Today’s installment of the Christmas Special Countdown basically ends at the halfway mark. After four days in a row of countdown installments, tomorrow’s solo entry comes at a pretty good time. Though in looking ahead, we’re not going to have another one for a week! I guess that’s the problem when you integrate those solo entries into an overall ranking system because they have to post where they rank. I could have taken liberties with the rankings to prevent that, but I have integrity! That integrity forced me to also break-up yesterday’s final entry with today’s first one. I think the two pair well when it comes to discussing the pros and cons of a Christmas special, but I couldn’t figure out a way to make that happen. Especially considering that yesterday’s post included 11 entries and today’s does as well. Had one included 10 it would have been easy enough, but that’s just the way things ended up. Without further adieu, here’s number 115:
I feel this one pairs well with Yes, Virginia because it overcomes the weaknesses of that special, while somewhat lacking its strengths. In case you forgot, Yes, Virginia is a nice little Christmas story with some unfortunate CG animation. It’s not good. This being a Pixar television special, it looks fantastic! It’s just very light on Christmas. Toy Story That Time Forgot is really a post Christmas special. Originally, I even considered doing it as a gag December 26th post. It takes place after the holiday has come and new toys have been bestowed upon young Bonnie, but none appear poised to push out her old favorites (wait until they meet the spork later on). As for her friend, on the other hand, he got something way more interesting: video games. On a playdate, Bonnie gets to experience the same while the toys are left to peruse this other kid’s playroom which has been filled with a new dinosaur product line. This kid got a ton of stuff for Christmas and it kind of takes me back to when my son got into Paw Patrol. As a dad who grew up adoring toys (and still does), I had to get him everything Paw Patrol I could get my hands on and I probably went a little overboard. The same happened for this kid and it’s overwhelming. He doesn’t seem to care and the toys are left to fend for themselves and they’re basically all a bunch of Buzz Lightyears. Woody and the gang have to prove to them they’re actually toys and while it feels a bit familiar, it’s still pretty fun. It’s just not very Christmassy.
This is our second Christmas special (though chronologically, it came first) where the Dickens tale A Christmas Carol is treated like a historical reality. In this holiday themed episode of The Real Ghostbusters, our favorite busters somehow travel back in time and accidentally bust the ghosts that were supposed to show Ebenezer Scrooge the error of his ways. Now, I’ve been pretty vocal about my disinterest in adaptations of A Christmas Carol here, but this one is legitimately clever. Especially when your main characters are known for fighting ghosts. And apparently, that night was extremely important for the world as busting those ghosts changes the future for the worse forcing the Ghostbusters to try and set things right. First, by taking the place of the ghosts, and then by actually springing them from the containment unit. Longtime viewers get to enjoy a trip into where all of the ghosts they’ve been capturing all series long are held and there’s some fun cameos. This one is ranked this high because the premise is fun and this era of the show had some pretty nice animation and vocal performances. If you’ve never cared about Ghostbusters or The Real Ghostbusters then you might not enjoy it as much as I, who was raised on this stuff. Let’s hope Mondo never makes X-Mas variants of their Ghostbusters figures because my wallet may never recover.
Johnny Bravo was another early Cartoon Network original that found success. He’s basically a meat head with an Elvis obsession and this short Christmas cartoon puts that on display. It’s a bit like The Santa Clause, or “Christmas Flintstone,” in that Johnny takes over for Santa because the jolly old elf has become incapacitated. The twist here is Johnny is the one who incapacitated him. I guess Tim Allen did the same when he startled the Santa on his roof, but Johnny literally beats him up. Santa then demands he take over and Johnny reluctantly complies. There’s some good gags as Johnny pops in on characters featured in the show and some who are not, including a famous cameo. Perhaps the best part though is it’s all narrated by Adam West. His dry, yet earnest, delivery is perfect for this sort of thing. The segment is one of three from a half hour show so it’s extremely brief compared to most of the specials on this list which works to his advantage. I can only handle the character of Johnny Bravo in small doses and this is perfect.
You know it’s a big tree when the candle needs to be put on it from the balcony.
This episode of The Legend of Prince Valiant was a tough one to rank. On one hand, it gets a little preachy and the episode’s resolution is perhaps too tidy for the weighty material leading up to it. On the other hand, it’s a more serious addition to the Christmas special lineage which makes it refreshing and the weighty material is handled pretty well, for the most part. It’s all about seeking peace in a war-torn land. A local lord has been killed and his son is expected to rule in his place. His followers want vengeance, but he just wants an end to the long-running feud. Our titular character, Prince Valiant, is politically bound to defend his allies so if a battle is to be waged then he and his knights are duty bound to join in when they want nothing more than to go home for Christmas without bloodshed. It’s not afraid to show some violence and death, it’s just not gratuitous. And such subjects are spoken of plainly. It’s also a relic of the original The Family Channel so, yeah, there’s a religious component to it as well. The plot even centers on a book, though to my shock the book was not the Bible. The animation is solid and if you want something non-comical for your Christmas viewing then this might be worth a look.
Despite what the image suggests, the whole gang does not get together to celebrate Christmas.
Mickey’s first animated Christmas special in years is a bit of a mixed bag, hence why it’s here in the middle. The animation and overall look of this one is great, some of Disney’s best television animation for the era. The special is an hour and a half broken up into three segments making it essentially three half-hour specials in one. The sequel special kept the running time, but broke it up into more segments which is about the only thing that special got right. This one kind of struggles with each segment getting long and repetitive. It doesn’t help that the first one is a “Christmas Everyday” story with Donald’s nephews in the lead role. That one is repetitive by design. The middle segment, which stars Goofy and a younger version of Max than we saw in Goof Troop, is probably my favorite and it’s just all about Goofy trying to get his son to believe in Santa Claus. The third is a telling of The Gift of the Magi starring Mickey and Minnie and it’s as satisfying as most adaptations of that story – which is to say not very. Each segment has its moments, but this one falls short of being a true Christmas classic despite its pedigree.
Oh yes, we’re including the Batman episodes! Years ago, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Batman: The Animated Series, I did a weekly rundown of each episode in the show as well as its sequel show, The New Batman Adventures. As such, these existed outside of the usual Christmas Spot countdown, but since there are two Christmas episodes among them it only felt right to include them here. This one is the series premiere for The New Batman Adventures and it’s like an anthology episode. The first segment features Harley and Ivy going on a shopping spree with a drugged-out Bruce Wayne, the middle segment features Batgirl stopping Clayface at a shopping mall, and the third and final segment actually takes place on New Year’s Eve where the Joker is up to no good and it falls on Batman and Robin to stop him. It’s a weird one for the show because it comes first in production order despite the Robin character getting introduced later on in the series, but we don’t really care about that for this purpose. All you need to know is this is a perfectly fine episode of the show that takes place at Christmas. The segmented nature of it does prevent it from being able to lock-on and tell one cohesive, satisfying, story instead opting more for the Looney Tunes approach. It’s entertaining, and the final scene is a nice piece of Batman lore for this universe, and overall I just find it more enjoyable than what The Justice League did.
I am a big fan of the original Prep & Landing holiday special. I hope to be a big fan of the new one coming this year. I am not that big of a fan of Naughty vs. Nice. It obviously isn’t bad since I’m placing it roughly in the middle of my countdown, and by virtue of its association with the better special I tend to watch it annually, but it does some things I don’t like. Namely, it makes the lead, Wayne, just completely unlikable. The first one flirts with that idea, but it’s a bit more reasonable and relatable. This one just gives Wayne a case of sibling rivalry where he comes across as extremely petty, self-serving, and really just an asshole. Can you have a successful Christmas special where the lead is an asshole? Sure, but probably not when it’s ultimately trying to be a wholesome take on the holiday. It’s not all bad as there’s some humorous bits and the presentation is still fantastic, it’s just way less enjoyable.
Another old school holiday short, and one I deemed much better than the collection of old shorts featured further back in this countdown. Popeye is one of the original stars of black and white cartoons, but this Christmas short comes after that when he was in color and no longer part of Fleischer. That was the best era for Popeye, but these color ones from Famous Studios aren’t all bad. And this mad cap Christmas short is pretty fun and what most probably want out of a Popeye short. Olive and Popeye have put his nephews to bed when Bluto shows up dressed as Santa Claus to try and steal Popeye’s girl. Only Popeye thinks he’s the real deal and is probably more captivated by this rather bulky Santa than Olive seems to be. There’s some funny bits where Popeye is basically throwing himself at Santa until the big guy finally gets rid of him for good. Once the cat is out of the bag, Popeye can get to kicking some ass and eventually Bluto gets his due and violence solves everything. Popeye ends the short in the Santa suit because how could he not?
This is one I wanted to rank lower. It’s a 2014 cartoon I had never heard of with only so-so animation, but each time I went back to it for this ranking I was reminded that, “Hey, it’s pretty good!” Now, it’s not sentimental or anything and is just about some kids stuck on a monster-infested island. It’s got some gross-out humor. Poop plays a pretty central role to the monster version of Santa, the aforementioned Zanti-Clops, who takes old junk from kids and leaves behind a steaming pile of green, jewel-encrusted, dung. One of the nerds, Dudley, is anti-Santa or whatever and takes it upon himself to find out the truth, which nearly gets him killed. See, Zanti-Clops eats all who see him, but it turns out he’s not such a bad guy. He still inflicts some terror upon the kids before this one is over and we get even more poop jokes. If you can look past so many poop jokes then you’ll probably be entertained by this. It’s another short one too with some solid character work.
Yeah, we’re doubling-up on Prep & Landing today with this one being the short the franchise has produced. As the title implies, this one is more like a spy mission and it’s a pretty simple one: infiltrate Santa’s work shop and retrieve something for Mrs. Claus. The stakes are a bit undefined. We can clearly see that Lanny and Wayne fear Santa and what might happen should they be caught snooping around, but he’s also Santa. What’s he really going to do? Despite the stakes seeming awfully small, it still manages to create some solid tension while the elves are on their mission. There’s some nice set pieces and stunt shots and the item they’re after leads to a solid enough conclusion. It’s brief, but benign. I usually watch it out of habit at this point after I watch the truly special original.
This is a popular one I tend to enjoy less than most. Maybe it’s because I grew up with this one on VHS so it didn’t have that unobtainable quality it had for a lot of people. Now it’s far easier to see thanks to streaming and there have been some physical releases, though some stuff had to be cut for copywrite reasons. The special is great on paper: the Muppets gather at the home of Fozzy’s mom and get snowed in with the gang from Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock. It’s all of the major Jim Henson properties literally under one roof. It just runs out of steam for me. A lot of the setup is fun and seeing the Muppets interact with the cast of Sesame Street is surprisingly entertaining. The Fraggles though are kind of wasted and the back half gets bogged down by concern for Miss Piggy and songs. So many songs. It’s as if they couldn’t fill an hour, so they decided to just have everyone sit around and sing Christmas carols. It’s really not good. Still, some people love The Muppets so much that it’s worth sitting through, but this is the rare special you can turn off about halfway through and not have really missed out on anything. Well, except that Jim Henson cameo at the very end which is pretty sweet. And it’s made all the more so by him no longer being with us.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
The 2024 edition of The Christmas Spot has been a year in which we return to a show we haven’t talked about in a little while. Today’s subject is certainly one such show as we’re heading back to Arlen, TX for a Christmas episode of King of the Hill. Up to now, the only episode…
I have a pretty tremendous blind spot for most animated shows produced between 2005-2015. If it was a show animated and marketed at adults, then I might have checked it out. If it was a show created primarily for kids and not based on some existing IP I knew from my childhood then I almost…
This one has been a long time coming. One of my all-time favorite television shows is The Venture Bros., but it’s a show I really haven’t spent much time discussing on this blog. I guess because I view it as contemporary, even though the pilot premiered almost 20 years ago now. For most of this…
We’ve got another 11 special slot for you today. After all, it is the season of giving, is it not? And once again, we’re mostly sticking to the land of children’s fair or G-Rated content. In fact, our most aggressively G-rated special leads things off today.
I detailed in the write-up for this one that I basically have a “No Preschool” shows rule when I do this and that’s because that’s a genre that is very specialized. It’s not that adult comedy isn’t, but preschool might be the only genre that really can’t entertain a demographic other than its intended one. However, one show rises above them all: Bluey. I know many adults who adore the Australian import and her canine family – I’m married to one of them. The show is charming and clever and it manages to impart worthwhile life lessons without feeling too formulaic. The adults are incredibly patient with their children and always down to play making them seem like the idealized version of a parental figure. Unfortunately for our purposes, the Christmas episodes aren’t the best. This one unfortunately is a bit formulaic as Bluey is wronged by her toddler aged cousin and basically seeks revenge by hurting her feelings. Still, there’s some fun stuff and I really like the food coma impacted adults. Bluey might make the parents play like kids, but it’s also not afraid to show them as adults.
Pokémon may not be as popular as it was in the late 90s and early 2000s, but it’s still plenty relevant. The show, in its various forms, number hundreds of episodes and yet this Christmas episode from 1999 is one of the harder to view today. That’s all due to the presence of Jynx, the pocket monster who resembles a character in blackface. Even though she’s been recolored to deemphasize that, this episode still remains “lost.” Is that a big deal? Only if you really like Christmas episodes. In this one, Ash and his pals wind up at Santa’s village and need to help him out and thwart Team Rocket in the process. There’s a bit of a B plot with Jessie and her connection with Christmas, but it’s nothing profound. It’s a pretty okay episode of TV with some interesting lore (that I think the show dropped) if you’re a Pokémon fan.
It still blows my mind that the 1987 iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never tackled Christmas. There was no Christmas episode, no Christmas themed action figures, nothing. The 1991 movie The Secret of the Ooze got a Christmas-themed poster to help sell VHS copies of the movie which feels like the closest thing we got. We really should have had a mutant reindeer or something in the Playmates line. Anyway, this holiday episode comes from the 2003 series and it remains the only Christmas episode any TMNT cartoon has featured – which is perhaps even more insane. It’s based on the Michelangelo one-shot from Mirage Studios and features a simple plot where Mikey thwarts a Christmas robbery and also adopts an adorable kitten. Klunk is the original ice cream kitty. The issue was adapted for the show and it’s pretty faithful. The only major change is that while Mikey is out doing stuff the rest of the gang is back at the lair hosting a bunch of friends they’ve made throughout the show. It’s solid, nothing spectacular or revolutionary, and it does feature some nice Christmas outfits during the final scene that I’d love to see in action figure form. At least in 2025, the Christmas drought comes to an end for TMNT with the theatrical short Chrome Alone 2: Lost in New Jersey. It’s from the current version of the franchise and is attached to a new SpongeBob movie opening on the 19th. Hopefully, it can be viewed easily without seeing that movie.
At least it gives Disney a new look to sell as a doll for Belle.
In 2017 I had the crazy idea to dedicate one of my write-ups to a movie – what was I thinking?! If I had to guess, I was just curious if this direct-to-video midquel for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was any good. The actual movie is one of my wife’s favorites so it was something we could check out together. And it’s okay. Honestly, most of the direct-to-video Disney stuff I’ve seen has been perfectly fine. Not on the level of the theatrical output, but mostly entertaining. It doesn’t look as good, naturally, and features some regrettable CG that hasn’t aged well, but it tells a decent Christmas story that mostly fits into the movie without creating too many obvious plot holes. And it has Tim Curry who is wonderful in everything. Honestly, if you’re able to separate this from its theatrical better then it’s perfectly fine. That’s just an admittedly difficult thing to do if you’ve already seen it a bunch.
The Disney show that asked “Do you want to build a snowman?” way before Anna.
Interesting that we wind up at The Weekenders a mere three spots ahead of Pokémon. That’s because the legacy of this show seems to be that it temporarily dethroned Pokémon as the Saturday morning ratings king. I honestly don’t really know why. The Weekenders isn’t a bad show or anything, it’s just a bit of a low energy one which feels a bit out of place for Saturday morning. Then again, it’s from ABC which always had the low energy Saturday morning shows. It was like their specialty or something. I was a Fox Kids kid so I didn’t watch much of the stuff on ABC and by the time this show was airing I wasn’t awake on Saturday morning anyway. This one is fine though. It does the thing where it gathers a bunch of kids from different backgrounds, gives a snapshot of their holiday experience, and also sneaks in one wacky adventure that mostly goes wrong. I don’t like the look of this one at all, but the kids are well represented and feel authentic. It’s an emotionally mature cartoon, whether or not that’s something you like is more subjective than anything.
The Christmas special where Nickelodeon tortures a kid and his dog.
