Category Archives: christmas

December 5, 2021

Dec. 5 – Pluto’s Christmas Tree

By Joe
Original release date November 21, 1952.

Today we’re doing the second look-back to one of the best Christmas specials ever conceived, as chosen by yours truly, and it’s one of my all-time favorites: Pluto’s Christmas Tree. Despite being titled Pluto’s Christmas Tree, this Jack Hannah-directed cartoon short from 1952 is actually considered a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Mickey apparently had it written into his contract with The Walt Disney Company that anytime he had a speaking role in a short it was to be considered a Mickey Mouse cartoon, because this could have easily just been a Pluto cartoon. Also showing up in this one is the duo of Chip and Dale. The chipmunks seem to be mostly associated with Donald Duck, but the pair’s unofficial debut came in the short Private Pluto where the two agitate the canine. In that short, they looked more like generic chipmunks and they were identical, it wasn’t until the 1947 Donald Duck cartoon conveniently titled Chip an’ Dale that the pair was more developed.

Today, we go where no special has gone before: inside the Christmas tree!

Pluto’s Christmas Tree is also interesting for being the first Mickey Mouse short with the second, official, voice of Mickey, Jimmy MacDonald, doing the voice of the mouse. Walt Disney famously voiced that character to start, and over the years there was the occasional fill-in, but the role was never handed off to anyone else until Walt did so with MacDonald during the production of Fun and Fancy Free. Walt Disney was a pretty busy man with his hands in all kinds of projects and being the voice of Mickey just wasn’t a priority come the 1950s. MacDonald was already an accomplished sound effects engineer and provided voice work as well, in fact, he was the first voice of Chip.

Just look at how happy they are!

Pluto’s Christmas Tree is the Disney short most likely to put the viewer in the Christmas mood. It opens on a softly lit title card with “Deck the Halls” playing over it. It then zooms in on a Christmas card featuring a home that just happens to be Mickey’s house all covered in snow. The mouse and his dog are about to set out to find a Christmas tree. These were simpler times when a man, or mouse, could just walk out the back door with an axe and find what he was looking for. Pluto (Pinto Colvig) is especially excited to go running through the woods in search of the perfect tree and Mickey lets him go out ahead.

Chip and Dale are mostly going to act like jerks in this one. Here they are making fun of the happy puppy.

It’s not long before the dog is spotted by some would-be agitators. Chip (MacDonald) and Dale (Dessie Miller) are foraging for nuts and they take interest in mocking the dog. One of them pegs Pluto in the butt with an acorn, and the two mock him by jumping around a twig that resembles a Christmas tree and barking. This, of course, gets Pluto’s attention and he chases after them with the two forcing him to smash into a snow drift. On the opposite side, a perfectly formed “snow Pluto” slides out with the real dog behind. Pluto is unnerved by his snow doppelganger and seemingly forgets about the chipmunks. Meanwhile, the pair have taken refuge in a tree. As they have a laugh at Pluto’s expense, the tree begins to shake! It soon falls down as we see the two happened to pick the tree Mickey also settled on. He calls for Pluto, still checking out the snow dog but quickly gets freaked out when it collapses, who is happy to follow Mickey back home. As the pair march along, Dale tries to sneak out of the tree, but upon seeing Pluto trotting along behind him, immediately jumps back into it.

Happy times from before the chipmunks would disrupt their lives.

At home, Mickey sets up the tree and he and Pluto get down to decorating it. He starts hanging candy canes and ornaments as Chip and Dale come out of hiding from deep within the tree to check out their new surroundings. The two stroll along in the tree with Dale remarking, “Well, what do ya know?” as he takes in all of the pretty lights and colors. He then sees the candy canes getting placed on the tree and gets excited. Grabbing a twig, he stick it out of the tree in hope that Mickey will hang a candy cane on it, but he instead places a glass, blue, ornament. Dale inspects it, and while he may have preferred the candy, he seems pretty impressed with the bauble (after momentarily getting freaked out by his own reflection) and retreats deeper into the tree to go show Chip. He finds his fellow chipmunk inspecting a tiny bell, and dangling the ornament over his head, he whistles for his attention. Chip pops up and his head smashes through the bottom of the ornament. Dale, embarrassed, pulls open a cracked portion of the ornament to check on Chip, only to get punched in the face! Chip collapses into a pile of broken glass and then runs over and punches Dale on the top of the head for good measure as Dale gives a sheepish shrug.

Not where Dale was looking to find himself.

