The Super Mario Bros. Super Show - Volume 2 is a pretty solid collection of the classic 80's cartoon series featuring Nintendo's popular videogame brothers and live action sequences featuring WWE wrestling legend "Captain" Lou Albano and TV actor Danny Wells. The DVD 4 disc set features over ten hours of episodes and extra content related to the show covering a myriad of weird stories starring Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Toadstool as the partake in some meatball adventures thwarting the plans of various world themed Koopa's.

If you have kids ages 6 - 10 the first thing you'll notice is that this show is really geared towards them - they'll love the live action versions of the Mario Brothers and the cartoons. Both parts of the show are equally Parmesan, with lots of silliness, juvenile fun and non-violent action that you'll feel safe letting your kids watch.

There are a total of 10 hours worth of episodes, with many written using classic tales as a backdrop for new Mario stories. This is a pretty common thing with cartoons, and The Super Mario Super Show does it with extra goofy abandon. On disk one, in the episode entitled "The Pied Koopa," Mario and the gang must save the mushroom children from the Pied Koopa, who has a special flute that plays enchanting music; on disc two in the bonus episode called "Koopenstein" Mario comes face to face with a very different kind of monster; and on disc 3 in the episode called "The Provolone Ranger" Mario rides to the rescue just like the classic Western masked man, The Lone Ranger. The contents of the disc are based on classic real and fictional tales along with what was hip during that time like "Crocodile Dundee," "The Untouchables," and James Bond. Sure, many of these stories are juvenile and downright silly, but the cartoons are well animated, the stories are fun and kids will enjoy the colorful worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom.

There are, however, some production value issues that were probably a touch call to make in editing out. A good example of this are the myriad of commercials for The Legend of Zelda animated show. I completely understand that these were left in the show for the sake completion and editing them out would mean additional editing on the show's content, but it just feels like a cheap tease to a show we can't watch. The other part of the show that should have been edited out are the bumbers for commercial. All of these spot really needed to go and the show needed to be spliced together to make it work. Those are probably my biggest gripes about this entire disk set though.

There are also a ton of great extras in this set particularly for people that grew up watching the cartoon and those that played the videogames for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This bonus material includes extra episodes that didn't have a live action sequence attached to them, character concept art and conceptual art from the show.

In the end, and given the time of year it is, I'd be hard pressed not to recommend this set to fans of Super Mario Bros. and for those looking for something different and safe for their children to watch. The package retails for around 29.98, which is a great value for ten hours worth of family friendly entertainment. You can learn more about how to buy this DVD set by visiting www.shoutfactory.com .