Interestingly enough, this leads us to Doug. Doug was the quiet Nicktoon. It’s grounded, to a point, but has its own cartoon traits to distinguish it from live-action. And most of those traits rest with the dog, Porkchop, who is the subject of “Doug’s Christmas Story.” Porkchop is a bit like Scooby Doo, though without the talking. He gets accused of attacking one of the kids in town which is preposterous for all regular viewers of the show, but it gets taken very seriously. We basically see the titular Doug imagine his dog getting put down and it’s made rather apparent that euthanasia is on the table for old Porkchop. It’s a humorless Christmas special that’s rather weighty as a result. And that’s fine as long as the show does the plot justice. As far as that goes, the results are a bit mixed. It loses me in the final act, but it’s not bad and a sad story about a dog at Christmas is sure to bring about some Christmas feels.
I didn’t know how to separate these two, so I didn’t! This episode comes from Disney’s take on Doug which is largely viewed as inferior to the Nickelodeon years. I mostly subscribe to that notion, but I honestly didn’t keep up with the Disney version. I am by no means the authority on Doug, but I did enjoy this episode just a little more than the first one. The plot is Doug’s family is preparing for a new baby and that basically consumes his parents at Christmas time. His dad is apparently afraid to leave the house or has money concerns with a new kid on the way so the Funnie family won’t be buying anything or doing anything this Christmas. Doug hates this lack of Christmas spirit so he and Porkchop vow to have their own, secret, Christmas up in his room. It honestly takes up only a few minutes of the episode’s duration as most is devoted to Doug navigating the holiday and then the final act is all about the baby. It’s charming though and the final act hits better than the first Christmas special.
The DC Animated Universe has made a few attempts at Christmas episodes, but I don’t think any are really a home run. This is the one from the ensemble show which brings its own challenges, but also opportunity to view the holiday through different perspectives. Writer Paul Dini attempts that with “Comfort and Joy” and the results are just decent as opposed to a Christmas classic. I think I enjoyed the more offbeat plot between Flash and Ultra-Humanite the most. It had some solid humor and I like the depiction of Ultra-Humanite. The Martian Manhunter plot is the one that I think the episode wants us to be moved by, but it’s pretty conventional “Guy goes to small town and finds the Christmas spirit,” plot. It’s fine, but it’s been done before. And the Hawkgirl and Green Lantern plot is a waste of time. No Batman and no Wonder Woman so if you wanted to see them you were let down. Considering Batman has already taken a go at Christmas, it’s not a big loss. I guess I would have liked to see what Wonder Woman was up to, but at least she wasn’t shoehorned into one of the other plots which were crowded enough.
If you want a brief, Christmas, short that looks pretty cozy then have I got the cartoon for you. Bedtime for Sniffles is a Chuck Jones directed Warner Bros. cartoon starring the mouse in his cute days. Sniffles would evolve into more of a pest since his cartoons weren’t funny enough, but here he’s just a sweet character trying to stay awake on Christmas Eve. There’s some visual humor, but nothing outlandish. This is Jones really trying to audition for Disney as the look of this one is very evocative of a Mickey Mouse short with realistic and well-detailed backgrounds and a character that emotes in the cutest way possible. It’s harmless fluff and better than a lot of other Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies Christmas specials.
Bobby – slamming doors in the face of carolers since 1995.
More cutesy stuff as we’re onto the Fox Kids series Bobby’s World. This was a Howie Mandel creation back when it felt like a lot of comedians were getting opportunities in television. We had Camp Candy, Little Rosie, and Life with Louie among others. Bobby’s World felt like an early breakout hit for the Fox Kids Network on its march towards Saturday morning dominance. Bobby was pretty wholesome, but the show was also a comedy so there’s plenty of silly stuff to entertain the kids. For this one, Bobby travels to see his grandparents and engage with his extended family. He wants a video game for Christmas really bad, but he’s going to have to learn the Christmas spirit instead because everything goes wrong. It’s solid, though I did kind of hate the resolution. It’s worth watching and you could really put together a solid viewing party of Christmas specials from Fox Kids if that was your goal.
My mom loves the kid on the left so much she named her cat after him.
Boy, did this one take a tumble since I first mentioned it? This one was part of my initial list of my 25 favorite Christmas specials which I compiled back in 2015. Then, I had it ranked all the way up at number 16! There may have been some recency bias at play for even though this special debuted in 2009 I think I had seen it for the first time fairly recently in 2015. Back then, I mostly stuck to “the classics” when it came to my Christmas viewing and it was doing this blog that really caused me to both branch out and to rediscover Christmas specials I had not seen in years. Yes, Virginia suffered as a result, but it’s still plenty fine. It might have worked a little better as a shorter subject as it is a little slow, but I enjoy the story which is loosely based on reality. In it, Virginia is a believer in Santa, but she’s at that age where her peers stop believing and she’s getting left behind. Her dad has a saying that “If it’s in The Sun, it’s true,” referring to the local paper so Virginia decides to write to the paper asking if Santa Claus is real. And wouldn’t you know, they print a reply that says “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!” It’s a great climax, it just takes a bit to get there and some of the stuff along the way is less fun. Plus, it revolves around mostly adult characters who dismiss the idea of Santa which limits the special’s reach with kids. I never liked showing my kids stuff that might create doubt about Santa so maybe this is more of a special for kids in Virginia’s age range. They do sneak in a real Santa at the end, but I don’t know how reassuring that is. By far though, the real reason why this has dropped so much is it is ugly to look at. Cheap, 2000’s, CG has not aged gracefully and maybe that’s why it’s no longer on TV? There are other versions of this story out there which I should check out, but even though I no longer have this one in my top 20, I still think it’s worth watching provided you’re not bothered by the Santa stuff I already mentioned.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
This year we’re doing not one, but two classic Mickey Mouse shorts set at Christmas time. The first one, Mickey’s Orphans, was a cartoon I had failed to mention years ago when doing a scattershot look at Mickey-related Christmas specials. Today’s subject, Mickey’s Good Deed, was mentioned in that post and is the second Mickey…
I don’t think there’s much debate that the most popular and enduring character churned out by the Hanna-Barbera factory during its hey-day is none other than Scooby Doo. About the only franchise that even competes with the big dog is The Flintstones, which hasn’t been relevant for ages. Scoob has basically had an omnipresence ever…
When I was a kid growing up in the 80s The Berenstain Bears was a popular series of books that usually imparted a simple, clear, message. I seem to recall a fire safety book being a go-to in school for fire safety week and I know I got a copy of one about not eating…
Today’s portion of the countdown is a little like yesterday’s. We have a few adult cartoons mixed in with mostly kid’s stuff. I liked the flow of yesterday’s list so I’m going to stick with that and front-load today’s list with the few adult cartoons I want to talk about before moving onto the general audience television specials. And if you’re curious, my arbitrary ranking for all of these pretty much coincides with that approach. I haven’t been including my scores for each special because they’re purely subjective and not part of my original review/write-up. They’re simply the product of my gut reaction to looking at the list of all of the specials I’ve covered and only used to help get me started when it came to organizing this thing. If you’re curious though, everything here has the purely arbitrary score of 6.5-6.75 on a 10 point scale. We’re firmly past mediocre and bad and into the “fine” portion. I know everyone’s reaction to 10 point scale scoring is either different or everyone thinks anything under 8 is bad, but for me it’s something like this:
0-1 – Abysmal
2-3 – Bad
3-5 – Time Waster
5-6 – Mediocre
6-7 – Fine
7-8 – Good
8-9 – Very Good
9-9.9 – Excellent
10 – Near Perfect
My approach may not be a 10 on my own scale, but it worked to get things in order and then I moved stuff around as I saw fit. In general, I don’t like numerical scales for deciding if something is simply good or not which is why I don’t use them. That’s just a little peek behind the curtain though, now let’s talk Christmas!
The Christmas Peter was visited by the ghost of Patrick Swayze.
Family Guy has probably never been celebrated for its creativity, even among its fans. It’s more about subversion and shock so when I found out the show did a parody of A Christmas Carol in 2017 I can’t say I was very surprised. The twist, if you want to call it one, is that instead of someone Peter actually knows serving as the ghosts of Christmas it’s Patrick Swayze (voiced by his brother Don) in the role of all 3. He takes Peter on a trip through time to examine how selfish he is and also to revisit the show’s Patrick Swayze jokes, of which there may be more than you think. It’s a bit self-indulgent and likely only works if you’re a long time fan of the show and enjoy callbacks. I think Family Guy relies on such tactics far too much and they rarely work on me. The jokes are mostly predictable and the episode ends exactly how you would it expect it to, but it’s also Family Guy where there’s a joke every 10 seconds so you’re almost guaranteed to laugh at something. How often is what will determine your overall enjoyment of it.
That doesn’t seem like the best way to win over a kid, Santa.
Yes, I’m ranking the Family Guy spin-off ahead of not one, but two Family Guy Christmas episodes. Considering this one is only one spot ahead, I wouldn’t read too much into it. I’m giving it the nod because it doesn’t rely on the A Christmas Carol trope and because the next entry on the list is going to be…well, you’ll see in a moment. The Cleveland Show was not something that worked for me. I didn’t stick with it for very long before dropping off which I suppose is unfair since many shows don’t truly find their footing until the second season or so, but also no show just deserves your attention until it gets good. My issue with it was it was just way too similar to Family Guy to the point where it felt redundant. The Cleveland character seemed to have to become mean like Peter and the family dynamics felt all too familiar. Nevertheless, the first Christmas episode is all right. Cleveland’s stepson Rallo hates him, but worships his biological father who’s a total deadbeat. Cleveland loses it while playing Santa and informs Rallo that his real dad is a piece of shit which sends the kid spiraling out of control. In the end, his real dad shows up for Christmas and invents a new lie for why he never has time for his kids: he’s the real Santa Claus! It was a clever way to return the show to the status quo, which most of these sitcoms aim to do. It’s just along the way there were many dud jokes of questionable taste, but some not so bad ones. If you’re a Family Guy fan who has exhausted that show’s Christmas offerings then you could do worse than turning to Cleveland.
Yup, a trio of Seth MacFarlane cartoons are leading off this section of the countdown. I honestly can’t really separate these three in terms of quality, they’re all very similar flavors. It’s like choosing between 7Up and Sprite. This one gets the nod over the other two because it actually has a little heart. This episode takes place in the brief period of time when Brian, the dog, is dead and replaced by a new dog named Vinny. Stewie ends up going on a time travel adventure to prevent Brian’s death, but the lead-up to that moment is pretty clever and doesn’t really occupy the whole episode. Instead, we have a Peter and Carter B-plot for that which includes bukkake jokes which I suppose is pretty unique for a Christmas plot. Nevertheless, this is Family Guy so the sweetness has to be undercut at every opportunity which lessens the payoff and makes the preceding 20 minutes feel like it may not have been worth it in the end. I did enjoy the resolution enough to slide it past the other two, but I don’t blame others if they find the other episodes funnier.
If I liked this series more I’d be calling for a Christmas Duckula action figure to be made.
Count Duckula is basically the unofficial first Nicktoon. It’s the first cartoon Nickelodeon produced for its network, though by the time the network got to the actual Nicktoons the process was changed up and they had a firmer grip on the legal component. Duckula is a spin-off of Danger Mouse and a superior one at that. I never cared for Danger Mouse, but Duckula was okay. I think I like the idea and character design more than the execution. This Christmas episode of the show is a bit odd as about half of it is devoted to Duckula reading an in-universe comic book and we get to see the story unfold on screen. It has basically nothing to do with Christmas. The plot of this one is that Duckula is your typical selfish protagonist eager for Christmas, though he’s more general kid selfish and not over-the-top Scrooge selfish. Santa is delivering presents, but gets lost in the maze that is Castle Duckula while the local vampire hunter is basically in the same predicament while trying to deliver a trap. It’s a very low stakes episode and no one learns anything in the end. Santa does escape while the vampire hunter’s Christmas trap literally blows up in his face. It has a bit of a British feel to the humor so if that’s your thing you may enjoy this one more. I enjoy it mostly for the animation and character designs as you don’t find too many of these spooky Christmas specials. It’s way better than Little Dracula.
Most people are probably familiar with the Disney feature Lilo & Stitch, especially now that it’s been given the live-action treatment. Fewer are probably aware of the animated series Lilo & Stitch and even fewer there are familiar with the anime, simply titled Stitch! This one was mostly for Japanese audiences, but it did receive an English dub and I do believe it aired on the Disney Channel at some point, but it has yet to make the leap to Disney+. There is no Lilo to be found in this one so maybe Disney thinks it wouldn’t play well with American audiences. It is animated just fine and supremely cute. The plot is pretty safe as well and similar to the other animated series as Hamsterviel is the main antagonist. He dresses up as Santa and lures in children with mind control cookies which Stitch easily counters with cookies made by Jumba. It’s just to kill time as the last act is reserved for Stitch helping Santa Claus out by playing him. It mostly just leads to a fun character design of Stitch as Santa and we get the customary sweet ending. It’s cuteness for the sake of cuteness. If you love Stitch then you’ll probably enjoy it.
Not to be confused with the comic of the same name, Ultimate Spider-Man is another perfectly cromulent Disney Channel vehicle for the webslinger. In this holiday episode, Spider-Man has to house sit for Doctor Strange and things get out of hand when Moon Knight crashes the party. The enigmatic hero mistakes Spidey for a villain and the two soon find themselves teaming up to stop the spawn of Mysterio who uses her mind-altering powers to conjure up a violent Christmas. If you ever wanted to see Spider-Man and Moon Knight battle against Christmas themed rogues then this is the special for you. The Spider-Man here is likable and full of his usual quips and it amounts to a mostly satisfying experience. It even manages to sneak in a little Christmas feels in the end with a redemption arc of sorts for Mysterio. Humanizing villains in superhero cartoons is always a pretty solid path to a successful Christmas episode.
Okay, here we have yet another adaptation of A Christmas Carol. As far as adaptations go, this one isn’t any better or worse than the usual lot. And the show it hails from is merely decent. I rank it this high though because Captain Hook is played by one Tim Curry and he’s fantastic. I absolutely adored this take on the pirate brought to life by Curry and some of that praise should definitely go towards the writing staff who do a tremendous job with Hook’s dialogue. He’s cultured, articulate, but also vicious, mean, and vile. It may be another version of A Christmas Carol, but in this one the protagonist (who is actually the antagonist) learns almost no lesson. He emerges from his visit with the ghosts of Christmas just as mean and vicious as before. If anything, he’s even more committed to his life of villainy! That’s a Captain Hook I can get behind. We just talked about a villain receiving redemption in the Spider-Man show and that’s all well and good, but sometimes villains need to just be that and no redemption is necessary or even wanted.
Sometimes a Christmas special just hits right for me when, objectively speaking, it probably shouldn’t. That’s why I do this though because I like the corny aspect of Christmas specials. I like the feel good moments. If a special can penetrate my wall of cynicism then it usually wins me over. That was the case with ‘Tis the Season to be Smurfy. Where the other Smurfs special almost completely failed, this one succeeds. It’s somewhat a retelling of The Elves and the Shoemaker substituting in the Smurfs in place of elves, but it goes about things differently. It’s very much a “Christmas Magic” plot where we need a character, a woman named Elise, to have plot sickness and the only cure is Christmas. Sassy and Grandpa Smurf find out about the poor woman and take it upon themselves when no other Smurf will. A thief sees the error of his ways, some rich guy learns to not be a dick, and everyone has a merry Christmas in the end. Along the way you get the usual Smurfs antics with Brainy, Hefty, and all of your favorites. If you have no affection for this sort of thing then scroll on by. If you’re in the mood for a surprisingly well-animated Christmas special with a feel good ending then go for it.
One of the most surprising experiences for me in doing this countdown was this episode of RoboCop: Alpha Commando. Prior to discovering it, I had no idea this show even existed. It came out at a pretty odd time for a new RoboCop cartoon and that it seemed to be a continuation of the short-lived 80s cartoon was even more surprising. And it’s not bad! It does some silly, late 90s, “extreme” stuff like giving RoboCop Roller Blades, but the animation is competent. The voice performances are fine, but what surprised me the most was the humor. The villain, appropriately named Tannenbaum, has some pretty suggestive language in this one that kept making me laugh. Was some of it only funny because it was so unexpected? Probably, and it’s not the sort of humor that could sustain an entire series, but for someone like me just dropping in for Christmas then ducking out it connected. There’s also just enough cynicism and sarcasm owing back to the film to make this not feel too foreign as a RoboCop property. It doesn’t have much Christmas sentimentality, but that’s definitely not something I’d expect from a RoboCop cartoon.
It’s Christmas Eve and the dog is about to die – sounds like a great setup!
