magic tricks (including the ‘Box of Mystery’, a possible relation to Santo of The Late Show’s ‘Stage of Mystery’ perhaps?) and some utterly pointless things to do with Play Doh and you have 75 minutes of devilishly useful kiddie distraction.

For those just itching to know which of their tunes are on offer here, itch no longer – rompbompachomp!

Once again that old rule you can rely on more then sunrise and sunset comes into play, if it’s a DVD for kids it will have an exemplary visual transfer. Basically there’s nothing to fault here, the full screen shot on video vision is detailed, nicely sharp (although we hope it was edited with safety scissors), alive with colour and more vivid than the most psychedelic of psychedeliccy things on steroids. There’s no aliasing or shimmering worth noting, no bodgy layer change (it’s a single layered disc) and shadow detail? Well, there are seemingly no shadows in the floodlit world of The Wiggles, so there’s no such thing here.

Sonically it’s a Dolby Digital Stereo mix, which works perfectly well for the plethora of jaunty little numbers included. Considering both presentations are mostly mimed, synching is very good – although at least the guys prove they’re not pulling a Milli Vanilli on us with the live footage that’s included.

Extras – you want extras? Well, sorry kiddies, there simply aren’t any. The somewhat “boing!�-infested menu does have an animated intro and musical accompaniment, plus those Wiggly hangers-on Wags the dog, Henry the Octopus, Captain Feathersword and good old Dotty the Big Green Thingy bob up and down from behind the few options available, but that’s it unless you count ‘song selection’ (aka ‘chapter selection’) or a two minute ad for the videos that follows each programme (on a DVD, hello?!) as extra features.

If ever a DVD manages to prove that there are only a finite amount of times you can play it before it lets out a defeated sigh, waves a little white flag and ‘X’s come up in its eyes, I for one will bet money that it would be a disc such as this. It offers exceptional value in munchkin entertainment, and is possibly the best $30 or so you could ever spend on babysitting.

No matter what you may think of The Wiggles, you’ve got to admire four blokes who advocate teddy-bear hugging. Respec’!