Mickey declares his work as done and leaves Pluto to admire the pretty tree. As he lays on a nearby rug, he then notices a light has started to blink. Apparently their lights are not the blinking kind, so Pluto goes over to the tree to check it out. There, we see Dale is twisting a light bulb to make it turn off and on. Pluto sticks his nose through the brush and Dale mistakes it for another bulb. He gives it a twist, causing Pluto to recoil from the tree with the chipmunk still attached. Dale spins around and finds himself eye-to-eye with the canine, and Pluto immediately starts to growl. Before he can snap his jaws shut on the rodent, Chip happens to walk by and uses a candy cane to snatch Dale from harm’s way.

I don’t think Mickey appreciates how amazing his dog is.

Pluto and Dale then bark back and forth at each other before Dale gets an idea. Grabbing an ornament, and tapping on it first to make sure it’s as fragile as the last one, Dale hurls it towards the ground. Pluto, apparently quite fond of Christmas trees, refuses to let the ornaments hit the ground. He dives for it, but Dale quickly tosses another one, and then another, forcing Pluto to stand on one leg with an ornament in each foot. Mickey then comes strolling in with gifts to place under the tree. He takes one look at this awkward position Pluto has gotten himself into and gives a chuckle. Playfully telling the dog to “cut it out,” Mickey places the ornaments back on the tree, only he hung one from Dale’s nose. Pluto points and stammers at the tree hoping Mickey will turn and see the chipmunk, but of course by the time he does Dale has already ascended the tree and retreated inside. Mickey just brushes aside Pluto’s behavior with an “Ohh, Pluto,” and leaves.

That getup might have worked on Goofy, but not Pluto!

Pluto is momentarily irritated, but he turns back to the tree and spots Dale once again. This time he’s left the tree in search of some nuts left out on a table. Pluto cuts him off, blocking his access to the tree, so Dale drops his nuts and runs ending up on the mantle above the fireplace. There, Mickey had set out some Santa candles and Dale positions himself among them and swipes the hat and beard from one in a bid to disguise himself. Pluto races over and finds that Dale’s disguise may have fooled the eyes, but they can’t fool his nose. He sniffs at Dale, causing the chipmunk to sneeze, and Pluto has him right where he wants him.

Mickey is surprisingly dumb in this cartoon.

Mickey then comes strolling back in and finds Pluto gesturing towards the chipmunk candle. Mickey mistakes Pluto’s actions as him wanting the candles lit, so Mickey lights them. When he gets to Dale, the chipmunk blows out his match. Mickey just shrugs, picks up Dale as if he were a candle, and uses an already lit candle to light the Dale candle. Mickey then leaves and Pluto looks broken-hearted that his master failed to notice the disguised vermin. He then turns back to the mantle and brushes all of the candles onto the floor, which seems like a real fire hazard.

Chip takes notice of what’s going on by the fireplace and races over to his friend’s aid. He stands on Pluto’s tail and gives it a tug. It makes a bell sound and Pluto lifts his tail all the way up with a curious expression on his face. Chip salutes him, thanks him, then hops on the mantle to snuff out the flame and snatch his buddy from harm’s way.

How do we not have a stuffed animal of Pluto with presents for feet?

Now the real chase is on as Pluto and the chipmunks race around the room. Pluto crashes into the presents Mickey had set out, his feet going through the boxes. As he tries to run with boxes on his feet, Chip and Dale get back into the tree. Pluto races up a ladder that Mickey had left out and starts barking at the tree, seemingly out of ideas. Dale hops out from the bottom of the tree while Chip pokes hi head out to release the tension on the middle brace of the ladder allowing Dale to push the bottom back together. Pluto tumbles over and crushes the remaining gifts he hadn’t already trampled while Chip drops the star from the top of the tree onto his tail.

Now that’s just adding insult to injury.

Pluto, who has seemingly has had enough, emerges from the mess and dives into the tree. Mickey sees him and races over screaming for him to get out and gets pulled into the scrum. The tree shakes and contorts as if it were in an electric dryer. Soon everything falls off of the tree, Mickey and Pluto included, leaving just the skeletal remains of what was a pretty nice tree. Mickey calls Pluto a dumb mutt and then does something pretty shocking for him: he strangles Pluto! Mickey grabs his own dog, man’s best friend, by the throat and begins to shake! As he orders Pluto to take a look at the mess he made, he finally sees Chip and Dale who are holding each other and staring in bewilderment. Clearly, the two are just as shocked as I am to see Mickey strangle his pet.

I’m honestly shocked this act of violence by Mickey didn’t land this one in “The Vault” or at least get edited out over the years.