Like The Smurfs, this one just happened to hit me in the right way on the right day. I can still remember watching this one in my bedroom on my little 13″ tube TV. It almost certainly would have been airing on Cartoon Network and I was somewhere in my teens when this one did something I wasn’t expecting it to: it made me cry. I can’t recall if I was feeling especially susceptible at the moment, but Christmas has a way of doing that. At the time, it was a rarity, but now it’s almost a guarantee with anything uplifting. And what got me here was the damn dog. They kill Astro! It’s Christmas, so it all works out in the end, but that got to me. And as the title implies this is yet another adaptation of A Christmas Carol. This time, it’s George Jetson’s boss, Mr. Spacely, in the role of the Scrooge figure and the special plays it straight. Jetson gets a raise and Astro is saved, though I don’t think anything changes from a continuity aspect. I don’t think there are many more episodes to follow anyway. Plus, Spacely’s motivation to save Astro is because the Jetsons sued him following the dog’s death since it was caused by a toy made by Spacely’s company which bankrupts him. In other words, he’s just out to save himself and his money. In the grand scheme of things, A Christmas Carol adaptations are boring and overdone, but in the case of The Jetsons this is one of the more successful ones.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
It was a week ago that we took a look at the Seth MacFarlane produced American Dad! and I remarked it had been a minute since we did an American Dad! Christmas episode. Well, it’s been even longer for the MacFarlane original, Family Guy, the show that was famously unloved, cancelled, and then brought back…
Today, we return to my best Christmas specials of all-time list with television’s first family: The Simpsons. The Simpsons are the brainchild of series creator Matt Groening who allegedly came up with the idea as a spur of the moment one when he needed something to pitch to the Fox Network. He essentially based The…
Alvin and the Chipmunks is one of the oldest, family-owned, pieces of intellectual property left in the world. And it might not be for much longer as the franchise is reportedly up-for-sale and has been since last year, but as-of this writing nothing has been agreed upon. The Chipmunks date back to the 1958 novelty…
December 9th brings us perhaps the most eclectic part of the countdown yet. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I tried to group similar specials together when it came to tone and audience. I didn’t want to create too much whiplash going from Mickey Mouse to Eric Cartman. That doesn’t mean I’d stick to that approach at all costs because the rankings are what they are. I’m not going to elevate a bad Christmas episode of a show just to slot it into a friendlier place on the list or do the opposite to a good special. Sometimes, there’s just no way around it. Today is one of those days, but I’m going to frontload it with the adult comedy specials before transitioning to the more general audience stuff. And sure, maybe I’m more likely to watch one of these adult cartoons over one from The Flintstones on a given day, but they’re so close together that the rankings are purely subjective. I could say that for any entry, if you want to reorder these ten I wouldn’t fight you on it, but let’s get to it.
Family Guy is making its first appearance on this list, but it has a few to contribute and plenty more I never covered. This episode is one of the more recent ones and it’s also the most recent episode from the show I took a look at. It appealed to me because the plot, a frustrated Lois ditches her family for Christmas, felt very similar to the show’s first Christmas episode which remains my favorite one it’s done. The main difference is in that episode Lois goes to great lengths to be a beacon of positive energy who wants her family to have a great Christmas and then she eventually snaps because her family just isn’t willing to help her at all. This one, being many years later, is more typical of modern Family Guy where there’s a mean-spirited energy throughout. Lois experiences basically the same thing, but rather than have a nervous breakdown she just leaves and hopes to watch her family fall apart without her. When that doesn’t happen, she returns to steal Christmas in a very Grinchy segment which ends up being the highlight. It’s all right, but it all has a feeling of “Haven’t we done this before?” Doing a Grinch parody in this day and age also doesn’t help. We somehow managed to go decades as a society with doing The Grinch before the floodgates just suddenly opened in the 2000s.
During its Fox run, Futurama gave us two excellent Xmas episodes centered around a murderous robot Santa. This one from the Comedy Central era decided not to go all-out on Xmas and instead gave us an anthology style episode with a segment on Xmas, Hannukah, and Kwanzaa. It’s…okay. None of the segments are really long enough to feel substantial, but they’re also not good enough to feel like we were deprived anything. Some of the jokes are too reliant on callbacks, a frequent problem for the show when it came back, and the Xmas segment in particular is rather weak. Recently, Futurama added another Xmas special to its bank of episodes and it’s a lot better than this one. I considered doing an entry on it this year, but decided against it. Maybe some other time. This is the Futurama holiday episode I usually skip.
This Christmas, you’ll believe Charlie Manson can be reformed.
South Park‘s second season is somewhat maligned. It lacked the novelty the first season brought with it, but wasn’t quite the satirical force it would become in later seasons. “Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson” is pretty much emblematic of that. It’s not as shocking as the debut of Mr. Hankey in the first Christmas episode, and it’s not as brilliant as “A Very Crappy Christmas,” an episode I probably should have covered at some point. I only did this one because no one talks about it, but that is with good reason. Making Charlie Manson a central character in your Christmas special is certainly subversive and having the spirit of the holiday save him sounds like a decent South Park premise on paper, but they just don’t really pull it off. Maybe because it takes awhile to get Charlie into it? The payoff just isn’t all that funny and once the family of Cartmans runs its course the episode just limps to the finish line. If I’m throwing on the Christmas Time in South Park DVD I’m not skipping over this one, but I’m also not going out of my way to watch it annually.
Want to fall out of love with Stimpy? This episode will try and make it happen.
Ren and Stimpy feels like a good transition from the adult section of our countdown to the more family friendly stuff to come. I actually wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the show’s second holiday episode. I very much enjoy The Ren and Stimpy Show. For a long time it was my favorite Nicktoon, but I think now I’d rank Rocko’s Modern Life ahead of it. That’s still pretty good and the show is funny, but I don’t love their Christmas episodes. There are aspects of this one that I think work a little better than “Son of Stimpy,” and I considered ranking it ahead of that one, but ultimately settled on this spot. In this one, Stimpy really wants a scooter for Yaksmas and is not subtle about it. He always gets his buddy Ren thoughtful gifts, while Ren takes Stimpy for granted. That’s what happens here and it drives Stimpy crazy to the point where he basically steals the scooter and is on the run for a lot of the episode. It has its moments and it’s full of the Games era hallmarks of subversive jokes and misdirection, but it’s yet another episode that’s just brutal to Stimpy. He’s a sympathetic character and it’s just not fun to see him in so much distress and the jokes just aren’t frequent enough, or clever enough, to rescue this one.
Nope, not the movie about the kid and the BB gun, but the Hanna-Barbera stand-alone Christmas special about a mouse and dog trying to get a letter to Santa. This special is mostly interesting to me because it must not have made much of an impact. I don’t know if I ever saw it as a kid. I definitely didn’t remember it when I returned to it for the blog, but I’m sure Cartoon Network would have aired this thing in the 90s. I conclude it made little to no impact because most of the original songs were lifted and repurposed for A Flintstone Christmas a few years later. It’s like if The Little Mermaid bombed so they had Aladdin sing “Part of Your World.” As for the actual special, it’s animated and produced competently enough and the story is a bit syrupy sweet. Daws Butler voicing another mouse is cute and it’s kind of amusing to hear Paul Winchell lend his Tigger voice to a dog. And it’s an original story for a stand-alone Christmas special so I’m giving it some bonus points for that. It’s not great, and I may be overrating it, but for whatever reason I just don’t hate this one and I think it’s more deserving of your time than a lot of what I ranked behind it.
The character who put Dic on the map in the 1980s made a brief return in the early 90s for a proper Christmas finale. Inspector Gadget is the comically inept detective who is some sort of cyborg or something. He’s got lots of gadgets, as the name implies, and they’re built into his body. Are we sure he’s a cyborg and not just a robot? Anyway, he gets all the credit for thwarting Doctor Claw when in reality its his niece Penny and her super smart canine Brain getting the job done while also keeping Gadget out of harm’s way. In this one, Doctor Claw overtakes Santa’s workshop and Gadget is deployed to put a stop to it, but in the process assaults the real Santa Claus because he’s incredibly dumb. Dic was able to get the voice cast back for the most part and even spent a little money to make this thing look good. There’s some musical moments that don’t really work for me, but otherwise this is a pretty good episode of Inspector Gadget that also happens to be a Christmas episode. If you liked the show then you’ll probably enjoy this.
When Warner Bros. (R.I.P.) had a new network to stock with children’s shows they turned to some old stars: Tweety and Sylvester. Joining the adversaries is Granny and the dog, Hector, who I don’t think ever had a name in the golden era, but maybe I’m mistaken. The plot then required this group to become a detective agency of sorts because why not? It worked for Hanna-Barbera all those years so why not a pair of Looney Tunes? The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries is a pretty mid-tier animated series. It’s well put together, but not very inventive, the kind of show you leave on if you can’t find anything better to watch (or can’t find the remote). “Feather Christmas” is also a fairly benign episode of the show. It occupies one segment, so roughly 11 minutes or so, but it also lacks what the title promises: a mystery. In this one, a bratty girl has a pet bird her parents hate so they snatch it in the middle of the night. They have their butler or something (they’re rich) return the bird, but come to regret it. Since the help is on vacation for Christmas, they need Granny and her animals to find the store the bird was returned to. Meanwhile, Sylvester is trying to be extra good so he gets something better than a rubber mouse for Christmas. There’s some slapstick, pee jokes, and Sylvester ultimately makes the right choice and the bratty little girl has a Merry Christmas while Sylvester gets…another rubber mouse. The cat can’t win.
Future Worm! is a show I had never heard of until it popped up on Hulu one day as a recommend. I looked through the episodes, found a Christmas one, and then had to get acquainted with this interesting series. I’m not going to rehash the nonsensical plot and setup, but all most likely need to know about Future Worm! is that it’s Rick and Morty for babies. The look and tone is so similar to the more popular adult animated show that it kind of blew my mind. That had to have been the premise, right? As in, someone at Disney wondered if they could adapt a popular show like Rick and Morty for a more general audience. It’s the only explanation. And the crazy thing is it mostly works. This episode isn’t laugh out loud funny, but it’s clever. The main family gets lost in the mall, the patriarch (who is such a Gerry) falls in with some goths, and it turns out the villain is Mrs. Claus with a head made out of gingerbread. It’s weird, though maybe not as weird as it’s trying to be. If you ever wondered if Rick and Morty could work with a PG rating, then maybe give this show a look.
Fred is going to learn the true meaning of Christmas the hard way.
Yes, another 90s Flintstones holiday special. This one is much better than the franchise’s take on A Christmas Carol. This is a made-for-primetime television special so it has the production values and it’s also an original story. In this one, a juvenile delinquent comes into contact with the Flintstone family and it’s upon them to reform this Stony. He’s legitimately a bad seed at the start, but he’s also a product of neglect. The kid then tries to repay the Flintstones for their kindness, but he’s not equipped to do so and his bad decisions just create more problems for Fred and the family. It’s a very sitcom-type premise with the typical sitcom results. I confess that I’m still somewhat charmed by The Flintstones so this one probably works a little better for me than it would someone who doesn’t care about the show, but it’s a perfectly fine Christmas special.
I may have liked this as a kid, but I never liked how Santa looked.
The Ranken/Bass animated special closes out our ten for today. Is this one a classic? It was in my house so I guess that’s all that matters for this countdown. And it was a favorite of mine as a kid. I naturally gravitated more towards the hand drawn stuff over the puppets so that probably played some role and I’m a sucker for the “Will Santa Claus come?” plot and the payoff always hits me. I feel like I frequently cite the songs in a lot of these things as being bad, but this one has some bangers. I think the big song, “Christmas Chimes are Calling (Santa, Santa)” is great and it’s kind of a shame it never made the jump to radio or something. I like the animation, I like the voice work. The special gets a little long and the plot is kind of goofy. Is Santa really so thin-skinned? If he’s omnipresent, how does he not know one editorial in the newspaper was the result of some kids? You can really pick this one apart if that’s your aim, or you can just be along for the ride. My kids don’t really like it, but it still charms me.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
It was a few years ago that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly in which they picked their favorite and least favorite episodes of the long running show. I couldn’t find an active link for that interview, but it’s covered in various other places on the web…
Come 1996 the Nicktoons were an established brand. Launched in 1991, Nickelodeon had tremendous success with the likes of Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show and soon more shows followed. Nickelodeon seemed to be a bit stingy with their in-house shows when it came to renewals as when a network looks to renew a…
If the 70s were defined by Scooby Doo when it came to Hanna-Barbera, then the 80s belonged to The Smurfs. The little blue creations of Pierre Culliford, better known by his pen name Peyo, had an animated series that basically spanned the entirety of the 80s totaling an insane 258 episodes. And once the 80s…
When it comes to the Disney Afternoon, my mind doesn’t always go to Christmas. I attribute that to my viewing habits of the legendary programming block to mostly coincide with its earliest days. Then, the block consisted of DuckTales, Chip n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers, and TaleSpin only I tended to just watch DuckTales and Rescue Rangers. Why? I’m not entirely sure, but I’m guessing TaleSpin conflicted with another program I was more invested in (likely The Real Ghostbusters or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). If you’re intimately familiar with Christmas and its association with the Disney Afternoon, then you may know that both DuckTales and Rescue Rangers did not feature a holiday themed episode. I know – it’s crazy. Scrooge McDuck is named after a Christmas icon and his debut occurred in a Christmas story while the Rescue Rangers save Christmas is a story that practically writes itself, but that’s how it was.
Despite my personal viewing habits, it’s not as if I was unfamiliar with what came after the original block. Darkwing Duck is a show I watched some and also liked to a degree. Due to my affection for Batman and other caped heroes, there was a part of me that very much wanted to like Darkwing Duck, though I don’t think it ever came to be. It was a thing that was on and once it started to conflict with shows I preferred, like an actual Batman cartoon, I mostly dropped it. From afar, it feels like Darkwing Duck has a pretty strong reputation these days as a quality children’s cartoon and a high point for the Disney Afternoon. It of course looked great and what essentially amounts to a Batman spoof with ducks is a solid concept for 1991. And that theme song is an absolute banger. Has there been a television block of any kind with as consistently strong theme songs as the Disney Afternoon? Of the first four (and if you want to toss-in legacy cartoon Adventures of the Gummi Bears) only TaleSpin is just kind of okay, though I know even that one has its fans. Goof Troop had a great theme, Gargoyles was awesome, and even Bonkers was okay. Toss-in sister series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and holy cow do you have a strong collection of opening themes.
Darkwing Duck aired from September 1991 – December 1992 totaling 91 episodes.
When it comes to the quality of the show I would say Gargoyles stands head and shoulders above all other Disney Afternoon cartoons. That one is also decidedly different from the rest given that it’s not a comedy. After that though, I won’t fight you if you want to say Darkwing Duck is the best. As such, it would make perfect sense for Darkwing Duck to have the best Christmas episode of them all, but to my surprise I’ve found that isn’t the case. “It’s a Wonderful Leaf” is not a bad episode and if you’re a big fan of this show you probably watch it annually, but is it better than Goof Troop‘s take on the holiday? TaleSpin? Bonkers?! I don’t think so, but maybe after going through it in exhausting fashion as we’re about to do I’ll feel differently.
Before we really get into the nuts and bolts of this thing, allow me to just indulge once again in the theme song. When it comes to Christmas episodes of television shows, I do appreciate when they dress-up the opening title for the holiday. Usually this can be accomplished with some added bells or chimes to the song, maybe an altered lyric here and there, or the addition of falling snow over the animation. Some shows go really far and completely change the performance. Take DuckTales, the reboot, which altered its theme song to that of a crooner performance reminiscent of Sinatra or Crosby. It’s neat, but when I only return to the vast majority of these shows for holiday viewings I tend to enjoy the ones that don’t mess with things if they have a great theme already. Those holiday performances of the DuckTales theme often leaving me wishing I could just hear the regular one instead.
Full disclosure: Disney+ decided it hated my PC when I went to get screens so they’re going to suck for this entry.
Anyway, this one begins with the regular intro with nothing added for Christmas, so that’s both a good and a bad thing. It does have a nice, wintery, title card which dissolves into a snowy scene. Our first location is a mall and it’s quite close to Christmas, by the looks of things. The holiday shoppers are practically ravenous and one guy even gets bit by a little pig girl (I’m not making fun, she is a literal pig). One person out and about today is none other than Bushroot (Tino Insana, who sounds remarkably like Dom DeLuise), the plant-focused villain who is the Poison Ivy stand-in for Darkwing Duck, minus the sexual tension. He’s not exactly happy to be at the mall so close to Christmas, but he put his shopping off until the end. He’s able to avoid the mob by ducking into a plant-focused store. There it’s much quiet, and as he goes over his list of individuals to buy gifts for (they’re all plant-centric names so I don’t think these are people, or ducks, that he’s buying for) he happens upon a display of watering cans. Feeling that will make a suitable gift for someone, Bushroot goes to retrieve one only for the mob to attack the display leaving him with nothing left but a dented watering can.
