| Walt Disney Treasures - The Mickey Mouse Club Featuring the Hardy Boys | 
| Director: Charles F. Haas
Actor: Jess Kirkpatrick
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $32.99
Buy New: $23.35
You Save: $9.64 (29%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $23.35
Avg. Customer Rating:   (34 reviews)
Sales Rank: 12581
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 269 minutes
Number Of Items: 2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.9 x 1
MPN: DISD50362D
UPC: 786936702453
EAN: 0786936702453
ASIN: B000ICM5S0
Release Date: December 19, 2006
Theatrical Release Date: October 3, 1955
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Walt Disney's Hardy Boys April 8, 2008
I loved seeing the old serial again. I wish Disney had included more than just one Mickey Mouse Club episode. I loved the interview with Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk!
The Hardy Boys Relived January 27, 2008
What a great item this is. These episodes took me back to a time when good wholesome entertainment was the norm.
My Favorite of the MMC Serials January 16, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Disney's "The Hardy Boys": "The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure" (1956) is based on Franklin W. Dixon's (aka Edward Stratemeyer) "The Tower Treasure"- the first of many "Hardy Boys" books. It was the first of two "Hardy Boy" serials produced by Disney for its "Mickey Mouse Club" show; which was broadcast from 5PM-6PM each weekday. The one-hour show was broken into four segments with this sort of serial taking up one of these 15-minute segments. The "Spin and Marty" serials were also used for this purpose.
As in the books, Frank (Tim Considine) and Joe (Tommy Kirk) are the teenage sons of Fenton Hardy (Russ Conway), a private detective. Following in their father's footsteps the two boys are looking for a pirate's treasure supposedly hidden in the Applegate Mansion in their neighborhood. The series has a cool theme song (see below). Despite the song there are no pieces of eight. They were one ounce Spanish silver coins, worth 8 reales, or half of a gold dubloon.
Frank and Joe are assisted by Joe's girlfriend Iola (Carole Ann Campbell) and hindered by their Aunt Gertrude who is looking after them while their father is out of town.
The Applegate mansion is a spooky looking house and when the boys finally meet the owner he confirms that there really is a treasure, given to his grandfather by LaFitte the pirate as repayment for when he burned the Applegate plantation. His grandfather hid the treasure and no one has been able to find it since.
The story has gold doubloons and crooks, and Iola gets a lot of scream queen moments. "Applegate's Treasure" was my personal favorite of all the MMC serials. The only drawback is that it was a rather complex mystery with a lot of misdirection, and having to watch it in a cliffhanger serial format was extremely frustrating. No sooner had they cleared up the suspense from the last episode than something would happen and they would break off- telling you tune in for the next episode. But we were hooked and faithfully tuned in day after day. A lot of family plans were altered during this time so as to not interfere with daily viewing.
Watching it now I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the performances by the child actors; especially Campbell and Kirk. The serial is definitely several notches above "Spin & Marty" in what was demanded of the cast, and for the most part they come through.
The DVD has some nice special features including a 2006 interview with Considine and Sands in the Disney Studio where the serial was filmed. Also included is the entire (hour-long) MMC episode in which it premiered. It was a Monday, which was "Fun With Music Day", and Darlene does a lengthy song and dance number with Bobby.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
"Gold dubloons and pieces of eight, handed down to Applegate? From buccaneers who fought for years for good dubloons and pieces of eight. Handed down in a pirate chest, the gold they sailed for east and west. The treasure bright that made men fight, till none were left to bury the chest. So now the gold and pieces of eight all belong to Applegate. The chest is here but wait...now where are those gold dubloons and pieces of eight?"
The Original MTV! January 12, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
MOUSE TV! That was great stuff!
I want to say up front that these five stars are for BABY BOOMERS ONLY!
Don't buy this DVD for your children and expect that they're going to love it just like you did as a kid -- you'd be fooling yourself. If your kids are 5 or older, where they're now socializing with peers, "The Hardy Boys" is probably going to be laughable to them. You should go get them some "Spongebob Squarepants" cartoons if you really want them to be happy and entertained.