Declaring, “Pluto! We have chipmunks in our tree!” Mickey scoops up Chip and Dale and presents them to Pluto, who slaps his own head in frustration. Mickey characterizes them as “cute little fellows,” but Pluto just barks in their face. Mickey pulls them back and scolds Pluto, reminding him that it is Christmas. The sounds of carols then fill the air and Pluto races over to the window. Outside, Goofy, Donald, and Minnie are singing “Deck the Halls” (Clarence Nash can clearly be heard in his Donald voice among the voices, but I don’t know if Minne or Goofy’s voice actors contributed) by a street light. Pluto and Mickey seem to enjoy the caroling, while Chip and Dale join in with a little dance and someone saw fit to have them sing the “Don we now our gay apparel,” line which feels like a hint about the nature of their relationship. Pluto decides to sing as well, only since he’s a dog, he just kind of howls. The chipmunks cover their ears and look at Pluto angrily, then slap a “Do Not Open Till X-Mas” sticker over his muzzle. The dog then looks at the camera in shock as the short comes to an end.

It looks like Christmas is once again the salve for all wounds.

Pluto’s Christmas Tree is a gag-infused short that’s over in the blink of an eye, and usually leaves me wanting more, so I watch it again! What I appreciate most about it is that virtually all of the gags incorporate the holiday theme in some way. We have smashing ornaments, candy canes, Christmas candles, and more all contributing to poor Pluto’s misery. It’s a Chip and Dale vehicle in which the pair create mischief, and really don’t receive any sort of comeuppance. Oftentimes the two are wronged somehow, but on occasion they’re basically just jerks taking advantage of a situation. And in this case, they’re taking advantage of an animal they clearly possess intelligence over, which just raises further questions since a chipmunk and a mouse should be on relatively equal footing, but Mickey clearly towers over the pair. They also live like animals, despite possessing human intelligence, and the whole thing really stops making sense if you give it much thought.

This is basically the only bad thing to happen to a chipmunk in this one. They really are the antagonists.

This one does celebrate Christmas and it’s quite possibly the best Christmas short Disney ever produced. It might even be the best Christmas short ever! The only rival really is Toy Tinkers, which is very similar to this one only swap in Donald for Pluto. I prefer this one just a little bit more, despite my love of Donald Duck, because it’s a touch sweeter and the setup is a little better. And it is also just gorgeous. If I had an endless amount of money to throw at things that I love, I would absolutely track down a production cel of Chip and Dale inside the Christmas tree. It is just drawn and painted so beautifully. It makes me wish I could shrink myself down to the size of a chipmunk to experience Christmas from that perspective. No wonder why my cat always liked sitting under tree.

I love this short so much that I just had to get the ceramic statues. I can’t bring myself to box them up during the off-season.

If you want to experience this fantastic holiday short this year, and you really should, then you have quite a few options. This being one of Disney’s best and most famous Christmas cartoons, it’s been released several times over on VHS, DVD, and Blu Ray as part of holiday collections. Most recently, it was included on the Blu Ray release of Mickey’s Christmas Carol. If you’re a subscriber to Disney+, it’s also available on there 365 days a year. Disney also still isn’t particularly protective of its theatrical shorts. It’s really surprising considering how litigious the company can be over the silliest things, but I suppose it’s a good thing that this short (and many others) can often be found streaming in various places on the web for free. In short, there’s no good reason to miss out on this one this year or any year.

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 5 – The Captain’s Christmas

Did you ever wonder where those speech balloons in comic books came from? Maybe you just assumed they were always there, but they actually originate from a comic strip titled The Katzenjammer Kids. The strip was created by cartoonist Rudolph Dirks and it debuted in newspapers in December of 1897. It was incredibly popular for…

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by Joe

Dec. 5 – The Weekenders – “Worst Holiday Ever”

When I was a kid, and going as far as back as the 1970s, Saturday morning meant one thing:  cartoons! Usually beginning at 7 AM, all of the broadcast networks came at me with full cartoon force. Now, rarely was I awake that early and programmers seemed to know that. The earliest hours were often…

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by Joe

Dec. 5 – “Don Coyote and the Christmas Bell”

After four relatively solid entries this year, I feel like we need to take a look at something that has the potential to be truly awful. In the 80s and early 90s Hanna-Barbera was still trying to remain current while it moved away from the shoddily animated mysteries and animated sitcoms of its past. Its…

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by Joe

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December 4, 2021

Dec. 4 – Family Guy – “Christmas Guy”

By Joe
Original air date December 15, 2013

In the fall of 2013, beloved family dog, Brian, met his demise. Brian was an extraordinary dog capable of communicating in English with his family members who was often seen walking on two feet. Despite that though, he met a rather ordinary end for a dog when he was unceremoniously struck by an automobile. Life goes on though, and the Griffin family to which he belonged turned to a new dog: Vinny. Like Brian, Vinny was a remarkable specimen as he too could speak English and chose to walk on two legs, plus he functioned as an Italian stereotype and even appeared to have connections to the underworld. The audience latched onto Vinny, and while no one could replace Brian, we all accepted that these things happen and the best thing we can do for Brian is to never forget him.