Bushroot is not your typical villain. He’s pretty easy going and he even takes this in stride, until some yokel (Jim Cummings) yanks it from his hands. Bushroot rather meekly tries to explain that he had the item first, but the guy just whacks him what appears to be a purse (interesting) and sends Bushroot soaring through the air (and out of his trench coat) to land in a barrel. With just his tuft of purple-pink hair sticking out, the young pig girl from earlier mistakes him for a plant and plucks some hair out of his skull. Bushroot objects, though fairly politely, and then the girl (Dana Hill) screams. Her mother (Susan Tolsky) sees Bushroot and does the same crying out that there’s a plant monster in there. Bushroot asks “Where?!” oblivious to the fact that she means him and then he’s forced to retreat as she blasts him repeatedly with a rake. He’s able to avoid the mob that ensues by hiding in a present at an outdoor Christmas tree display. When everyone is gone, he goes into villain mode basically blaming Christmas for his misfortune and deciding that the city of St. Canard shall rue the Christmas it decided to mess with Bushroot!
Gosalyn is your typical excitable kid at Christmas.
At the home of Drake Mallard, we find out hero getting ready to decorate the tree. To do so, Drake (Jim Cummings) offers up a variation on his catchphrase with “Let’s get decorative,” before he aggressively covers the tree with lights. There’s just one problem – Launchpad. Drake’s buddy, sidekick, secret lover?, ended up tied to the tree in the aftermath apparently unable to avoid the speedy Mallard. Once freed, Drake is able to bask in the glory of the season remarking on how peaceful it is, which is just the cue for daughter Gosalyn (Christine Cavanaugh) to come flying down the stairs Kevin McCallister-style on a sleigh. She takes out the tree and most of the family’s living room, but blames it on her excitement at finding the sleigh upstairs. Drake remarks it’s his sled and takes it from her only for it to crumble into dust. Gosalyn is not deterred though as she refers to her rather large Christmas list to confirm she requested a sled this year and assumes there must be one in the mountain of presents before her. Drake has to pry her off the pile to remind her they don’t open gifts until Christmas only for Gosalyn to whine that it’s too far away. Drake tells her it’s tomorrow and she mostly calms down agreeing to wait. Oh, wait, she’s lying as she adds in a “Not!” afterwards! Oh, those plucky 90s kids.
We transition to a new living room scene where apparently everything has been tidied up. Even the tree now stands again with Gosalyn eyeing it from behind the couch via binoculars. She’s joined by Honker Muddlefoot (Katie Leigh) and the two are sporting military-styled helmets as they make their way for the tree. Declaring herself the terror that unwraps in the night, Gosalyn goes to open a gift only for an alarm to sound from the tree. Drake calls from the other room to make sure she’s not peeking and Gosalyn calls back that she was just replacing an ornament. A good save, especially if they have a cat. She’s not giving up though as she stalks over to a present conspicuously far from the tree, only to find her dad hiding inside it (he’s good). She snidely refers to him as a Christmas cop as the scene ends with an iris out in the shape of a star. Interesting choice.
An army of trees – are we scared?
We find Bushroot has descended upon a tree farm. Armed with a star-shaped megaphone of some kind, he puts out the APB “Calling all trees,” which brings the trees to life. I don’t know how his powers work, but I’m guessing he just has an innate ability to command plants. Though these trees were probably already cut so I’m not sure how that works since they should be dead, but it is a cartoon and I probably shouldn’t think about it that much. Bushroot leads the trees out in a marching formation and returns to the mall. There he does the same thing to bring the Christmas trees in the mall under his command. They’re apparently a cheeky lot as one grabs a Darkwing Duck toy from the little pig girl and tosses it into the bag of another shopper. The pig girl cries out to get her mother’s attention who thinks the guy stole it from her (given the behavior of the shoppers we saw earlier, this checks out). She wails on him, and he doesn’t fight back, much to the delight of the little pig girl.
More trees are up to funny business as we find a Santa working a collection pot elsewhere in the mall. As he swings a handheld bell, the Christmas tree behind him snatches it and wallops him over the head with it. Terrible, just terrible. The tree then does like the other one and places the bell in the hand of some old, dog, guy walking the mall. Santa sees it, angrily grabs it, then wallops him with it! Bushroot looks on with satisfaction as we can also see the pig lady is still beating up the other guy too. He remarks it’s time for phase two of his operation. Just what is phase two? It takes place at the Santa’s Workshop location of the mall. A different Santa from before is working this one, but when a kid vacates his lap the trees alongside him basically smother him. It looks like murder, and when the trees pull back we see that Bushroot has taken Santa’s place. Phase Two is apparently all about making Santa look bad as the first kid to sit on his lap asks for a drum for Christmas, so Bushroot tells him to “Beat it,” and boots him away. Time passes and the little pig girl comes running in excitedly waving the Darkwing doll she apparently got back. Bushroot tells her he’s all out of toys and needs her doll for next year. This causes her to run off crying, but it’s revealed that Tank Muddlefoot (Hill) was watching. He’s kind of like the bully character of the show, and he bullies Bushroot by telling him he’s not Santa and yanks on his fake beard, which hurts Bushroot for some reason. The trees give him the boot and we see him soar past his parents, Herb (Cummings) and Binkie (Tolsky).
Herb is a little more than Bushroot expected.
Herb, being a big kid basically, gets all excited at the sight of Santa Claus and practically leaps onto Bushroot’s lap. He is a duck of generous proportions so Bushroot is not exactly appreciative of this display of affection. With Herb inadvertently pinning him down, the angry pig mom storms in to do what she does best and beat up old Santa Root. Bushroot is forced to retreat as a mob forms to start chasing him. He takes refuge underneath a tree only popping his head out after the mob runs past him to deliver a sinister “Ho ho ho,” as he removes his beard. It would seem that sabotaging the good name of Santa Claus was worth the punishment.
Elsewhere, Drake and Launchpad (who he calls D.W. whether Drake is in costume or not, apparently) are doing some last minute shopping of their own. Launchpad has presents piled up in his arms with Drake standing on top of them. When he questions if they’ve gone a little overboard, Drake insists they have not for it is Christmas and it’s the season of giving. Or something. The pair then take notice of the havoc going on around him as many mall-goers complain of stolen items. “This looks like a job for…” is the expected line, only when Drake reemerges he’s dressed as Santa Claus. He seems surprised to not be in his Darkwing attire, but then tries to play it off like he did this on purpose surmising that disguising himself as Santa will help him get the drop on the holiday thief. Only it actually makes him a target as the angry mob looking for Bushroot sees Drake as Santa and immediately goes on the attack!
You gotta get with the season, D.W.
Darkwing, now in his regular attire, and Launchpad are able to give the mob the slip fairly easily setting up for some monologuing. Darkwing speculates that a sinister force is behind all of this, but Bushroot sticks his head out from behind a Christmas tree to correct him that he’s not sinister, just misunderstood. Darkwing immediately seizes upon the moment to declare he should have known Bushroot was behind this! After a few plant-based puns and some alliteration from Darkwing, Bushroot summons his “boys.” A trio of bushy trees back him up which is just too much for Darkwing. He is positively disgusted that Bushroot would use Christmas trees to attack Christmas. It’s a new low. Bushroot isn’t exactly phased by this as he leaves arm and…limb…with a pair of trees leaving three behind to take care of Darkwing and Launchpad. I’m not really sure how this is supposed to work, but Darkwing and Launchpad are certainly playing it up like they’re scared. Darkwing whips out his gas gun and fires unleashing a burst of ornaments and tinsel at the unsuspecting tree. It’s now fully decorated, much to Darkwing’s surprise, and someone even whistles at it like they find it sexy. I don’t know if that came from one of the heroes, or one of the trees. It’s enough of a distraction for Darkwing and Launchpad to beat it forcing the trees to give chase. Once again, Christmas decorations are used as cover as Darkwing and Launchpad hide in some gifts until the trees pass. Once they’re in the clear, Darkwing ponders how they can track Bushroot down while Launchpad helpfully suggests they just follow the pine needles. Is Launchpad the smart one in this relationship? It’s been awhile since I’ve watched this show.
Bushroot is now onto phase three of his plan, Operation Bah Humbug, which involves a flatbed truck and his little intercom/wand thingy. He’s doing his calling all trees bit while driving through a neighborhood and as he does so the trees in the homes come to life. Their objective? Steal all the presents! Bushroot soon sees that he missed a tree so apparently the trees only come to life if they have the star on top of them. I probably should have picked up on that earlier, but I just thought they were decorations. The tree with the missing star is of course Darkwing’s and when Bushroot activates it he also sets off the tree alarm that had been installed to keep Gosalyn at bay. She and Honker come storming in to find the tree snatching gifts, which she naturally does not take kindly to. The tree shoves a wreath around the pair to subdue them, then runs off which only further enrages the small duck.
You better not be messing with presents on Christmas, tree.
The trees all emerge from the various homes with limbs full of presents. As they make for Bushroot’s truck, the plant-duck basks in a plan well-executed. That is, until he spies Darkwing Duck speeding up from behind him! Apparently, Darkwing’s motorcycle can also become something akin to a snowmobile as it has a big ski on the front instead of a tire. He rides up along side Bushroot’s truck and decides to spring into action…right in front of the truck. I’m not sure what the thinking was here, but the predictable happens which is Darkwing gets run over. He gets to mug for the camera with a busted smile singing “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,” clearly concussed. Gosalyn hops over to him, still wrapped up in the wreath with Honker, to inform her dad about the obvious. Launchpad pulls up in the bike to check on his buddy, who is now fine because he’s surprisingly resilient. The three hop onto the bike and Darkwing declares, while brandishing a massive axe, that it’s time to do some Christmas tree chopping!
It’s also time to kill a little time with a chase scene. Well, kill some time for the writers, the animators have to do some heavy lifting here as they chase after Bushroot’s truck which is now loaded with trees. Everyone is safely wearing helmets on the bike, but apparently not seatbelts. Yeah, I know, motorcycles don’t typically include such, but you would think the sidecar might? Regardless, a big hill tosses Darkwing and Launchpad from the bike leaving just the kids behind. No problem for apparently Gosalyn is pretty good with this thing. Darkwing and Launchpad have, painfully, landed on a Santa decoration of Santa in his sleigh with two reindeer leading his team. Gosalyn, in a bid to be helpful, lassos the sleigh and proceeds to pull her father and…uncle?…all through downtown St. Canard in pursuit of Bushroot. Darkwing and Launchpad obviously get the worst of it, and are soon shot into the sky where they pass before the full moon giving us a different take on the whole Santa moon shot thing.
That’s a weird looking Santa.
It sure seemed like they were going to soar right out of the city, but apparently not. Bushroot comes to a stop outside a tree farm, possibly the one from earlier, and remarks how he was finally able to rid himself of Darkwing Duck. Which, in cartoon speak, means he absolutely has not. Darkwing and Launchpad come soaring in and crash into Bushroot’s vacated truck. That is apparently the least of their problems as soon Gosalyn comes racing in on the bike declaring she doesn’t know how to stop. Understandable considering she’s…what? Eight? She crashes into her dad, but everyone seems more or less fine. Plus they’re surrounded by stolen presents which Gosalyn is eager to open, but her father stops her. He tosses the trio (is Honker actually going to speak in this episode?) some Santa beards and informs them that they’re going to return all the presents while he goes after Bushroot. Since he brandished an axe before, now he’s sporting some sinister looking hedge clippers because we have to keep the puns coming.
We catch up with Darkwing as he prowls rooftops with an elaborate looking magnifying glass narrating his search for Bushroot. Unbeknownst to him, Bushroot is well aware and lurking about. He lassos Darkwing’s beak with a string of Christmas lights and pulls him close. At first, it seems like a bad play as he doesn’t have a weapon or anything to face Darkwing with who quickly pulls out his gas gun. He then informs the heroic waterfowl that he best put the weapon away unless he wishes to invoke the wrath of his good pal Douglas. Darkwing naturally asks who Douglas is and he soon meets him. Douglas Fir is Bushroot’s new best friend – a massive Christmas tree one might find in a town square. Darkwing is swatted away, which happens a lot in this show, and lands behind a fire hydrant. Viewing it as some sort of saviour, he actually makes the very poor decision to kiss it. Do duck beaks stick to metal in cold temperatures? Apparently so, for Darkwing is stuck as Bushroot calls in more trees and orders them to “Deck the duck with everything you’ve got!” It’s a lovely little number, but the trees are still only armed with Christmas ornaments and other fixings so it doesn’t seem as bad as Darkwing makes it out to be. Still, he can’t get unstuck as he frantically pulls at his own beak eventually ripping the hydrant from its moorings.
Meet Douglas.
Once again, we find our hero in a pile of snow this time duck butt up. There’s also a snowman beside him so you know that’s going to play a role soon. Darkwing emerges from the snow with the hydrant still attached to his head. It’s an odd piece of animation as he appears to be wearing it like a helmet, but his face is drawn on it. I think something might have been lost in translation here. He removes it and soon finds himself under assault again from the trees. He ducks (heh) behind the snowman for cover. He then basically wears the snowman like armor as he withstands the pummeling from the trees which seems to enrage Bushroot. The snow falls away, but Darkwing is left holding a large snow shovel which the snowman had been posed with. He runs over to the water main which is gushing thanks to the damage done to the hydrant and uses the shovel to direct the spray at the trees. The water basically freezes on contact and Bushroot is soon forced to make a hasty retreat. Only he can’t outrun Darkwing and his directional water and he too becomes a frozen vegetable. Darkwing slaps some cuffs on the now inanimate Bushroot and declares this another sinister plot that’s been nipped in the bud. Clever.
Bushroot is put on ice and we still have several minutes left of this one.
Darkwing returns to the neighborhood and finds Launchpad, Gosalyn, and Honker seated on the flatbed looking rather glum. Darkwing is surprised to see such long faces, but Launchpad informs him they returned all of the presents, but the gifts for Honker’s family were no where to be found. There’s a massive mountain of gifts on the flatbed, but apparently they’re all for Gosalyn. Damn, she’s spoiled. Darkwing doesn’t really know what to do and apologizes to Honker who says “It’s okay,” (he speaks!) and then suggests that the real Santa Claus will surely bring his family something. As he heads into his house, Darkwing remarks, “Poor little guy,” but Gosalyn corrects him to say you can’t be poor when you have friends and she thrusts one of her gifts into his hands with a smile. I see where this is going.
Inside the Muddlefoot residence, the family is sound asleep until the sound of sleigh bells awaken them! Tank is the first downstairs for he has a trap for Santa – a bear trap! It’s in the fireplace so he’s pretty annoyed when Santa enters through the window. He runs over to admonish Santa for this untraditional entrance, but when Santa spins around he accidentally whacks him with his sack full of gifts. Tank ends up landing on his own trap the pain of which causes him to shoot up and get lodged in the top of the chimney. The rest of the Muddlefoots enter the room and Santa, who is obviously Darkwing, dispenses with the gifts. Honker gives him a big hug in return which seems to touch old D.W.
Santa always comes through.
With that task done, the Mallard clan makes the short walk home. Darkwing tells Gosalyn how proud of her he is for giving her gifts to the Muddlefoots and gives her an affectionate noogie to punctuate it. She seems unphased, but is soon delighted when she finds her Christmas present on the stoop of their house: a new sleigh. It has a tag reading “To Gosalyn, From Santa,” which Launchpad reads aloud for our benefit. She grabs the sleigh and dives into the snow leaving Launchpad to ask Darkwing when he found time to get her that. He indicates he thought Launchpad did, and they go into a whole routine you’ve probably seen before until there’s only one solution. Darkwing remarks that “He is a Christmas tradition,” as the pair look up to the sky and we see the real guy fly by with a proper moon shot to boot. Tank, still stuck in the chimney, cries out to Santa for help and promises to be good from now on, but his cries fall on deaf ears as the camera zooms out on a snowy St. Canard to end it.
“It’s a Wonderful Leaf” is far from a bad episode of Darkwing Duck. It has a decent premise with the plant-based Bushroot using Christmas trees to wage ware on the holiday. It also tosses in a materialistic Gosalyn subplot in which she’s forced to do something selfless, it’s just that neither plot really lands beyond that. Bushroot is more annoying than truly disruptive and an army of marching trees isn’t particularly threatening. There are puns galore, as the show often deals in, but few are truly clever. Some of that is by design as Darkwing is like an amateur poet, but the only one I really liked was Bushroot ordering the trees to deck the duck.
