The kids and I picked up a fun DVD at Circuit City yesterday that brought back a lot of memories for me, the complete School House Rock. While the kids have never seen any of the famous 5 minute shorts that used to play on Saturday mornings between cartoons, they thought they were pretty cool. And they’ve been going around all day today singing about “E-lec-tri-city” and how they just “Unpacked their Adjectives.”

They’re all here, all 46 original songs. Cynthia and I got a kick out of “I’m just a Bill”, “The Preamble”, and other favorites. Who could forget “Conjunction Junction,” “Verb: That’s What’s Happening,” and one of my faves, “Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla”? True greatness.

The funny thing is quite a lot of these couldn’t safely air on modern television, with the PC movement and all. Heaven forbid we should talk about such concepts as winning, male and female roles, etc. I’d hate to see what an updated version of these classics would look like.

Interesting thing: there’s a brand-new SHR song included in the set. What subject did they choose? Why, the electoral college, of course! My, how timely.

There’s a whole second disc in the set that goes behind the scenes with info and interviews with the series creators. I haven’t gotten to that disc yet, but it looks to be loaded with interesting stuff. One note I found on the website:

Series co-creator George Newall recalls: “It all started in 1972 on a horseback ride in Wyoming where my boss, David McCall of McCaffrey & McCall Advertising, heard his young son, who couldn’t begin to remember multiplication tables, singing Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead lyrics. When Dave got back to New York, he commissioned musician Bob Dorough to set the multiplication tables to rock music. Bob responded with “Three is a Magic Number.” The lyrics were so visual that my partner, Tom Yohe, drew a storyboard and met with Michael Eisner, who was then ABC’s Vice President of Children’s Programming. On the recommendation of the legendary animator, Chuck Jones, Eisner bought it on the spot. All it took was that one meeting. And that first song is still my favorite.”

That’s right, none other than Michael Eisner, now head of Disney (who owns ABC), was the head of Children’s Programming and bought the original series.

Great series of shorts that are really catchy. As I told the kids last night, “Watch out! You might just learn something!”

By the way, you can go here to listen to a sample of the songs.