Of course, that was all bullshit. No one cared about Vinny and Brian Griffin was as unlikable as basically every other member of the Griffin family at the time of his death. And these deaths never stick, so no one was surprised when the show brought Brian back a mere two episodes later as part of Family Guy’s Christmas episode that year.

This episode takes place during the short-lived Vinny era

Brian Griffin had once been one of the few voices of reason on Family Guy. Despite the fact that he was a dog, he seemed like the most real of any of the Griffin family and many of his problems seemed to stem from the fact that he existed in this unreal world. He seemed to deal with the craziness of being Peter Griffin’s dog with booze and therapy and he seemed to delight in needling the youngest member of the family, Stewie, who was always threatening to kill someone or take over the world, but Brian saw through his bullshit. The two were foils and didn’t seem to really like each other, which is partly what made their team-up episodes, like “The Road to Rhode Island,” so successful.

After Family Guy’s cancellation and return to television, Brian underwent a change. Instead of being the voice of reason, he was made a narcissist who manipulated women and was happy to stand on a soap box and lecture folks on things he had no business speaking on. He took on the role of uninformed liberal capable of regurgitating popular talking points with no subtext. In short, he became insufferable as basically every character on the show took this route, just via different means.

In a show basically devoid of charm (and that’s by design), about the only charming aspect would become the Stewie and Brian relationship. Once adversaries, the pair are now best friends. They understand each other and accept each other’s deficiencies. Their relationship seemed to be solidified in the Season 8 episode “Brian & Stewie” in which the two get trapped in a bank vault over a weekend. Since then, not only is Brian Stewie’s best friend, he’s probably a better father to him than Peter and there’s genuine warmth between the two. This being Family Guy though, their relationship can’t just be sweet so the writers also added a weird subtext where Stewie appears to desire sex with Brian. Why can’t we just have nice things?

I have long since ceased to care about Family Guy as it’s not a show I particularly enjoy. It is a frequent contributor to Christmas though, and “Christmas Guy” felt like an episode worth revisiting. We get to relive the era of Vinny and a story about a baby just wanting to get his best friend back for Christmas is certainly a sweet way to approach the holiday. And it should be better, and definitely shorter, than the other major Brian and Stewie Christmas story “The Road to the North Pole.”

They’re getting ready to celebrate Stewie’s “first” Christmas.

The episode begins with a lovely exterior shot of the Griffin house covered in snow and all decorated for Christmas. Given how inept Peter (Seth MacFarlane) is at virtually everything, I am amazed at how well the decorations look. Maybe that’s just the one thing he’s good at? The family is inside watching television and it’s a version of Home Alone with capable robbers. It’s an observational piece where the robbers enter a house and immediately take note of things like toy cars on the floor and frozen stairs so as to avoid them. When the Kevin character appears at the top of the stairs, they just shoot him and he tumbles down the stairs, dead. We then find out that the family is gearing up for the annual Christmas Carnival that takes place at the mall. Lois (Alex Borstein) is particularly thrilled about celebrating Stewie’s (MacFarlane) first Christmas by sharing the carnival with him. Upon saying that, Stewie says “Again?” which is a clever way for the show to acknowledge that no one ages. I think the one-year-old Stewie has celebrated Christmas a dozen times at this point. This also sets up an awful cut-away joke about how Peter enjoys teasing the clerk at Tiffany’s into thinking he’s actually going to buy something. The joke is that no one in their right mind would believe Peter because he showed up wearing Sbarro wrappers for shoes.

Stewie and Vinny were able to form a fast bond in Brian’s absence.

An exterior shot of the mall lets us know the family has already made the short journey. Stewie is decked out in an elf costume and Vinny (Tony Sirico) makes a few comments on it causing Stewie to ask him if he only uses adjectives sarcastically. Vinny, predictably, responds with sarcasm. The family soon notices that there’s no Christmas Carnival, or really any sign of the holiday for that matter. Stewie suggests whoever is responsible will suffer for it and Vinny makes a smart comment that “tough don’t sell in curly-toed shoes.” Stewie suggests to Vinny that he go buy more cologne setting up another worthless, but at least brief, cut-away.

Lois approaches a security guard to inquire about what happened to the carnival. She addresses him as sir, and he tries to correct her by saying “officer,” but she puts him in his place with a “No, it’s sir, and barely sir.” After the guard hangs his head in shame, he explains he doesn’t know using the term small cog to describe his role in the decision making process. This prompts Chris (Seth Green) to comfort his father by saying “See dad, you’re not the only one with a small cog,” clearly referring to his dad’s penis. Both Lois and Peter respond in unison saying “I told you that in confidence!” so apparently husband and wife are both disappointed in the size of Peter’s penis.