When are they going to get him down?
Gosalyn and her plotline just isn’t really given enough time to land. It’s not the best plot anyway as the audience rarely feels anything extensive for a character that has to give up material goods. We don’t see her longing for some specific item that she then in turn gifts to Honker, all of the gifts just exist in the abstract. I feel like the episode wants the ending to land with more of a thump, but it’s a whimper at best. It was a nice attempt at invoking some Christmas feels, but not enough. I also am slightly annoyed with the dismissal of Santa Claus throughout the episode. All of these people just put the gifts under the tree already? They’re just a bit too casual in their disbelief right up until the end. This is a show for kids, and sort of like my feelings on other Disney Afternoon Christmas specials (Bonkers, TaleSpin) they’re too eager to show unbelieving adults. It’s a fantasy world inhabited by talking ducks – can’t Santa just exist? Admittedly, that’s more of a pet peeve I have where I prefer shows aimed at children to not put doubt in the minds of viewers because I want the Santa myth to last as long as possible with children, even if it’s a losing battle.
Since we did get two moon shots in this one I’ll forgive them for only doing six reindeer.
My conclusion here is that it’s not really funny enough to be a classic episode of Darkwing Duck. The Christmas element isn’t clever enough, and there aren’t enough Christmas feels to produce that lump in one’s throat. It’s just kind of okay at everything which is why I’m ranking it back here behind other Disney Afternoon Christmas episodes. And I probably am penalizing it a touch as I didn’t expect much out the likes of Bonkers so I was pleasantly surprised with that one. With Darkwing, I just expected better. The animation is at least still great for the most part so it’s not like I feel as if I waste my time when I watch this one, but I also start to tune it out about halfway through and struggle to get reinvested come the end. If you like it more than me I won’t say you’re wrong or anything, but maybe you love the idea of a Darkwing Duck Christmas episode more than the reality.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
Last year, Prep & Landing was given the prestigious slot at The Christmas Spot of Christmas Day. I try to reserve a really good special for the big day each year and Prep & Landing is one of the best. In fact, I have declared it the 9th best Christmas special of all-time. That’s no…
I’ve been known to be a bit critical of Warner Bros. for not creating more Christmas shorts. The most notable one is Gift Wrapped starring Tweety while Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck basically had to wait until after the Golden Era to give Christmas a whirl. And those weren’t really that great. Low key, the…
It was around Labor Day of this year that Will Sloan (@WillSloanEsq) took to Twitter to uncover the origins of an image that had confounded his girlfriend and him for the past five years. It was actually a return plea as he had posted the same image 3 years prior. The image in question was…
I can feel it, folks – we’re getting closer! Closer to the Christmas specials that are almost universally worth watching! That’s not to say the specials that have appeared in the countdown thus far are not worth it, they just might require more nuance. These are the specials that are watched year in and year out chiefly due to nostalgia. They’re the ones you grew up with that you just have to watch each year or the holiday just wouldn’t feel complete – even if they’re objectively bad. And I do think we’re beyond the objectively bad, well past that even, and just into the splitting hairs category. Yeah, you could watch the specials spotlighted today, but each moment spent with one of these could also probably be spent watching something superior. Take our first Christmas special of the day…
Some redesigns are fine, while some are just “meh.”
Alvin and his chipmunk brothers Simon and Theodore are no strangers to Christmas. They had a stand-alone TV special in 1981 as well as a Christmas episode during their run in the 1980’s in a show with a very similar name. This particular Christmas episode comes from the most recent iteration of the franchise which aired on Nickelodeon in 2020. If you’re familiar with the 80s cartoon, then this one should feel very similar. It just looks different. Alvin and his brothers, while still not the size of actual chipmunks, are a great deal smaller than they have traditionally been depicted in cartoons, but also their features otherwise are a bit deemphasized. They look more like kids with weird noses. And it’s a CG-rendered show that while not as ugly as some of the CG shows from the early 2010s, is still far less pleasant than the 80’s cartoon. In this holiday episode, Theodore is feeling unwanted at home, and when he gets mistaken for an elf and brought to the North Pole, he thinks no one back home actually wants him. And Alvin kind of gave him to the North Pole because in most versions of this franchise Alvin is a selfish dick, but he learns his lesson, Theodore makes it home for Christmas, and everything is fine. It’s just why would you spend your time with this one when you could be watching the far superior A Chipmunk Christmas? I don’t blame you though for preferring this to the It’s a Wonderful Life parody that showed up in the 80s series.
By sheer coincidence, we have another CG program from the 2010’s that aired on Nickelodeon starring a character who was pretty popular in the 1980s: Garfield. And like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield has a much better Christmas special from the 80s you could be watching instead. Garfield and his pals made an okay jump to 3D. The models are a bit texture-less, but not unpleasant to look at. Frank Welker takes over for Lorenzo Music as the titular fat cat and does a solid job of capturing the same tone as Music. He’s low energy, almost bored, and rarely genuine. This episode, which is a tidy 12 minutes, features Garfield caroling because he sees it as a path to free food only no one he carols for seems to enjoy his antics. Meanwhile, Nermal and Odie are caroling together and dragging a wagon full of food behind them because they’re just so cute! There’s a few moments of genuine humor and since it’s so short it requires a much smaller sacrifice of time than most, but in the end it might still leave you wishing that you watched the more famous Christmas special featuring the orange cat.
I can think of something very wrong with that title. Yogi Bear’s All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper is pretty light on comedy, as most Hanna-Barbera things are. What it is not short on are cameos. That’s the “All-Star” part as you’re going to see most of the classic Hanna-Barbera characters in this one, even Fred and Barney! That’s actually the only part that did get a little laugh out of me as Snagglepuss points out the absurdity of the situation. Anyway, this one is about a lonely, mistreated, girl mistaking Yogi for Santa and him being unable to come clean about it because he doesn’t want her to feel worse. They need to help her greedy, selfish, father see the error of his ways. It’s not very good, and if I’m being objective about it then I probably should have ranked this one lower, but I do have some nostalgia goggles for it. It did get a genuine reaction out of me when I was younger which is hard to let go of. And I am a sucker for big ensembles, just not enough for me to make it through Yogi’s First Christmas. That damn thing is an hour and a half and I refuse to ever watch it again.
Space Goofs is a Fox Kids cartoon that started airing when I started tuning out on Saturday morning. Once X-Men and Spider-Man finished their respective runs I was all done. After watching this Christmas episode though, I do think I may have missed out. This is a bit of an ugly late 90s cartoon, the aesthetic for the era is not one that I look back on fondly, but it was pretty amusing. The premise of the show is a bunch of aliens are hiding out in a house and they’re oblivious to human culture, save for what they can get on their television. When Santa shows up on Christmas Eve, they think they’re being invaded. This Santa is incredibly stubborn though and insists on delivering presents so he keeps trying to sneak into the house which results in him getting caught by the various traps inside. He takes a beating, but he keeps on coming. It’s a bit like Smokey and the Bandit in that Santa keeps absorbing more and more punishment until he’s in a full body cast by the episode’s end. It’s an easy one to watch these days and if you like that 90s physical comedy that was present in many cartoons then you probably won’t need the benefit of nostalgia to find some enjoyment here.
If you didn’t like Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales then it makes sense why you’d give New Looney Tunes and its Christmas episode a try. Unfortunately, it’s not that great. It’s not terrible, and I am ranking it ahead of that first one, but it doesn’t take advantage of the holiday very well. This one has two segments. In the first, Bugs is Christmas shopping and after a hot item, but so is Yosemite Sam. This means the two go to war in a Walmart-type store for the last item available. There are some decent gags, but nothing particularly memorable (except maybe Porky having to mop up spilled ham). The second segment features Bugs’ friend, Squeaks, misdelivering his letter to Santa to a guy called The Barbarian on account of the fact that he kind of resembles Santa Claus. Bugs has to get the letter back so he can get it to the real Santa, but Barbarian is apparently not interested in giving it back. It’s kind of stupid. Again, it’s just Bugs inflicting pain on his opponent (with some pain returned) through comedic means none of which is particularly memorable. You’re unlikely to hate it, but it’s not the sort of Christmas special you’ll be inclined to watch again. And there are better Looney Tunes specials to come.
The Pink Panther is basically a silent cartoon star. The cartoons are not absent sound, but there’s no dialogue from anyone. The story is moved along through animation and the object is usually to convey pretty basic emotions that almost anyone can understand. Like most cartoon stars, The Pink Panther is accustomed to short subjects, but this television special had to fill a half hour and it really hurts the pacing. In this one, Pink Panther is basically homeless and just wants a hot meal. He goes through all kinds of hoops to land one which also lands him in trouble with numerous people along the way eventually leading to him getting arrested. It has funny moments, and there’s a nice ending to it as well, but it’s the sort of special that just wares me down. I don’t have any particular affection for the Pink Panther. I don’t think there’s anything especially sympathetic about him in any of his cartoons, but even so I get sick of him constantly losing throughout this one even knowing it’s going to work out in the end. Had this been a cartoon short, I think it would have worked better. It’s a bit too miserable in this form, but some may find that the constant misery leads to a better payoff I suppose.
Don’t be fooled by his cuteness, he just kicked the crap out of Santa.
Here’s one for the British readers. SuperTed is a living teddy bear that’s also a superhero. I really liked this guy as a kid and had pretty much forgot all about him until I stumbled upon this Christmas episode a few years back. In this one, the villainous Texas Pete is out to steal Christmas and it’s up to SuperTed to stop him. The amusing wrinkle in this one is that SuperTed thinks he gets the drop on ole Pete only to find out it’s the real Santa Claus, err, Father Christmas. He actually beats him up pretty well too in what is an almost shockingly funny little bit. Outside of that, it’s a perfectly fine little Christmas episode that probably works better if you have some affection for the character.
I swear it’s just a coincidence that SuperTed is followed by Super Dave.
Comedian Bob Einstein’s Super Dave alter ego actually had his own cartoon series in the early 90s. It was short-lived, but it’s one of those things that impresses me to this day. Super Dave, if you’re unaware, was a daredevil. Since this was a bit by a comedian, he was a terrible daredevil. None of his stunts go right and he often winds up in extreme pain. It makes sense to turn that type of guy into a cartoon since you can really do some damage to a cartoon character and he’ll always come back ready for more! In this Christmas episode, Santa is kidnapped and Dave has to rescue him. Why does a daredevil have to be the one to rescue him? Who knows? It has its moments, but mostly it ends up getting ranked this high because I remain tickled that this is a thing that exists. I also appreciate that it really has no moral. Sometimes we don’t need a preachy ending, we just need an ending.
Eek is the good-natured cat that roamed the Fox Kids Saturday morning lineup in the early 90s. He is an eternal optimist which makes him a great fit for a Christmas special. He can also scream like a bastard and take some serious punishment which makes him an ideal cartoon character. In this Christmas episode, Eek comes across a gift for Little Joey and takes it upon himself to make sure it reaches him. Along his journey, he’s going to get the snot kicked out of him. He’s also going to help people along the way which just in turn leads to more misery, but the cat comes through in the end and delivers the present to Little Joey. Who turns out to be a rat or something. It’s entertaining, it’s just not one of the better looking shows from the era. And since it doesn’t really invoke the “feels,” it comes up just a tad limp for me in the end. If Eek was your guy, or cat, when you were a kid then you’ll probably derive far more enjoyment out of coming back to this one than I ever could. I also think his other Christmas special is just a little bit better.
I apparently named this image “Dick Dexter.” I amuse myself sometimes.
Our final entrant for today is Dexter of Dexter’s Laboratory fame. He was one of the original Cartoon Cartoon stars for Cartoon Network and I have mostly positive memories of his show. In his Christmas segment, Dexter is confronted by his own ignorance for he gets into an argument with his sister about the existence of Santa Claus. Dee Dee insists that he’s real while Dexter insists that it’s merely their father in disguise. He seems to think his dad puts on an elaborate show to keep up the ruse indicating that while Dexter may be a boy genius, he’s also still a boy. Dexter then waits up all night and catches the real Santa in the act, only he still thinks it’s his dad and does horrible things to the big man in order to prove it. This just leads to injuries and destruction. Santa even loses his beard (coincidentally, the same thing happens to the Santa in Space Goofs)! Yeah, it’s kind of unsettling. What I love about this one is the continuity. This being a Hanna-Barbera Christmas episode that aired in 1998, it still made sure to have a Santa that looks exactly like the one from A Flintstone Christmas. That’s pretty neat, even if other versions of Santa have appeared over the years in other Hanna-Barbera productions. If you’re going to copy one though, that’s the one to copy. This Christmas episode is brief, but funny. A little dark, perhaps, but we need that from time to time out of our Christmas specials.
What’s not dark, is tomorrow’s Christmas special. Actually, it technically is dark, just not in tone or humor. You’ll see what I mean in short order, but tomorrow is a full write-up of a Christmas cartoon I never got around to. It’s one that has been on my “to do” list year after year and even pre-planned on at least one occasion, but I just never got around to it. That all changes tomorrow so come on back and see what ended up in slot number 147!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
I told you we would probably take a look at the other Christmas episode from The Cuphead Show!, though maybe you expected a buffer. I considered it, but why not pair them up just like the creators and Netflix already did? This second Christmas episode comes right after the first. Titled “A Very Devil Christmas,”…
When two billion dollar organizations butt heads, it can be hard to know who to root for. Take Disney, somewhat of an “evil” overlord when it comes to content, which seemingly owns everything these days and likes to throw its weight around when it comes to copyright claims. And then there’s Fox, owned by the…
In 1964, Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass unleashed a Christmas Classic upon the world in the form of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The special basically put the company on the map and put it on the path to holiday domination for decades to come. Despite that, few of the specials that followed Rudolph truly hit…
We’re back to the ranking posts, and following yesterday’s solo entry, it means our numbers are no longer nice and clean. This is also our first day with 11 entries and we’ll have a few more just as part of my organization. We’ll also never have fewer than 10 on these. It’s math, baby!
Today we slide a bit further into the “Hmm…okay,” category. There’s still stuff here that I am unlikely to ever return to, but there’s also some stuff in here that I watch just about every year. Now, I hesitate to call those particular specials good, but they obviously do something right or appeal to a certain part of me and flawed Christmas specials can be watchable. The first one on our list though is a bit murky.
Courtesy of the “new” Woody Woodpecker show comes “A Very Woody Christmas.” I could make this short and say this series had another Christmas episode, but I never watched it. I had my fill here. It’s not terrible, it just didn’t really make me laugh. It’s three segments: two Woody cartoons sandwiched around a Chilly Willy. I’d say the Chilly Willy one is the best of the three, but I always liked the little penguin. The third one is also in the discussion as Woody tries to get himself off the Naughty List by doing something nice for his neighbor, but everything just goes wrong. The show premiered in 1999 and it looks okay by those standards. Woody’s redesign is slight and not unsightly and I did like Billy West in the role, I just wish the cartoon was funnier.
You could take a lot of what I just said about Woody and apply it here. One would think a Christmas special centered around Bugs Bunny would be pretty funny, but this is not. Perhaps one of the most disappointing Christmas specials I’ve ever seen, this comes post Looney Tunes shorts when the made-for-television animation was obvious and the voices started sounding a little different. It doesn’t look particularly good and too much time is wasted on a tired A Christmas Carol parody that does nothing clever. My affection for these characters has helped to prop it up all the way to this spot and the fact that my kids love Bugs Bunny has kept this in semi-rotation over the years, but this is the worst Looney Tunes Christmas anything on this list.
We go from the Looney Tunes Christmas special to the superhero who wants to be a Looney Tune. The Mask is not a show I’ve spent much time with outside of this episode and I’m not likely to. Even so, this wasn’t bad even though it’s another “Character takes over for Santa” plot. Rob Paulsen is a good Mask and there were at least a few spots that made me smile. It also has Tim Curry and he’s great. I did enjoy the look of this one as it’s much better than the other Jim Carrey movies turned cartoons in that respect. And with this one, I can watch it and think, “This isn’t bad, but it’s definitely not made for me.” And that’s because it’s made for kids and if I were a kid I’d probably think higher of this. And had I been a little kid when this was on, maybe my nostalgia for it would have pushed it higher? Or not as we’ll see in a few entries.
I avoided this one for years because of that title. “Dickens” implies only one thing when paired with Christmas and my appetite to watch unfamiliar A Christmas Carol takes is nonexistent. This one isn’t really what I thought the title implied. Instead, the Brown family (and Marty) travel back in time to find that A Christmas Carol is essentially a true story. They don’t really come to that conclusion, but that’s basically what it is. The Brown kids get mixed up with an Oliver Twist like kid and a Scrooge-type gets it in the end. It’s all right. A cromulent Christmas episode from a cromulent cartoon. There’s so little Back to the Future things outside the movies that there was a temptation to rank this one higher, but if I’m being honest with myself I’ll never watch it again.