Here's what YOU will get out of it, Baby Boomers: This DVD is PURE 1956-57 NOSTALGIA. It's clean and it's moral, and cloying, and Eisenhowerish. In the introduction, one of The Hardy Boys even set our minds at ease by assuring us that there were NO MORE PIRATES to worry about - that they were all dead (which, like all the Eisenhower propaganda, was not at all true. Modern-day pirates were, and still are, even more vicious and ruthless than the original ones!). It's all about as "true" as the name Franklin W. Dixon, the pseudonymish ghostwriters' sobriquet of the original Hardy Boys series.
But we still love our Hardy Boys. Here are examples of what you will see: ultra-clean streets with no cigarette butts or McDonald's trash; white picket fences; Aunt Gertrude with an apron; lots of checkered shirts; china and silver table settings for breakfast, no Cheerios box on the table; a thug/scoundrel/bad guy with really nice teeth; "conformity wallpaper" that repeats itself every 3 inches to avoid waste; Fenton Hardy's perfect gig line; and lots more Ozzie and Harrietish gooey parallels. What you won't see is any black actors, typical of Disney. But that was true of a lot of period TV shows so I won't beat him up for that anachronistic omission. But black people aren't much going to watch this show as a result and I wouldn't blame them a bit.
The story? There's a rumor around the Hamlet of Bayport that Old Man Applegate's family came into a big chest of pirate treasure (gold dubloons!) and that the curmudgeony old devil has it buried somewhere on his vast, spooky, and deteriorating estate. Several ne'er-do-wells are after the booty, including a thief, (a stereotyped IRISH one, of course!), The Hardy Boys, and their female friend, Iola Martin. The boys and Iola set out to unearth this very cozy mystery. Iola is a typical Disney pedaphile's dream. She (played by Carol Ann Campbell) looks like a fully-formed mini-woman, the height of a young girl and with a Munchkin voice. She has supple lips, big dark cow-eyes, long eyelashes, a perfect nose, and a slightly weak chin to emphasize her prospective submissiveness to Alpha-males.
The Hardy Boys live with their dad, Fenton Hardy, (the younger Hardy Boy runs outside and actually HUGS his dad when he arrives home from work!) and with their Aunt Gertrude. Why no mom? Because the boys disobey her with some frequency and, in that era, encouraging youths to disobey their moms would not have gone over so good... but an AUNT can be disobeyed to a degree without much social consequence. Anyway, that's pretty much the entire basis for the story.
There were ultimately only two Hardy Boys stories, parceled out in episodes, on The Mickey Mouse Club; this one and "The Mystery of the Ghost Farm," which ran later. This entry, "The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure," aired in 1956-57 over four weeks. There is an introduction plus 19 episodes (each is about 10 minutes). The particular Mickey Mouse Club episode which introduces this Hardy Boys story is included in its entirety, (we get to see Annette Funicello's chubby little legs!), albeit, you have to bring it up via "features".
There is also a contemporary interview with Tim Considine (who was also in "Spin and Marty") and Tommy Kirk about the series. Finally, this two-disc set additionally includes a "photo gallery" and some photos of Hardy Boys memorabilia. Disney has grossly over-packaged the DVDs in a regular plastic case which is housed within a metal, pop-apart case, making it inconvenient for storing on your DVD shelf. I recommend throwing away the tin case. This is a LIMITED EDITION (a nasty Disney marketing trick) and so 65,000 of these DVD packages are being issued for now. So if you MUST have one, you'd better go ahead and order it before the scalpers gain control of the pricing. The package also includes a cardboard mini-cover from a Dell Hardy Boys comic book and an informational booklet which mostly promotes other Disney DVDs.
The crystal clear black-and-white image is full-screen and all the opening sequences (episode openings) were snagged from the movie "Treasure Island". Almost ALL of this series was shot inside of Disney's Studio #2 at Burbank, California. This is affirmed when you see Fenton Hardy enter his home and his shadow is cast against the face of the house (away from the viewer) while the shadow from the picket fence is cast upon the sidewalk in front of the house, (toward the viewer) in the opposite direction!
You will get pretty sick of hearing the "Gold Dubloons" introductory song, sung ad nauseum by the same guy who did the voice of Tony the Tiger. Each of the 19 episodes offers this introduction with full credits also being scrolled each time.