SNL did it better.

Stewie then asks if Santa was killed by Muslims, intentionally mispronouncing the word Muslims. This sets up yet another cut-away as Peter declares he hates being disappointed. This one is Peter in a restaurant commenting on the quality of the coffee, only for the server to tell him it’s Folger’s and call him an idiot for liking it. There’s a tag at the end about how Folger’s is only worth drinking if you’ve been tricked into it. I’ll give them a little credit here as when I saw the joke setup I thought they were just going to have Peter play Chris Farley’s character from the same bit on Saturday Night Live.

It just wouldn’t be a Family Guy Christmas without a little Meg torture.

We’re shown another exterior shot of the Griffin house only it’s nighttime now. Peter and Lois are in bed discussing the events of the day. Lois is worried about Stewie as he seemed so disappointed in the carnival’s cancellation. She remarks he’s been acting out all week and Peter brushes off her concerns with a “He’s a baby, how bad can he be?” We’re then shown the family seated for a meal and Stewie is loosening the cap on the salt shaker. Meg (Mila Kunis) takes it and goes to sprinkle some salt on her food only for the top to fall off completely and out pops a giant snake! It bites her and she instantly swells up to gargantuan size.

We change scenes, and get this, there’s another exterior shot of the Griffin’s house to mark the change! Back to daytime, and the family is once again watching TV so we get another Christmas movie parody joke. This time, it’s Miracle on 134th Street and a guy is shown running to his car in a panic because he left his phone in it. The miracle, and the joke, is that the car has been left undisturbed and his phone is fine. Vinny then enters to say he talked to a bunch of guys and a girl (allowing for him to be casually misogynistic) and found out that the mall’s owner cancelled the carnival and he is none other than Carter Pewterschmidt, Lois’s father. Vinny is then shocked at this twist letting out an exaggerated “Oh!” He then takes his leave as he has to get the “Ohs” out as he keeps saying it over and over. Off camera, we hear them gradually decrease in intensity.

Peter resolves to dealing with Carter, but first has to ask Lois if he’s The Little Caesar’s guy. She responds in a manner that suggests this is a frequent question from Peter and he’s relieved to know that Carter is not, in fact, The Little Caesar’s guy. He then likens Carter’s attitude towards Christmas to a gluten-free Santa, setting up yet another cut-away of a Santa waking a kid up in the middle of the night to ask about what the cookies were made out of. It’s yet another dud of a joke.

Peter and Carter do have an odd chemistry when paired-up.

We then setup the next scene with an exterior shot of Pewterschmidt Industries. Carter (MacFarlane) is seated at his desk filling out some paperwork only pausing to flip off the window washer outside because he dared to make a sound. His secretary then calls to tell him the guy who’s face is on all the money is here to see him and Carter hastily cleans up his papers and welcomes the obvious fake in. It’s Peter, who demands Carter bring back the Christmas Carnival! Carter declines telling Peter he hates Christmas because everyone assumes a rich guy like him will give them expensive presents while giving him nothing in return. Peter vows to return Carter’s Christmas spirit to him and then asks if he can take something home with him from his office. Carter tells him no, and he replies with an “Aww, too bad, because I was gonna pick you!” Carter then confirms that Peter is a weird guy.

Stewie, up to his old tricks.

Exterior shot of the Griffin house! This time, from a different angle though. Seriously guys, we don’t need to see an exterior shot of a building before every scene! Especially a familiar setting like the home of our main characters! Anyway, Peter is struggling to zip-up his coat and refusing Lois’s help because he’s a man-baby. Vinny is there to comment on how crappy it is to have a father who hates Christmas. He then goes off on a tangent about how his old man drowned in a bird bath thanks to a cop, but left directions to “Kick Jimmy in the sack. Go Eagles.” When Lois offers condolences, Vinny brushes them aside and tells everyone his dad was a scumbag. Lois and Peter then start discussing the issue at hand, but they’re in front of a window so obviously we’re supposed to ignore them and see what happens outside. Stewie appears, and he rips down the neighbor’s decorations and molests a snowman before apparently setting off a nuclear explosion that destroys everything in sight. Lois talking about her dad’s disgust towards Christmas leads to another cut-away, this time of Carter going down Santa’s chimney on June 16th in a “how do you like it?” joke. It’s not funny.

I seem to remember jokes at the expense of Carter’s balls in another Christmas episode.

