Bunnytown: Hello Bunnies! (2009, Disney)
purchase this DVD (Amazon)

If you’ve been wondering why it seems to take three years for the folks who make Jack’s Big Music Show to get a season’s worth of new episodes together, this might be your answer. Disney’s Bunnytown, assembled by some of the same talent behind Jack’s, has been entertaining Disney Channel devotees since the last few weeks of 2007, and now, with Hello Bunnies! it makes its first leap — er, hop — into the home market.

Jack’s fans will instantly recognize the same visual aesthetic (and some of the same voices) behind Jack, Mary, and Mel; Bunnytown is a brightly colored world of foam and fuzz that fairly leaps off the screen. Here, take a gander:

This isn’t a carbon copy of Jack’s Big Music Show, however; it’s more of a Disneyfied version of The Muppet Show, complete with skits by human actors (including a pair of Laurel and Hardy-type characters). There really aren’t any storylines in any given Bunnytown episode; although you might see a gag repeat with slight variations, they mostly consist of bite-sized bits, light on dialogue and heavy on visual humor. A lot of it seems more suited to between-show bumpers on a network like Noggin than a full-length television series, but that works well with the short attention span of Bunnytown‘s target demographic (such as my daughter, who immediately pronounced it her new favorite series, ranking it higher than Yo Gabba Gabba! or The Wonder Pets — a change I suspect will be exceedingly temporary, but there you go).

The Hello Bunnies! DVD includes four episodes of Bunnytown, as well as a few small bonus features — one of which is, naturally, an advertisement for an upcoming Disney program. It’s all appropriate for young children, although it’s worth noting that some skits, such as “Superbunny,” are drawn along the same black-and-white moral lines that will be familiar to any longtime Disney viewers, and if you aren’t ready for your kids to digest the concept of “good” and “bad” bunnies — or people — then you may need to do some skipping around.