Speaking of surprises, this one definitely surprised me. I knew the Berenstain Bears as a series of children’s books. I read and enjoyed them as a kid. I also vaguely recall an animated series. The only specific of the animated version I could recall was the opening title. An actual plot from an episode is just not something my brain can recall. I assumed this would be a preschool styled show and when I went to watch it for the countdown that year I thought there was a really strong chance I was wasting my time as I avoid preschool shows for this blog. There just isn’t much to talk about with them. I was wrong as this was really a straight-forward comedic show aimed at kids. It didn’t exactly win me over, but I was charmed by elements of it and came to enjoy the dumb father character. I think if this were in the 11 minute range it would have been stronger as I just got sick of it. The plot didn’t have enough meat on the bone to sustain the full run time, but it wasn’t bad. If my kids had been raised on this franchise then I would have been fine introducing this to them. Since they weren’t, I don’t have to.
The last of the Jim Carrey movies turned cartoons I covered was Dumb and Dumber. Coincidentally, it was also the last to be released and the same is true of the movie and cartoon. And it’s also the best of the three, which I’d say is also true of the movies which is quite the coincidence. As for series, that I can’t attest to as I haven’t seen enough of any of them, but for Christmas specials I’m taking “Santa Klutz” over the other two. Part of the reason for that is the run time – this one is short. I like short. It is ugly as sin and I don’t really like looking at it, but unlike the other two this one did have some genuine funny moments. It can be hard to write stupid characters, but this cartoon did a good job with that. There’s some misdirection to jokes and the plot setup is also a strength. Reflecting on it, I’m almost talking myself out of ranking it here and moving it up, but I’m not here to second guess myself.
A Cosmic Christmas is a special that’s more interesting than good. I say that as someone who didn’t grow up watching it so my nostalgia here is nil, but the main plot beats are pretty standard Christmas stuff. The animation is rough, but in an artistic and interesting way. Some characters have weird flow or large blocks of color. There’s lots of smoking which is unusual in this day and age and some odd effects with the aliens and their spacecraft. I was never bored watching it even if the story wasn’t exciting. I also enjoyed the Christmas message contained in this one which is largely to help the less fortunate – the sort of thing a lot of high profile church people lose sight of. RIP Nelvana.
Here’s the one I was mostly calling out in the intro paragraph as one I tend to watch every year. X-Men was my favorite show as a kid so nostalgia plays a big role. I was predisposed to liking any Christmas episode X-Men did. And this is a pretty bad Christmas episode, but it’s also intentionally bad. The writing staff was tasked with doing a Christmas episode so they tried to get every trope they could come up with into this one because, on the surface, Christmas with the X-Men is pretty absurd. It just wasn’t the type of show that was going to tackle the subject. The only problem here is the writers were almost too good at making a bad Christmas episode. There’s no sense of irony within the episode, you’re only in on the joke if you happened to read an interview concerning it.
I don’t have a ton of nostalgia for the Teddy Ruxpin cartoon, but I did love my Teddy Ruxpin doll and the book this episode was based on. I feel like I can almost recite that story from memory because Teddy and Grubby told it to me so much. It’s not a true Christmas special as it’s one of those other world stories where they have their own customs that just so happen to resemble Christmas an awful lot. The only thing missing is Santa Claus. Teddy and his pals deliver gifts to their friends while the villain, Tweeg, tries to ruin their time, but he’s an idiot with idiot followers. It’s a little too syrupy sweet at times, but I was entertained.
Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas was so good that they had to come back for another one. Too bad that along the way someone decided that this should be animated in 3D as opposed to 2D and the classic Disney characters just weren’t ready for that. This thing is Ugly. Mickey looks weird, Goofy more so, and it’s an all together downgrade across the board. The duck nephews who are tasked with carrying one of the longer segments of this one look almost monstrous. It’s also a weird setup where we’re going with what is essentially a 90 minute block of programming broken up into 5 segments of varying lengths. It does improve the pacing when compared with Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, but the stories aren’t the best. The saving grace is the final segment where Pluto accidentally winds up at the North Pole and Mickey thinks he ran away because he got mad at him. It’s cute watching Pluto frolic with the other reindeer and it has a really sweet ending. It also helps that Pluto made the jump to 3D better than most of the cast. If you’re interested in this one, I recommend just fast forwarding to that part. The rest is filler.
Tex Avery’s contribution to Christmas is this short that’s also a sequel to the classic story The Three Little Pigs. Well, sort of. It doesn’t really matter, but we have two married pigs and their bratty son and old Mr. Big Bad is going to try and sneak into this home on Christmas. It turns out to be a bad idea as the little kid is a true screwball cartoon character with all the powers of the screwball. We get to watch this kid brutalize the wolf and get some laughs in the process. It’s light on your usual Christmas tropes, but there’s something there. What holds it back is just that, at this point in Avery’s career, there wasn’t a whole lot more he could do. It’s a lot of the same gags you’ve seen before and the attempts at making them bigger just lack imagination. I also don’t like the protagonist. I dislike his voice and most of his mannerisms so it ends up being one of those cartoons where you almost want to root for the bad guy. Eat the damn kid – he sucks!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
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One Christmas special I seem to break with my peers on quite a bit is the Rankin/Bass television special The Year Without a Santa Claus. The special was originally aired on ABC in 1974 and is sort of a sequel to Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. It’s one of the later arriving Christmas specials from the company and I’m guessing there was a feeling of diminishing returns at this point. As best as I can recall, The Year Without a Santa Claus never had a sustained run on broadcast television in the years to follow unlike its predecessor as well as other Rankin/Bass specials like Rudolph and Frosty. This one wasn’t on my radar as a kid and I’m not sure when I first saw it. I’m not even sure I ever sat through an entire viewing until now.
During the 90s, Christmas made the leap to cable. The Family Channel, which is now known as Freeform, was one of the networks that started making a habit of turning over much of its broadcast schedule to Christmas specials come December and The Year Without a Santa Claus was featured rather prominently. Is that the source of its enduring popularity? It could be, or like a lot of things with Christmas specials, it just happened to find its audience at the right place and right time. So many Christmas specials largely came and went and even though you may have folks who grew up during the same era, their idea of the best Christmas specials might differ quite a bit depending on what they were exposed to.
It’s not 1:1, but there’s some cohesion here with past Rankin/Bass specials.
I am not a huge fan of the Rankin/Bass stuff. I know, doing a Christmas blog and saying that sounds almost incompatible, but it’s really just nostalgia goggles that helps me even appreciate the few I do like. I tried to watch this one in the past mostly because people my age would cite it as one of their favorites, but it never took. In an effort to meet them halfway, I have decided that in order to feel like my Christmas rankings are complete I better give it another go. And I’ll say upfront, it’s not as bad as I remember. It’s still not all that good which is why we’re talking about it at this point in the countdown, but it at least has something to say even if I think it kind of chickens out in the end.
Mrs. Claus gets to assume more of a starring role this time, but maybe not as much as I would have gone with.
The Year Without a Santa Claus is a stop-motion holiday special and it follows with a similar story structure to other past Rankin/Bass specials. In the role of narrator, we have Mrs. Claus who is voiced by Shirley Booth. The stage queen would retire from acting after this role at the age of 74. That’s an old age to retire, but don’t feel too bad for her as she would live another 18 years. Unlike Sam Snowman and Special Delivery, Mrs. Claus is actually a key character for the plot as opposed to a passive observer or story-teller. She is reflecting on a Christmas from long ago, but it hardly matters for the story. And it’s another one that takes place at an almost impossible to nail down moment in time. It’s just sort of vaguely 1900s America.
Almost the exact same picture from Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.
The special begins with Mrs. Claus setting the scene. She’s up at the North Pole doing North Pole stuff, but who is not is Santa Claus (Mickey Rooney). He’s not feeling so hot as we find him climbing into bed. It’s a single bed, and it appears to be the only one in the room so I guess Santa and the Mrs. keep things very old-fashioned. The castle and setting are not exact copies of the North Pole from Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, but it is similar and I appreciate that attention to detail. Mrs. Claus goes back and forth between talking and narrating, sometimes even adding a “Said Santa Claus,” after he talks about his achy back and such. It’s annoying and unnecessary. Before Mrs. Claus gets Santa into bed, he walks about to a painting of himself driving the sleigh. It appears to be the same such painting from Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. Once again, I appreciate the attention to detail.
This doctor needs a new profession.
Santa gets in bed as Mrs. Claus welcomes a doctor in. The elf doctor (Bob McFadden) is a pretty grumpy sort. He also doesn’t look much like an elf. The doctor is not surprised he’s not feeling well and suggests he never got over that case of pneumonia he picked up riding in the sleigh. I was expecting some made-up, funny, ailment, not a real world one. This doctor is a real kill joy as he tells Santa no one cares about Christmas and no one cares about Santa. Geez. He best hope this doesn’t drive the old man to suicide. When the doctor leaves, Mrs. Claus discovers that Santa has taken his words to heart. Declaring no one cares and that he’s due for a holiday, Santa instructs his elves to inform the masses: Santa is taking the year off.
This elf is seeing pink elephants they’re so distraught!
Time for Mrs. Claus to sing the title song as the opening credits play. It’s not a terrible jingle, but there’s a reason why it hasn’t become a radio classic in the ensuing years. During the song we get some lines from Santa himself explaining his weariness and sightings from towns of people taking down Christmas. How depressing. When it concludes, we get a little more Santa informing the men that there will be no Christmas gallivanting this year. He instructs the stables to close down and the toy shop shuttered. During her explanation, Mrs. Claus refers to the workers as elves and gnomes which I find interesting. None really look much like elves. Sure, they dress in silly clothes with bells and such, but where’s the pointed ears? Where’s the continuity? You had two specials already that heavily featured elves and these guys don’t resemble them at all. At least the reindeer are more or less consistent with Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.
Jingle (right), Jangle (right), and Vixen (sleeping, though you probably could have guessed that).
Mrs. Claus is going to take it upon herself to get Santa back into the Christmas spirit. And to do so, she’s going to call Santa’s number one elf, Jingle Bells (McFadden). He answers the phone as the number one elf and I don’t know if that’s confirmed elsewhere. He could just be really full of himself. With him is, get this, Jangle Bells (Bradley Bolke) who has a really of the era design to him with shaggy, blond, hair. I was expecting him to introduce himself as the number two elf, but he does not. Jingle doesn’t seem to think highly of him and boots him off the phone. He then just says “Yes, Mrs. Claus,” a whole bunch and we’re not privy to the other side of the conversation. When he hangs up the phone, Jangle asks “Who was that?” and Jingle responds in an exasperated manner, but maybe Jangle was just being polite and not listening in on the conversation?
Oh my!
We cut back to Mrs. Claus as the elves assumedly head her way. She’s admiring her reflection in a mirror while wearing Santa’s hat and remarking that she could pull off the look. This launches us into another original song, “I Could be Santa Claus.” It’s a song about how she thinks she could pull off the gig and she’s pretty convincing. Why not? This could almost be a female empowerment type of song if the special decided to run with it, but no. Jingle and Jangle arrive at the end and are surprised to find Mrs. Claus in Santa’s suit. It’s not played off salaciously or as if this is some major faux pas, which could have worked comedically. Instead it’s just general surprise, and then they move on. Apparently, just their look of surprise is enough to convince Mrs. Claus that she can’t be Santa and she takes the outfit off and declares they need to move onto Plan B. I guess her heart just wasn’t in it? Plan B is for the elves, and a diminutive little Vixen, to head south and find some Christmas spirit. Mrs. Claus is convinced that’s all it will take for Santa to feel motivated to resume his usual Christmas activities.
Santa isn’t even going to give his elves a chance to fail.
When the two leave, there’s a familiar music sting that’s pulled right from Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. It sounds like it’s done on a xylophone. You’ll know it when you hear it, it’s apparently the reindeer take-off sting. Mrs. Claus heads back inside to do some ironing while Santa asks what’s going on. Apparently everyone hears that xylophone when reindeer fly? She tries to be evasive, but rather poorly. Santa gives her a chance to tell him if she thinks he’s making the wrong decision, but she declines to challenge her husband. He can tell she’s up to something and she comes clean about the mission Jingle and Jangle are on with Vixen, though she doesn’t tell the boss she put them up to it. Santa is concerned for their safety, especially Vixen since she’s just a baby (they really should have taken a bigger reindeer, or why not two?). I get the impression he doesn’t care what happens to the dumb elves. He also references the Miser Brothers and his doubt that the two can get past them. Santa has no other choice but to get out of bed, put on his Sunday best, and set off on Dasher to go after them.
The real stars of this special, or so I’ve been told.
We then find the trio as they have to pass between the two warring step brothers: Heat Miser (George S. Irving) and Snow Miser (Dick Shawn). These guys, as best as I can tell, are a big part of why this special is beloved by some. Heat Miser is a round and brightly colored fellow with red-orange hair that resembles a flame. He’s like the Burgermeister, but colorful. Snow Miser looks like Dick Van Dyke with hair made of ice. The snow effect is just okay and looks more like aloe vera gel to me. They’re basically sitting on clouds and fighting over where it should be hot and where it should be cold in the world. The elves know they should avoid them, but are pretty damn terrible at piloting reindeer (Mrs. Claus, who has continued to narrate this adventure, puts the blame on the baby reindeer and I am not having any of that). They fly right in between the two and a burst of light from Heat Miser knocks them from their reindeer. So much for Plan B.
For some reason, everyone who isn’t a main character in this one is a total dick.
The special decides to just “yada yada” the whole falling from the reindeer thing as we next find the two back on Vixen flying through the sky. Seriously, do elves bounce or something? We were denied an incredible midair rescue by Vixen. The pair fly over a town and decide it’s as good as any to find some Christmas cheer. Southtown, USA is the chosen destination, but the elves are not accustomed to traveling these parts. They land in the street and are surprised to see them empty. A cop (Bolke) comes up on a bicycle and do you think he’s going to be helpful? No, of course not, he gives them a ticket for riding a “Vixen” the wrong way on a one way street. The stupid elves think the problem is people being unaccustomed to reindeer, so they put socks on her ears to try and pass her off as a dog. Sure. They then find a woman and approach her about Christmas. She’s horrified by their “dog,” which they have dubbed Rover, but the mere mention of a dog proves disastrous. The woman was holding her hands in one of those warmers that have a hole on each side, only it’s not one of those warmers. It was actually a cat this whole time who freaks out when Jangle tells Vixen to bark like a dog, which she does. The cat turns the tables though and chases Vixen, who is apparently afraid of cats as she bolts forcing the elves and woman to chase after her.
Up in a tree is a good place to be when you’re scared of the world.
We next find Santa who has also made his way to Southtown, USA. How did he know the elves would end up here? I guess we’ll just attribute it to Christmas magic. Or reindeer somehow leave their scent floating in the sky when they fly. Santa is talking to the same cop who gave the elves a ticket and he confirms he saw the pair earlier and seems delighted at the idea of a judge throwing the book at them. This guy sucks. Thankfully, Dasher was smart enough to hide in the bushes and doesn’t come out until the cop leaves. Santa expresses worry to the reindeer about the pair and assumes they must be scared to death. We then cut quickly to the trio high in a tree and Jangle remarks he’s scared to death. That Santa sure is perceptive, isn’t he? Jangle is ready to bail while Jingle is happy to blame everything on his elf partner. Jangle at least has the bright idea that if they want to find Christmas spirit they should look to the children. Jingle thinks that’s a great idea and they remove themselves from the tree.
Hello children, we would like to talk to you about Christmas.
The pair are shown approaching a school and they’ve removed their jackets because it’s quite hot. Vixen also isn’t doing too well. She’s not accustomed to heat so the two decide to just leave her in a shady spot in the town where cops hope you get incarcerated for riding an animal the wrong way on a one way street. This will go well, I’m sure. The elves then approach the kids who are just playing with balls. They recognize the two as Christmas elves right away and then also share they know that Santa is taking a holiday – it was in all the papers! Things get confusing when the kids then express no interest in Santa and remark how they’re too old to believe in him. But, he was just reported on in the paper? I am so confused. Do they think papers only print lies? This is the opposite of Yes, Virginia. The elves are soon equally confused when the kid points out that they have bigger problems. Naturally, it’s the dog catcher and he’s got Vixen. The elves can’t continue their conversation on the subject of Christmas as they now need to chase after the truck that’s making off their dog, I mean, reindeer.
Santa and the Thistlewhites.