We get another repeated exterior shot of the Griffin house. We didn’t even change settings this time! We’re still in the same place! Did they really need to kill this much time? Peter and Carter are in the kitchen and it’s not explained why Carter would bother coming over. Peter is trying to put Carter in the Christmas spirit by showing him how to write a Christmas letter. He informs Carter it’s acceptable to embellish, so Carter reads the letter and the embellishments are all ridiculous like Peter becoming the starting quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Peter tells him to read what he wrote about him only to find out the only truthful thing in the letter is Peter noting that Carter bought a tiny stool for his balls. The camera zooms out so we can see the stool in use and Carter is pissed because he doesn’t want people to know that.

Now that’s unsettling.

We then get an exterior shot of a generic hotel and Peter and Carter are seated on a bed. Peter has a carton of eggnog and tells Carter this will put him in the holiday spirit. Cater tells Peter he hates eggnog, but Peter won’t take no for an answer. It then gets really uncomfortable as Peter forces the nog on Carter and it’s clear this is intended to be a parody of a sexual assault or violent, degrading, piece of pornography. Carter ends up covered in frothy, white, eggnog and Peter starts filming him and instructs him to degrade himself in various ways. It ends with Carter sitting up and telling Peter “You know, I still don’t like Christmas, but I kind of like what we just did.” Apparently, Carter has some odd kinks.

I bet you can’t guess what’s next! Exterior shot of the Griffin house! Peter and Carter are standing outside the bathroom and Peter tells Carter that Christmas is the one day a year where you masturbate like any other but then feel shame afterwards. He goes into the bathroom for a very short duration, and then comes out hanging his head sadly with his shirt untucked. Carter tells Peter that none of this is working and as he explains Vinny casually walks by causing Carter to interrupt his ranting to remark “Huh, different dog.” Peter confirms this and adds that he’s Italian or something too. Carter then goes back into his rant and Peter tells him he had no idea that Carter was Jewish. Carter, shocked at the suggestion, asks if that’s how he’s coming off and Peter confirms as much.

Carter Pewterschmidt: Not Jewish

Smash cut to the exterior of the mall only now it’s all decorated for Christmas! There’s even a giant banner promoting the carnival with Carter wrapping an arm around a seemingly uncaring Jesus. Inside, the place is fully decorated now and Peter is excited to see the Chinese carolers from A Christmas Story are there singing their rendition of “Deck the Halls.” Peter then tells the audience their beloved holiday classic is extremely racist, which is a gross exaggeration and ruins the observational joke. They could have just had Peter give a disapproving look or something and it would have been funnier.

Is there a sadder place to cry?

Vinny then asks Stewie what he’s going to ask Santa for Christmas. Stewie isn’t sure, but once he’s seated on Santa’s lap and faced with the question he looks to his family and the camera pans from each member and rests on an empty space beside Meg. Stewie then starts sobbing and tells Santa he just wants his friend back. When he explains in further detail, Santa deadpans “You want me to put a dead dog under your tree,” and it doesn’t come off like a question. Stewie confirms this, though immediately after he sees a kid walk by with his parents and a new bike and he adds “and I’d like a bike,” with a whimper.

Vinny’s interpretation of Brian.

After yet another exterior shot of the house, we see Stewie all alone watching television. It’s another holiday parody, A Year Without a Santa Claus or Sex and there’s just some uptight dad bitching to his kid about his wife being busy all of the time. Vinny then enters the picture wearing glasses and a sweater. When Stewie asks what he’s doing, he corrects him by saying he’s Brian and does an Italian version of Brian’s “catchphrase” of “Whose leg do you have to hump to get a dry martini around here?” Stewie is not impressed, but Vinny says he put a lot of thought into this gimmick by reading up on politics and even outlining his own novel “Wish it. Want it. You blew it.” He reads some of it to Stewie and it’s just another vessel for Italian stereotypes that goes on too long. He then tries to cheer Stewie up with an early Christmas present, but the box contains a severed foot. Vinny says that was supposed to go to someone else, and we cut to a group of gangster types getting ready to celebrate the death of Johnny the Foot something, only their gift contains a train. They then go into a schtick of trying to figure out who the train refers to getting more and more specific and it just goes on and on and is never funny.

Vinny then gives Stewie his real gift which is a bowling shirt. Vinny says it’s a versatile garment that can be worn for any occasion, as long as it’s at the beach or adjacent to a beach, but Stewie seems unimpressed. Vinny then decides they should head to the toy store where Stewie can pick something out for himself. They do just that and Stewie is still in a mood since the toy store before Christmas is usually picked over. Vinny tries cheering him up by pointing out there’s tons of good stuff and demonstrates with some bronze, sheep, bookends that shine a sad light on Vinny’s childhood.

Yeah, there isn’t much mystery here.

