"The Mother Goose Treasury Featuring The Little Miss Muffet Collection" (Vol. 2) [1992]

Second volume features the classic Babylon Man, and Miss Muffet, played by the beautiful Sharon Baird.

The film opens with Bertram who finished building his pyramid stacked with blocks. As he shows Mother Goose, he knocks it down having to rebuild it again. Mother Goose relates the situation to the popular song "London Bridge," but unable to read the story as she can't find her book once again (Mother Goose must have a short-term memory). As she finds it on the chair, she reads about "London Bridge" then the scene transitions into the musical performance of the song. You can tell the bridge is made of those miniature figures, usually made as collector's items, were used for the bridge. After that, Mother Goose has to do her shopping and unveils her mega-long list of things she must pick up, including Bertram's favorite dish: porridge.

Mother Goose runs into Mary Mary, looking contrary with her roses, reciting about her and her garden hoping it'll grow. Meanwhile, Bertram tries rebuilding his pyramid while a man runs into him asking where Babylon is. Confused, the man asks what's the quickest way to Babylon, and Bertram responds that he flies to get to his destinations. Absurd as it may seem, the man then flies off to Babylon.

Next scene is Joan, played by the beautiful Wendy Hawkes, and sings "Where, Oh Where, Has Our Little Dog Gone" looking good in purple. Gentlemen, if you thought she was gorgeous, two more gorgeous women appear with her! They too help Joan find her dog but to no avail. While the dog runs away, Mary's garden continues to grow before her eyes.

Bertram runs into Little Miss Muffet as he watches her eat Kurd and Way, and recites about her. Little Miss Muffet stands fearless, claiming not to be afraid of anything, until a spider sat beside her, and runs away. After that madness, comes another solo scene with Bertram remaining optimistic and talking to himself, hoping to eat as soon as he can the moment he finds Mother Goose.

The kids see Mother Goose, while she's about to do some serious shopping, stops by and promises to read the kids a story. She can't find her book (again), until The Letters Man—Joe Giamalva—pops up and sings the "A, B, C, D" song (I clearly remembered this scene when I was a kid, even though I couldn't dance like that). After that, Bertram runs into Mary and her garden is enormous and still continues to grow. However, Bertram needs to find Mother Goose and runs into Joan, looking for her dog. With little effort, Bertram finds Joan's dog in no time!

Suddenly a man named Simple Simon reads to kids the story about him...using Mother Goose's book. Then Mother Goose reads the story about Simple Simon, which was quite hilarious to say the least. You then learn about Betty Botter, a tongue-twister about Betty purchasing a better butter than her previous butter because her previous butter was too bitter for her batter (whew!). Bertram then summarizes the entire story of Betty by reciting the entire thing really fast. If you want a tongue-twister, try saying the popular "New York, Unique" five times fast.

The butter shop owner points to the porridge shop for Bertram, where Mother Goose may have gone. The "Peas Porridge Hot" song was musically performed with great choreography. Now that Mother Goose picked up a bowl of porridge, Bertram couldn't help but eat right away and sings along to the "Porridge" song.

Now that the duo are heading back home, Mother Goose forgot to do the rest of her shopping and putting it off for tomorrow. They both run into Mary Mary once again, and her garden is overflowing. Out of some random blue, a vine hangs over Bertram's head dangling alive. Mother Goose and Bertram both finally arrive home, as they promise to finish up any unfinished business tomorrow. Instead of a star, they see the Moon at night and recite "I See The Moon." After, Mother Goose blesses the viewer blowing a lovely kiss. The film ends with credits.

At the very end, Bertram plays a commercial pitchman and promotes the other volumes of the Mother Goose series. He also encourages to look for them at the video store, and to write a letter to the following address:

If you look this up on Google Maps, you'll notice the location of this building. I was surprised it's still there..until I saw the "For Lease" sign at the bottom.

Like the first volume, lots of chroma key being done here and lots of scenes acted out prevalent to the previous volume. I must say that when I was a kid, I loved seeing those girls helping Joan find her dog. I was in love. Even though one of my first celebrity crushes were Cindy Margolis and one of the Spice Girls, I couldn't resist seeing these lovely females. One thing: as they performed, you'll notice that at the moment they're about to finish lip-syncing the song, they sung the wrong lyrics by mistake. As a result, their lips did not sync in with the song played. Problem is, your eyes will be too busy glowing at the beauty of these girls. Seriously, they were wonderful; I loved them.

Speaking of females, it just so happened that one of them, the girl in blue, actually dropped the bowl at the very end of performing "Peas Porridge Hot." According to my VCR time counter, it was around the 23:53 mark but you'd have to pause and slow it down to really see it as she was in a very back of the rest of the performers. It happened so quick that by the time you try and pause it on your first few tries, it'll jump to the next scene where Mother Goose tries to hurry Bertram back home at a decent time.

The scene involving Little Miss Muffet, played by Sharon Baird, was a little seductive. If you play the scene and look away from the TV, or computer if that's where you're watching it on, you'll know what I mean (yes, that's exactly what I mean). I can't help but say that Little Miss Muffet has quite a sweat-inducing voice. It's so sexy. Of course, it's typical many dudes like me love the typical cheerleader-like girly voice, but come to think of it: women with deep voices are still attractive. If it's too deep, we have a problem.

Lastly, the credits had a pinch of typos. I understand very few pay attention to the credits, but if you really look at the credits, I would think the urge to quickly finish editing and outputting the final product back to master tape was done in a hurry: Wendy Hawkes' last name was misspelled, the Cameramen list was missing an "a" and the cast for the Production Stage Crew were listed twice, cutting out the Video Operator, Stage Manager and Script Supervisor. That's quite a chunk. See the credits below to see; they were written exactly as it appeared on tape.

Overall, there's a lot of actions and scenes keeping your attention on complete hold all throughout. Since I enjoyed the scene with Joan and the girls, even when I was younger, I'm sure you'll enjoy seeing them too. This volume is indeed included on DVD along with volume one, but I never understood why the production company stopped there. No more rights granted? Sales not high enough? I will never understand why, as I'm sure folks would ask the same about the popular hit anime series Sailor Moon, although their DVD release issue is more different. Nevertheless, what I do know is this:

If you are one of the cast members, backstage crew, and/or producers of this series, I would like to interview you on this website. Please provide full details and proof that it is you, making sure I'm talking to the right person (word from your manager/agent will help out a lot). You may use the Contact form on our contact page. The questions I ask you and your answers will be posted here for fans to see. I look forward to hearing from one of you!

UPDATE: Check out our interview with the star of the Mother Goose series, Mother Goose herself, Cheryl Rhoads!

Kris Caballero

Founder of KCU Network and KCU Plus, Kris has been writing since he started blogging in late 2005. Officially back to doing computer programming, Kris enjoys reading books on Mathematics, Quantum Computing, Philosophy, plus playing old video/MS-DOS games, digital video archiving, listening to sports, public radio and classical music.

• About me • Contact me