The kid heads home and our narrator informs us he’s somehow pretty important. Outside his home, he runs into Santa Claus. That’s when he introduces himself as Ignatius “Iggy” Thistlewhite (Colin Duffy) and asks Santa for his name. He was apparently not prepared for someone to ask him his name. He’s also not great when put on the spot since the only thing he can come up with is Claus. Why not just go with Chris? Iggy shares that he saw a couple guys dressed like Christmas elves and Santa can only respond with a sneeze. This gets the attention of Iggy’s mom (Rhoda Mann) who insists on inviting him in to give him something for that cold. He accepts and inside we meet Mr. Thistlewhite (Ron Marshall) as well and everyone sits around the table and Santa asks more about what happened earlier. This ends up leading into a conversation about believing in Santa. When Iggy asks his dad if he believes, he responds in the affirmative. He then turns to Santa who also confirms he believes.
Iggy’s dad as a kid. This is a strange family.
Time for another song. This one is called “I Believe in Santa Claus” and it’s pretty self-explanatory. Santa kicks it off and then Iggy’s dad picks it up from there. It’s a bit odd as he starts singing about a time when he thought he grew out of believing and the camera zooms in on a picture of Mr. Thistlewhite as a kid with his parents. He looks like Iggy, but what’s really weird is his mom looks almost exactly like the current Mrs. Thistlewhite. Did this guy marry a woman because she reminds him of his mother? His first name must be Oedipus. We’re treated to a flashback, and this special does something I hate. The dad stopped believing in Santa until something happened. What do you think that was? Why, it was Santa himself! He woke the little bastard up to basically admonish him for not believing anymore. Now, imagine you’re a kid who is starting to doubt all of the Santa stuff and you’re watching this. Wouldn’t it just make you wonder why he doesn’t reveal himself to you like he did here? We’re creating some unreal expectations here, folks. More specials need to deprive the main characters of actually seeing Santa.
Aww, poor little reindeer.
Poor Mrs. Thistlewhite doesn’t get to sing her own section and the song ends with Iggy seemingly feeling bad for not believing. Well, that’s all it took to right this ship. With Iggy’s belief in Santa restored, the real thing can now ask some more about his friends. Apparently, Iggy had yet to get to the part about the dog catcher which immediately worries Santa. He’s also smart enough to figure out that the dog in question must be Vixen and we cut to poor, sick, Vixen in the pound looking mighty miserable. The attendant at least knows something isn’t right as we see him holding a thermometer and he looks a little concerned. The camera zooms in on Vixen, who sheds a few tears. Aww!
See what I mean? Guy married his mother.
Santa gets directions to the pound and heads off. He’s in such a rush that he summons Dasher and the two take off right in front of the Thistlewhites. They’re surprised, but not too surprised, and that clever Iggy figures out that Mr. Claus is really Santa Claus! He remarks to his dad that he wishes he could do something to help Santa and his elves and his dad tells him when he has a problem he should take it straight to the top like a true Karen. That means going to the mayor to inquire about getting the reindeer released. Mrs. Claus interrupts to inform us that Jingle and Jangle were told to do the same by the man at the pound and we’re soon introduced to the mayor of Southtown. This laughing, giggling, asshole of a mayor (Marshall) of course doesn’t believe their story. That’s not what makes him an asshole, it’s his reaction to the whole thing. Iggy is there to share what he saw, but the mayor is not buying it, but he’s willing to make a deal. He’ll believe their story if Santa makes it snow in Southtown. And not only that, he’ll free the reindeer from the pound and spread the word about Santa and all that. Jangle accepts, much to the chagrin of Jingle, and the trio take their leave.
Did the jerk-ass mayor really need his own song?
Song time! The mayor is apparently something of a believer since he runs out into the streets to sing his own song, “It’s Gonna Snow Right Here in Dixie.” Dixie, eh? As he prances about and sings his little song I’m now noticing that the population here is very white. There is not a single individual of color to be found anywhere in this town. A big part of the song is about how excited he is that it will be “all white overnight,” which is just moving us into uncomfortable territory. Let’s move on. The song sucks anyway.
It’s the Mrs. Claus-mobile.
Santa is able to get Vixen released. He apparently travels with cash. The little reindeer is so sick that Santa can’t waste any time looking for Jingle and Jangle and heads back to the North Pole with Vixen across his lap. This leaves Jingle and Jangle, along with Iggy, to sit and ponder how to free their reindeer and make it snow, even though part of that issue has been resolved with them not knowing. Now it’s Jingle’s turn to have a supposed great idea, which is just to call Mrs. Claus. I guess they dialed collect, but it works and that night Mrs. Claus arrives with a reindeer pulling a different sleigh than Santa’s typical one. The trio are waiting for her on a rooftop and she seems pretty happy to see them. She also has a plan – they’re going to go see Snow Miser! Iggy is apparently coming too.
I have questions.
Time for the part that everyone seems to love best. We’re a half hour into this 50 minute special and we’re just now finally getting to the Snow Miser song. It has a thumping beat and this obnoxious horn section to announce the arrival of the character. He comes dancing in looking like a snow-themed Dapper Dan and he has a bunch of tiny versions of himself dancing around as well. How did those guys come into being? It is a fairly entertaining number, though I don’t think the lyrics matter much. It’s all about those comical sounding horns. When he’s done doing his thing, Snow Miser comes across as a pretty affable guy. He’s hospitable towards Mrs. Claus and crew, but when she requests he make it snow in Southtown he has to inform her the only way that can happen is if Heat Miser okays it.
Heat Miser doesn’t seem to be as into the song and dance thing as his brother.
You know what that means – off to see Heat Miser! The special cuts right to the chase and we join Heat Miser already into his own song. It’s the exact same song as Snow Miser, just with different lyrics to suit Heat Miser. He also has his own minions, but they don’t look like him. They look like little gremlins or monsters. Heat Miser also gets to show off his fire powers which exposes the limitations of stop-motion animation. Their solution for fire is just colored cotton. In the past they used foil or colored paper and I can see why they would feel that’s fine for standing flames, but not for Heat Miser’s fire breath. Heat Miser isn’t as helpful as his brother and demands something in return for letting it snow for one day in Southtown – The North Pole! Mrs. Claus calls Snow Miser on a video phone – pretty fancy for a cloud dweller. He has no interest in surrendering the North Pole to his brother, which comes as no surprise. Now it’s Mrs. Claus’s turn to behave like a Karen and go over the heads of the two squabbling siblings – to their mother!
So that’s Mother Nature…
Who do you suppose is the mother of these two boys? Iggy can’t even guess it so I guess he’s not too bright. If you guessed Mother Nature (Mann) then you are correct! Everyone acts scared and intimidated over going to see her, but when they do we find she’s just a pretty normal looking old woman. Only she has a bird’s nest in her hair. Honestly, pretty underwhelming character design. They couldn’t even make her a tree or something? She’s fine though, very accommodating, and immediately summons her boys to her side with a bolt of lightning. The two grumble, but Mother Nature informs them how this is going to all go down. Snow Miser is going to make it snow in Southtown for one day and Heat Miser can bring summer to the North Pole for one day as well. They try to protest a bit, but another bolt of lightning silences the pair and they do as their mother tells them.
Looks like Snow Miser was true to his word. And unlike Santa, Mrs. Claus doesn’t ditch kids on the roof.
Time to check in with Santa who has returned to the North Pole (it’s still frozen). He puts Vixen in his own bed and finds a note from his wife informing him that she went after Jingle and Jangle. Satisfied she can handle things, Santa settles himself into a rocking chair for a little rest. Down in Southtown, the snow is falling. The mayor is shown taking a phone call from his wife where his wife is instructing him to wear his goulashes, bundle up, and so forth and he’s doing the whole “What?!” schtick until he finally looks outside. We then jump back to the North Pole where Mrs. Claus and Jingle are rousing the old man from his slumber with a newspaper. The headline concerns the snow in Southtown and Jangle enters with more papers about a day off for Santa. He looks them over and informs his wife that she was right the whole time, but his conclusion is that the world is giving him a day off and he settles in for more nap time. Mrs. Claus can only shrug in the direction of the elves.
Aww, geez.
Mrs. Claus then returns to her narration duties to inform us that the children of the world became committed to giving Santa a day off. Now we get a multi-cultural group of children running over a map, writing letters, and wrapping gifts. They’re basically returning the favor and sending them to Santa and Mrs. Claus tells us they had more fun that December than any they could remember. Santa is then shown waking up and stumbling around. It’s like he’s having a senior moment as he just wanders the grounds grumbling taking note of the quiet workshop and sleeping reindeer. He pauses outside as a bird delivers a letter to him. He opens it up and it’s a picture of a sad, crying, girl with the message, “Dear Santa, I’ll have a blue Christmas without you.” I guess she wasn’t one of the kids having the most fun ever. This begins the song, “Blue Christmas.” Pretty surprising to see a licensed song enter at this stage of the production. I guess since this wasn’t adapted from someone else’s song they had room in the budget for a different one. The song is sung by a little girl (Christine Winter) and a children’s choir (The Wee Winter Singers) and it’s an even more somber version of the song compared with the Elvis version. It’s nice though. Most may like the Miser Brothers and their song, but I like this more. I will concede it’s weird the girl is clearly drawing a blue Christmas tree while singing about a green one, and the lyrics don’t work as well when they’re supposed to be about Santa and not a former lover. Especially sung by kids. Let’s not think about this anymore.
Tonight, we ride!
One letter is apparently all it took. If all of those kids were bullshitting everyone and really wanted Santa to come bring them toys, then they have this girl to thank. Santa, feeling especially vigorous all of a sudden, announces that Christmas is back on! Santa can’t take a day off on Christmas, he has stuff to do! Santa assembles the troops and starts barking orders and asserts that he’s feeling just fine. Set to the tune of “Sleigh Ride,” everyone gets back to work as Santa announces, “Tonight – we ride!” There’s almost a violence to how he says it, like they’re about to go crack some skulls. Might I suggest they start with that asshole mayor?
Looks like everything turned out fine in Southtown.
Santa flies off with a complete team of eight reindeer, including wee little Vixen. We get a partial moon shot as we head to Southtown, USA where the mayor has put up a sign designating it Santa Claus Lane. I bet you can guess the song chosen for this section. That makes two full songs they had to pay for. Santa reveals himself to the entire town as the sleigh touches down and slowly makes its way literally down Santa Claus Lane. Kids and adults are there to wave him along before he returns to the sky. Mrs. Claus gets the last word as she narrates over children, including Iggy, finding their gifts under the tree the next morning. She affirms you can always count on Santa Claus which takes us into a reprise of “The Year Without a Santa Claus.” Santa leaps from his bed and puts on his coat. He jumps into his sleigh and they take off into the night sky. As they fly towards the full moon, the special comes to an end. There will never be a year without a Santa Claus.
Everyone seems to like these guys, but they’re barely in it.
That wasn’t as bad as I remembered. I still think this is a pretty mid-level Christmas special. It’s just too uneven for me. The first chunk of the special almost feels unneeded. They could have easily just jumped to taking their concerns to Snow Miser to bring snow to a place in need of Christmas cheer, but it’s like we have to screw around for a half hour first because ABC wanted a full hour broadcast. I found it funny how Mrs. Claus narrates that Iggy is very important to the story, and then he proceeds to just be along for the ride. Yeah, he had to pass along the information about what happened to Vixen and the elves to Santa, but that’s it. Anyone could have done that. For as memorable as the Snow and Heat Miser are, they’re not in this one a whole lot. They did more recently get their own Christmas special, but I have never heard anyone recommend it nor do I have any interest in checking it out for myself.
Some of the effects could have used some refinement.
What I did like about this one is that the music by Maury Laws is very similar to the past Rankin/Bass specials. As I mentioned during the write-up, some music and sound effects are lifted straight from them while a lot of the instrumentals just call-back to them without exactly duplicating them. It helps to create this cohesive feel to everything. I’m surprised they didn’t drop a “Jessica” somewhere in reference to Mrs. Claus or make the elves resemble the old ones a bit more, but it still feels like a sequel or at least like this is the same Santa from before.
Mrs. Claus plays a big role in this one, but could it have been even bigger?
What bothers me most about this one is just the missed opportunity for a better story. I think I would have rather seen a Christmas where Mrs. Claus steps into the role of Santa. Maybe she would have found it’s really hard to do what he does and have some mishaps, but still get it right in the end. She so rarely steps into the spotlight, and even though the special didn’t take that path, this is still more Mrs. Claus exposure than we’re accustomed to. She did at least orchestrate the resolution to the story, even if it was just complaining to the manager. I also would have preferred an ending where Santa does just take a day off. The world lets him know how appreciative they are and he returns the following year with renewed vigor! Instead, there’s an outpouring of love and one kid is sad she’s not getting presents. Crisis averted, Santa is magically feeling better and Christmas is back on!
The general vibe is at least good. This little girl is adorable.
I guess what I’m saying is, there was a chance to subvert this one a bit, but Rankin/Bass decided to just pull a fake-out. The title is a lie as there never was a year without Santa. He just needed a little extra motivation one year. And we never did get to see Heat Miser bring warm weather to the North Pole. I kept waiting for the special to come back to that. I fully expected an ending with Santa and the Mrs. enjoying the sun at the beach for a day after the holidays. We were denied seeing Santa in a bathing suit. What a pity.
They squeeze in quite a few moon shots in this one. I went with my favorite of the bunch.
If you’re one of the people who does love this holiday special then you probably know where to find it. It still airs on cable each year and it’s sold on physical media and on streaming networks. If you’re opposed to paying, it’s also pretty easy to find online for free without having to go anywhere seedy. For me, I consider this one a little better than most of the other Rankin/Bass specials, but I also dislike most of them, which is why I rank it at #169 out of 209. Too low? Too high? Just right? If you have opinions to share, let me know in the comments. Hopefully, no one reading this will have a blue Christmas over it.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
In 1985, a little film called Back to the Future debuted in theaters. Starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, the story about a modern day teenager going back in time 30 years to encounter his parents when they were teens was an instantly timeless tale. It spawned two sequels which were shot back-to-back and…
It’s the fifth of December so that means we are returning to one of the 25 Greatest Christmas Specials (as decided by me because it’s my blog) to take a deeper look than what was done some 8 years ago. When I re-evaluated my Top 25, one of the biggest fallers was A Flintstone Christmas.…
This year, I’m bringing back a feature from last year where I take another look at, what I consider to be, the greatest Christmas specials ever made. I explained my reasoning for doing this in prior posts, but in short, the first time I looked at some of these specials I did just a short…
We’re getting closer, ever closer to the Christmas specials that are most worth watching every year. That’s not necessarily a bad thing that we’re still kind of in the weeds considering today’s entry covers entries 180 through 171. It’s a reminder that there are a lot of Christmas specials out there. Yesterday’s entries on short subjects is so far the outlier in that some of them are worth watching just because they’re so brief. And there’s some historical value. Today’s entries are not so brief and not so old so they need to get by on entertainment value and nostalgia. And, for me anyway, there’s not a ton of nostalgia to be found in this cast of Christmas specials. Oh, there is some, including one that I pretty much watch every year because of how I know it, but there’s a lot of “filler” here as well. These are mostly from children’s entertainment and if there was a theme I suppose it would be Christmas episodes from cartoons that are not well-remembered. There are a few exceptions and as I look over my list and the days to come I can see some that I could have flip-flopped out of here. Though in the case of many, it’s more an issue of seeing a special yet to come that I really don’t think is all that good and wondering why it’s not here, but then I look at what we’re talking about today and it starts to make more sense. I could tinker with this list all month and never feel like it’s perfect so let’s just move on, shall we?
Donkey Kong managed to elevate himself above his more popular genre-mates Sonic and Mario, but let’s not pretend like his Christmas episode is all that great. For me, it’s most memorable for being the kind of show I had very low expectations for going in and it managed to exceed them. That doesn’t mean it rose to the level of something I’d consider good, but it’s not terrible. There’s some silliness to be found with the long lost brothers plot to the point where it kind of works. What does not and never will are the visuals. If this ranking was purely on visual quality, Donkey Kong might be in last place. It’s hideous. Those early 3D CG shows have not aged well.
This is a Christmas episode that was always going to have to really knock it out of the park to be placed higher in the rankings. That’s because it’s a Christmas in July episode and in it our monstrous protagonists find themselves trapped in the mall after hours. The Christmas element is purely visual as the mall is decorated for a big summer sale, but there’s a lot of actual Christmas episodes that don’t do much more than add a visual element as well. This one is also short since it was only one segment from a half hour television spot and judged strictly on the quality of the entertainment it’s probably better than where I have it. It’s just not very Christmassy. Plus, I’ve never liked the visual style of this show.