Stewie soon notices someone familiar in the store. He follows the kid only to realize it’s him! Vinny is angry and hungry, so he goes to punch a sandwich while Stewie investigates further. Vinny then returns with a black eye and an angry, personified, sandwich. Stewie asks Vinny for his help, but he’s not really sure what he’s after. When Stewie says he needs help stealing something Vinny is suddenly all-in. Stewie explains the other Stewie is him from the past. He time-traveled to the future to get a new Jolly Farm game he couldn’t wait for. Stewie asks Vinny to distract him so he can steal the time travel device in the other Stewie’s backpack. Vinny assures him he knows just how to distract another Stewie.

Work it, Stewie!

Vinny then intercepts Stewie after he’s made his purchase. He asks the past Stewie if he’s ever done any modeling, and Stewie says “not professionally” clearly ignoring the events of the episode “The Son Also Draws.” Vinny continues to butter him up and Stewie actually starts stripping away layers as he poses allowing for the current Stewie to steal the time travel device from the backpack. He retreats to a storeroom and Vinny soon appears telling him he should probably hurry up as the other Stewie is changing into tap shoes for some reason. Stewie explains he intends to travel back in time to save Brian, causing him to realize this will undo his family adopting Vinny. Vinny, now realizing he was duped into helping Stewie significantly alter his life for the worse, seems a bit sad at first, but then lightens the mood by saying “Hey, I’m man’s best friend, not some stupid baby’s!” He gives Stewie a smile and then sits like a traditional dog would allowing Stewie to pat him on the head and assure him he’s a been a good dog (I do love it when the dog characters on this show behave like actual dogs for brief moments). Vinny then stands and announces to a Georgette that he’s coming home and walks out of the scene causing Stewie to ask aloud to himself “Who the hell is Georgette?”

A genuine moment of sweetness for Family Guy.

Stewie then hops on the time travel device and we’re taken back to the past with no establishing shot – it’s a Christmas miracle! Stewie and Brian are setting up their street hockey game and Stewie realizes he forgot his kneepads inside. He awkwardly informs Brian of this suggesting he was using them for some depraved sex act, before running inside. Future Stewie then appears and as the car destined to kill Brian screams around the corner, Stewie is able to tackle Brian and spare him. He then starts celebrating Brian’s un-death, which confuses Brian. Stewie goes on to explain he traveled from the future to save him, for when Brian died a little piece of him died as well. Brian is still confused since he just witnessed Stewie destroy his time machine, but Stewie explains how he ran into a past version of himself in the future which reminds him that he needs to send the time device back. We then see Past Stewie angrily waiting in the toy store as he says aloud to himself he’s starting to think Vinny wasn’t a real modeling agent. He then makes it creepy by adding “and I don’t think that other guy was a real Penis-Butt Inspector!”

So long, Future Stewie.

As Stewie finishes his explanation to Brian, he starts to fade away. By changing the past, he’s erased his own timeline. He’s not sad though, but rather happy to have saved Brian. His “dying” words are “Merry Christmas, Brian,” which must be a little confusing to Brian since I don’t think they’re near Christmas in his timeline. Right as he vanishes though, the now present Stewie returns (conveniently with a new hockey stick after the ones he set down in the road were run over) and asks Brian who he was talking to. Brian replies, “A pretty awesome guy,” with a warm smile, only for Stewie to mock him by suggesting he marry the guy. He punctuates the jab by hitting Brian in the balls with his hockey stick and then does circles around his writhing body chanting “Stew-S-A” over and over.

Right in the balls.

A final exterior shot of a snowy Griffin house ushers in our final scene. The family is celebrating Christmas by opening their presents. Chris got some oven mitts and an unfunny joke is attached to it. Brian then gives Stewie his Christmas present and it’s a picture of the two of them in Christmas attire with the caption “Friends Forever” underneath. Stewie tells him it’s wonderful, and Brian informs him that Stewie gave him the greatest gift of all and that he’ll elaborate further some day. Stewie then looks concerned and questions Brian if they’re pregnant? Brian corrects him, but then adds that Stewie’s his best friend and he tells him he loves him. Stewie begins to respond warmly, but then gets stern and informs Brian that he’s been making creepy eye contact with him all morning and that he wants it to stop! Smash cut to credits!

Stewie’s gift.

Well, that was a mostly unfunny romp through the Christmas season with some genuine sentimentality tacked on at the end. The episode was a rather unique setup for Family Guy as it was like two, distinct, stories that occurred consecutively rather than at the same time like a traditional A and B plot. We had the first half of the episode which was devoted to Peter trying to get Carter into the Christmas spirit, and then the second half which was all about bringing Brian back. If the writers were just trying to disguise the fact that they wanted to resurrect Brian for Christmas then they did a good job as the episode did not point in that direction at all, until Stewie climbed onto the mall Santa’s lap with less than 10 minutes remaining. Stewie’s grief was handled well though and I did like his interactions with both Vinny and Brian. This being Family Guy, they found ways to punctuate those tender moments with jokes. They didn’t always land (like the weird sandwich bit), but they didn’t take away from the moment, but rather just cut out some of the overripe sweetness of those moments. I did like how they teed up a warm closing scene only for Brian to just completely botch it which felt like the right note for a Family Guy Christmas episode to end on.