Once you get past the Disney packaging fluff, this is a very nice presentation that anyone who fervently watched this series when it originally aired will love. If you have any more questions about the product, just pose them in "comments" (below), and I'll try to field your queries.
Be a kid again in 1956, Disney style! January 10, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
From the second season of the original Mickey Mouse Club comes the hit serial "The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure" in this wonderful Walt Disney Treasures 2-disc set! Starring Tim Considine (of Spin and Marty and My Three Sons fame) as Frank Hardy and Disney legend Tommy Kirk (star of The Shaggy Dog, Old Yeller, Misadventures of Merlin Jones, and a host of other Disney faves) as younger brother Joe Hardy, the two Hardy brothers are preteens growing up in the suburbs on their Aunt Gertrude's watch while their detective father spends most of his time at work in the city. Out for the summer, Frank and Joe want nothing more than a mystery of their own to solve, and when they meet Perry Robinson, an unlucky new kid who is struggling to stay out of reform school and keep his job working for old Mr. Applegate, they find their first client! Determined to prove that Perry is a victim of circumstance and foul play, Frank and Joe soon find themselves caught up in a near forgotten case of missing pirate treasure. At first, no one else in town even believes the treasure exists other than Mr. Applegate, the rightful owner, but when suspicious characters begin to come out of the woodwork, everyone starts to take an interest!
The Hardy Boys in "The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure" is classic Disney fun for the whole family. Tim and Tommy are wonderful, but particularly scene stealing is the adorable Carole Ann Campbell in the role of Iola, the roller skating neighborhood girl with a crush on Joe who wants to be a Hardy Boy too! She is literally too cute for words! Despite the 1956 air dates, the story remains engaging and suspenseful, presented here for the first time out of the Mickey Mouse Club context and back to back in glorious black and white. There are 19 episodes that make up the story, each just under 12 minutes long. Disc One holds the first 9 installments, plus the full episode of the Mickey Mouse Club that introduced the series. Disc Two holds the remaining 10 installments.
As usual with the limited edition Walt Disney Treasures Collection sets, The Hardy Boys comes in a collector's tin and includes a certificate of authenticity, a booklet, and a postcard sized collectible artwork, this one being a Hardy Boys comic book cover reproduction. Some wonderful bonus features are included on the discs as well. Both discs are hosted by Leonard Maltin, and Disc One holds the featurette "From Dixon to Disney," while disc two holds "The Hardy Boys Unmasked" and two fine galleries of photos and merchandise. As one might guess, "From Dixon to Disney" is all about the origin of the Hardy Boys as a book series and Walt's translation of the stories from books to small screen. There's some very interesting information to be found in this featurette. No less interesting and very heartwarming to watch is "The Hardy Boys Unmasked," which is essentially a reminiscent interview with Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk today. Also worth describing is that aforementioned Mickey Mouse Club episode included on Disc One. For those curious, this episode is the first of the second season and includes a Mickey Mouse Newsreel in which two children visit the USS Nautilus, the first atomic submarine, a Fun With Music intro and Coney Island number starring Darlene and Bobby, the Hardy Boys introduction in which Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk explain the serial that will be debuting on the next episode of the Mickey Mouse Club, the cartoon "Mickey's Rival," and a poetic moment with Jimmie Dodd, head Mouseketeer. Also worth mentioning is that this episode introduces Mouseketeer Cheryl Holdridge (not to be confused with the Cheryl who visits the USS Nautilus). Why is this worth mentioning? Because, for those of us guys who watched the Mickey Mouse Club as kids (myself decades later, on the Disney Channel), most of us either crushed on Annette or Cheryl. I was a Cheryl man myself.
In truth, I would prefer to own all these Mickey Mouse Club serials within the context of the Mickey Mouse Club shows released in complete season sets (in volumes if need be). However, I can also see the value of owning them in sets like this, where one can sit and watch the complete serial uninterrupted except by the enjoyable opening pirate song and credits. Without a doubt, fans of "The Hardy Boys" should consider this set a must-own, especially since there's no sign of Mickey Mouse Club complete sets being released anytime soon!
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