This is the one I teased as being a special I watch annually, even if I don’t really like it that much. It was featured on my beloved Christmas tape growing up so I saw it all of the time and I still see it quite often. As a kid, it was the spot on the tape where I was most likely to drop-off. Thankfully, it had Rudolph backing it up so that’s what usually got me through. Had it been last on the tape then I probably would have seen it far less. If you somehow have not seen this Rankin/Bass production, it’s the origin story for Santa Claus and Mickey Rooney’s debut as the character. The story is pretty silly with a local ruler outlawing toys, but the approach isn’t silly. There’s a lack of fun here and it’s just so long and plodding. None of the songs are particularly good either. Sure, “One Foot in Front of the Other” can get lodged in your head, but that doesn’t mean I want it there. For nostalgia’s sake, I’ll sit through this one at least once this month, but that’s all I’m giving it.
For a little while, there was an attempt at making the Flintstones into some sort of holiday tradition in the 90s. There was a A Flintstone Family Christmas and there was this, A Flintstones Christmas Carol. Now, I have some affection for The Flintstones. I never actively sought the show out, but if it was on I’d often watch it as a kid. I do like A Flintstone Christmas and the episode of the show “Christmas Flintstone” it was based on, but that’s sort of my limit. And when you take a dated franchise like The Flintstones and pair it up with one of the most overused Christmas tropes on record by adapting A Christmas Carol, well, you don’t really end up with anything remotely special. I’ll give it some credit in that the special tries to blend a meta component by having it be a production in-show, but Fred lets stardom get to his head to the point where he starts acting like Scrooge. It’s for serious fans of The Flintstones only, the rest need not apply.
There have been many attempts at melding Halloween with Christmas. The most famous is obviously The Nightmare Before Christmas and it’s also probably the most successful. On television in the 90s though, we had stuff like Little Dracula. It’s a cartoon where the cast is basically all monsters, but the approach to the macabre is so tepid that it tends to undermine any real spooky element it could have. In this one, the goal is to capture Santa Claus. I guess that’s what vampires do. It’s very by the numbers for such an unusual plot as we just get a lot of setup where the entertainment is supposed to be seeing how monsters decorate for the holiday, but nothing is particularly clever. The villain of the show, Garlic Man, wants to pose as Santa to enter the house or something, even though he knows they’re trying to capture the big man. And, of course, the real Santa shows up and we all learn something. Or not? It’s not very memorable.
Make way for Don Coyoooooote! Don Coyote hails from a mostly forgotten Hanna-Barbera cartoon and rightly so. The main character is incredibly annoying and he just bumbles his way through adventure after adventure in a model similar to Inspector Gadget, only Don Coyote didn’t have a niece and a really smart dog looking out for his well-being. The only saving grace for the show is that most of the other characters see Don Coyote for what he is: an idiot. The villagers in the town he tries to help in this one all think he sucks and it’s a bit humorous to see. It’s not a big Christmas vibes sort of episode either, it just takes place at Christmas and the bell referenced in the title has some meaning for the holiday. There is a light faith element to the plot, so if you like your Christmas to appeal more to that aspect of the holiday as opposed to Santa and Rudolph then maybe you can appreciate this on that level. Maybe. It’s still not very good.
Heathcliff may have originated close enough to Garfield that the two can be considered peers, but he’s mostly lived in the fat, orange, cat’s shadow in my lifetime. And that’s despite sounding like Bugs Bunny! Heathcliff did have a solid run on television in the 80s getting two similar, but separate, cartoons and around 100 episodes of entertainment. His grand finale is a Christmas episode in which his letter to Santa is returned so he and Spike (all dogs were required to be named Spike in cartoons) head to the north pole to investigate. There they encounter a jerk of an elf who is hell-bent on destroying Christmas, but as is often the case, things work out in the end and it turns out the elf isn’t such a bad guy after all. There aren’t any memorable gags to find and this one does something I hate. It has Santa literally tell the audience that a year of bad behavior can be redeemed at the last second to get on the Nice List. What a crock! I get needing to give kids something to reach for, but to come out and say it like that is just wrong.
Okay, I really didn’t know where to rank this one. Visually, it’s offensive to my eyes. It’s cheap and ugly. It’s also Ace Ventura who is a pretty annoying character. On the big screen, at least the physical acting of Jim Carrey can help make him tolerable, but as an ugly cartoon the charm is gone. This one does have a somewhat clever plot though and it feels pretty original. Since the character is a detective (which allows them to make liberal use of the term dick), there’s a mystery component and it’s not bad. Santa’s reindeer have gone missing, and Ace needs to get them back. It’s a good setup for a pet detective. It’s just…a lot. I can only handle so much of this character. I do think if you really like the character then you’ll like this a lot more than I do. It’s the sort of Christmas episode where I’m glad I did experience it, but once is enough.
The Nickelodeon Christmas special by Ralph Bakshi that doubled as a pilot for a show that never was, Christmas in Tattertown is quite possibly the most uneven special in this countdown. There are moments in this one that look terrific. There’s a throwback quality to the character designs and animation of the 1930s and it mostly works. There’s also moments where the quality dips and then there’s just the uneven performances. This is especially seen in the character Muffet, who is at times sympathetic and at times a horrible villain. She is a doll that doesn’t really want to be a girl’s doll and she’s frustrated that her life has seemingly been decided for her. She just decides to go full villain in response to that. The voice work is also so up and down that watching this is like experiencing whiplash. I wanted to like this because the premise is solid, but there are too many moments for me where I questioned if I actually hated it. It’s exhausting to watch, but it looks so interesting that I think it’s something everyone should see once. At least, everyone who has ever been enchanted by a cartoon.
Our last entry for today comes courtesy of that other children’s cable network, the Cartoon Network. I Am Weasel was a spin-off from Cow and Chicken which in turn was born out of the What a Cartoon workshop. I have no idea why I Am Weasel was chosen to be spun-off. I liked Cow and Chicken to a certain degree, but I did not care at all for I Am Weasel. It’s a setup where the weasel is basically an ideal character and does everything right and he’s juxtaposed with I.R. Baboon, a selfish, stupid, jealous character. He basically tries, and fails, to undermine the weasel and steal the spotlight for himself. In this Christmas edition, Baboon is surprised by his family when they show up for Christmas. He is ill-prepared, so he runs out to get a tree and all the trimmings, but leaves his family out in the cold. Weasel then comes by and notices the frozen solid group of baboons and invites them into his palatial estate. They become rather enamored with Weasel which just makes Baboon jealous when he finds out. He then tries to sabotage Christmas. It has a happy ending, and it’s actually a lot of plot for what is a short cartoon. It’s a solid setup and premise for the show, it’s problem is it’s just not very funny. Maybe I’ve aged out of this era of visually loud humor, but I didn’t really laugh. If you have fond memories of this or Cow and Chicken then maybe you’ll get more out of it.
And that does it for today’s entries. Tomorrow, we take a break from the countdown to spotlight a forgotten Christmas special. I think it’s a bit of a crowd favorite, but maybe the winds have changed for it over the years and I’m mistaken. Or it’s just become properly rated since we are talking about entry #169. What is it? Well, you’ll have to come back tomorrow and find out. Unless you’re not reading this on December 4, 2025. In that case, you can just click the little button for the next entry. I hope you were surprised!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say last year on this day and beyond:
Last year, I made an effort to get to a lot of the Nicktoons that I had yet to cover. My initial thinking when I started doing this Christmas blog was to try and avoid the specials that had been covered in depth many times over. Then I realized that, hey, if you want to…
Last year, we covered in depth the inaugural Christmas episodes of Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show, two of the three original Nicktoons that premiered in 1991. Now, we’re going to look at the Christmas episode for the other original Nicktoon: Doug. Doug was created by Jim Jinkins and was one of the first…
Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were among the first stars of cartoon creation to burst onto the scene. Together, the duo would work for Disney, Warner, and MGM (among others) creating and overseeing some of animation’s most memorable characters from the golden age. After working with Leon Schlesinger’s studio to produce Looney Tunes shorts, the…
There’s going to be a lot of toys in these ones. And some are very familiar looking.
I mentioned yesterday that my rankings of Christmas specials are by quality and personal preference, but also by genre. When it makes sense, I’m trying to keep similar specials together when it comes to the general vibe and the vibe today is public domain shorts. The domain of the short used to be the movie theater and seemingly every major studio had a series of cartoon shorts. Some were bigger than others and a lot of the less popular ones have slipped into the public domain. Most of these shorts fall into that category, but not all. And most of these are going to have a very similar plot. A lot of these shorts liked bringing Christmas to poor kids. And almost all of them have something racist in them which is just incredible from a modern perspective. It got to the point over the years of doing this where it stopped being surprising. Even Mickey gets in on the action. It’s nuts. Anyway, let’s get to it.
Little Audrey and a diverse group of kids want to leave a surprise for Santa.
This is a Little Audrey cartoon who was a rip-off of Little Lulu and probably less successful. Maybe I’m being a little tough on this one by ranking it last because it does have a unique premise. Audrey and her friends decide Santa deserves some presents of his own on Christmas so they sneak into his sleigh and try to do something nice for him. It’s cute. I just don’t care at all about Little Audrey. The group of multi-cultural children that accompany her on this quest are also not the most sensitive depictions of such one is going to find. Usually, stuff like that is what helps get cartoons into the public domain because the companies that owned them originally don’t want to re-release them and if they’re not going to re-release them then they’re worthless.
He may not look like much, but this toy soldier is pretty special.
Here’s our first one where a poor kid gets a visit from Santa Claus. In this one, it’s a kid who lives alone in a shack with his cat. On the way back to his home, he finds a discarded toy soldier in the street and brings it home. When he goes to bed, the toy becomes sentient and uses the radio to call for Santa who shows up and does his thing. Most of the short is just toys doing stuff, the sort of thing we’re going to see a lot of. The kid eventually wakes up, is happy to have toys (and food) and that’s pretty much it. The short looks okay and it is in color. It’s also been re-released since my entry and there is a much better looking version out there now. It’s still a pretty boring short, but at least it will look nice.
Another one that would probably rank a little higher if I cared about the property. The Captain and the Kids is a series I don’t know much about, but it had a brief run of shorts and among them is a Christmas one. It’s basically a Captain character who takes care of some orphans and he’s harassed by the pirate John Silver and his crew. This one is interesting because the Captain is going to dress as Santa to surprise his boys, but John Silver and his crew get to him first. Silver takes the Santa suit for himself and they proceed to enter the dwelling and mess everything up. Because it’s Christmas, the bad guys feel terrible about what they did and eventually make it right. A large portion of the short is dedicated to a song that’s not very good performed by the pirates. It’s not terrible or anything, and the version I was able to find actually looked great, so there are worse ways to kill 8 minutes.
Mickey has had many goes at this whole Christmas thing.
Mickey Mouse’s first Christmas cartoon is among his worst. I rank this ahead of Mickey’s Christmas Chaos mostly out of respect, but that mediocre short might actually be more entertaining than this one. Mickey and Minnie wind up with some orphans in their care and try to give them a decent Christmas, but they’re also jerks. The little orphan cats just destroy the place and don’t seem to care that Mickey made the effort to give them a decent Christmas by playing Santa. There’s no real message here, no lesson to be learned, the kids just destroy everything until the short is over. It’s very bizarre in that aspect. It is in black and white, but the animation is pretty smooth, so it has that going for it.
This is an early Merrie Melodies short. It’s very similar to Gifts from the Air in that it’s another poor boy who seemingly lives alone. It begins almost exactly the same way with the poor kid walking through the snow on Christmas Eve getting progressively more upset over the sounds of other people enjoying Christmas. Only with this one, when the kid gets back to his shack he gets a visit from Santa before he goes to sleep! And not only is Santa there to bring Christmas cheer, he actually takes the kid back to the workshop and that’s where the toy antics come into play. It’s pretty crazy how similar the toy antics are from one short to another, and not just this and Gifts from the Air, but this and other shorts we’ll talk about shortly. This is another that ends abruptly, a fire breaks out and the kid is able to put it out and that’s it. Did he stay at the North Pole? Did he become the next Santa? Is he Santa’s slave? Is this where elves come from?! No one knows.
This one is a sequel to the Silly Symphony short Santa’s Workshop. If you like the part of that one where Santa just demoes the toys and laughs at them then this is for you. Santa delivers some toys to a house and we get to see him play with them. There’s even a Mickey Mouse cameo! Santa just laughs at everything and it gets real obnoxious. Eventually, he has to run and the kids come down and find their stuff. One cute kid gets a puppy. There’s a blackface gag, which is probably why it’s never been added to Disney+ to join its predecessor. It’s fine.
We have a lot of cartoons of kids finding toys under the tree, but not many of puppies finding toys under the tree. We do have this one from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising and it’s about what you would expect. Santa has made his delivery and the children are up in the middle of the night to check it out. Among them are two puppies who get into all kinds of mischief when it comes to the toys. In particular, there’s a toy tank that apparently has a personality all its own and it battles it out with the puppies. No puppy is seriously harmed, and they are cute. It does run a little long, which is an odd thing to critique a short for doing, but if you’re a dog person then you’ll probably enjoy this on some level.
This is one of the oldest Christmas specials in color out there. And it was also recently restored to look as best as it possibly can. And it is a good looking short. It’s a Fleischer Studios production and there’s some use of live-action references including a spectacular Christmas tree spot at the end, but the cartoon itself is pretty similar to everything else here. Grampy wants to bring Christmas to an orphanage, but since he can’t just will a bunch of toys into existence, he uses household objects to make toys and distribute them. The kids have a good time, and it’s a reasonably merry Christmas. Worth a watch to appreciate the impressive restoration, if anything.
Mickey is going to experience some hardships in this one, but it works out in the end.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, a character wants to bring Christmas to some poor kids and so they do. In this case, it’s Mickey Mouse who is very poor as well. He wants to help a family of cats (again), but in order to do so he needs money and the only thing of value he owns is his dog, Pluto. Some rich asshole’s kid wants Pluto so Mickey reluctantly sells him thinking Pluto will have a better life with the wealthy man than he would on the streets with him. He takes the money, buys a bunch of stuff, and makes a Christmas delivery to the kids. Unfortunately, that spoiled, rich, kid really sucks and is abusive towards Pluto who eventually gets away, but not before he makes off with a turkey. He finds Mickey all alone in the snow and there’s a happy reunion in the end. Thankfully. I get the idea of having a character sacrifice to make Christmas better for the less fortunate, but I don’t want to see them give their dog away! At least it all works out, and the animation is really nice. It was made in black and white, but there is a color version out there if you’re adverse to that.
The more popular Christmas themed Silly Symphony short. This one takes place at the titular workshop where we see toys being made, inspected, and tested. That’s it. I just rank it this high because I think it looks just lovely. There’s a whole bunch of gags similar to other ones we’ve already seen and it also had its own racist gag (which the Disney+ version omits), but at least it doesn’t have any orphans! Seriously, I’m getting a little sick of that trope. And seeing Santa prepare for Christmas is just more interesting to me than the process of infiltrating homes and the aftermath.
That concludes the public domain theatrical shorts category. Not all of those are in the public domain, but they all have a very similar feel to them, and as we saw, similar plots. There isn’t much separating the worst from the best in this case, I mostly ranked them on visual quality as that’s what appeals to me most. And not just how well it’s animated, but the emotive aspect of the characters since we get a lot of inanimate objects doing interesting things. They are all indeed short though and also pretty damn old. The historical aspect makes them worth watching, in my opinion. And they won’t take up much of your time. I bet they’re all on YouTube or Daily Motion too so they should be easy to find. It will give you something to do until tomorrow when we move onto the next group of 10. In looking ahead, there isn’t much of a theme in our next group other than it’s all stuff made for kids and almost all of it is comedic in nature. There might be one surprise in there, but we’re still firmly in the realm of mediocre and not quite to the point where we’re hitting on some essential viewing type stuff.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
It feels like it has been a minute since we took a look at an American Dad! Christmas episode. The show can be counted on to produce such an episode almost annually and often times the Christmas episode is among the best of the season. 2024 is also the year we had to say goodbye…
Children’s cartoons often take to Christmas when the season rolls around. The holiday is usually ripe for parody or just direct adaptations so it’s easy for the writers to kind of phone it in. What’s not customary is for a cartoon series to feature two dedicated Christmas episodes in a single season! That’s what Animaniacs…
Last year for the Christmas Spot we took a look at the 1960’s TV series Popeye the Sailor and its Christmas episode “Spinach Greetings.” There are a lot of Popeye fans in the world and my assumption is that most would not put Popeye the Sailor above the theatrical shorts that helped catapult Popeye to…
The Nostalgia Spot 