Aside from that though, the first half of the episode was a real slog. Almost none of the observational humor Family Guy strives for really landed, but they sure kept trying! The Home Alone parody was all right, but the others were lame. The eggnog scene was gross for multiple reasons, and none of the cut-away jokes accomplished anything aside from eating up time. And what is up with the need for exterior shots before every scene?! The Griffin house did look nice, but I didn’t need to see the same shot over and over! The only thing I did like was Carter finally coming around on Christmas because he was afraid of people mistaking him for a Jew.

In the end, this was a somewhat sweet story about a kid and his dog.

This Christmas episode of Family Guy ends up being memorable because it’s the episode where the show brought Brian back, even though he hadn’t been gone very long. Only one episode separates this one and “Life of Brian,” his death episode, so it’s easy to question if the show didn’t let Brian stay dead long enough to really sell the gag. It’s also Family Guy though and no one watches it for anything more than a sequence of jokes. The actual characters are rarely of any importance. Were fans happy to have Brian back? Did they like Vinny? Did they even care he died? I don’t know, but I do think it was a fun storyline to run with and they wrote themselves a nice out of Brian’s death. Aside from that detail though, this isn’t much good. You’re still better off with watching the inaugural Christmas episode from Family Guy if you must, and I think I enjoyed the Patrick Swayze one more that we looked at a couple of years ago.

If you want to watch “Christmas Guy” this holiday season it should be relatively easy to track down. I think. Adult Swim used to air every Christmas episode from the show this month, probably more than once, but lost the rights to air Family Guy this year so now it’s on the Disney family of channels. I’m assuming channels like FXX will schedule the Christmas episodes like they do for The Simpsons, but it is a bit of an unknown. The show is available on DVD and to stream as part of Hulu, which is probably the easiest way to watch it. If you enjoy Family Guy, and it’s fine to do so, then you probably like this one more than I do and will enjoy it. If you’re someone who does not care for Family Guy then you’ll likely hate this so seek holiday cheer from other sources.

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 4 – A Christmas Story (1972)

For today’s Christmas post, we’re going to take a look at A Christmas Story. No, not that Christmas Story, the first one. Way before Ralphie started obsessing over a BB gun, the duo of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera brought us a story about a mouse and a dog trying to get a last-minute letter…

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by Joe

Dec. 4 – Taz-Mania – “No Time for Christmas”

Before there was an entire broadcast television network owned by Time Warner, there was the relationship that existed between Fox and WB. Fox, needing a lot of content to launch its kid programming block The Fox Kids Network, partnered with WB and Steven Spielberg to bring the world Tiny Toon Adventures. It was a success,…

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by Joe

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December 3, 2021

Dec. 3 – Super Mario World – “The Night Before Cave Christmas”

By Joe
Original air date October 12, 1991.

Last year, we took a trip to the Mushroom Kingdom (kind of) and watched the Super Mario Bros. save Christmas from the evil King Koopa. Since Koopa failed, it would make sense for him to attempt the same trick at a later date, especially since he would go on to become “King Dad” and Christmas presumably got a lot more expensive around Koopa Castle (or should it be Kastle?). Well, he apparently did not agree as he’s left Christmas alone ever since, but Cave Christmas? Now that, is apparently appealing!

In the early 90s, if anything was popular either in toy aisles or on gaming consoles it had a cartoon, and Mario was at the forefront of that. He first had The Super Mario Bros. Super Show followed by The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, and concluding with the Super Mario World cartoon. Other popular Nintendo, or Nintendo-adjacent, properties had to settle for a cameo on Captain N The Game Master, but Mario was able to front his own toon. None of these cartoons were any good, and as the franchise marched forward it feels like the budget set by DiC just got smaller and smaller. The live action segments hosted by Danny Wells and Lou Albano were dropped, and the voices of the Mario brothers were replaced with Tony Rosato and Walker Boone, respectively. John Stocker, who saw his character Toad written out for Super Mario World, got to keep working by voicing new addition Oogtar while Tracy Moore (who came onboard for the Super Mario 3 show) and Harvey Atkin (the only one to voice the same character from start to finish) continued to voice Princess Toadstool and King Koopa, respectively.

How do we feel about Yoshi’s portrayal in this show? Love it? Hate it? I can’t decide!

Super Mario World, like the video game it’s based on, is set in the fictitious Dinosaur World. Mario and his friends are vacationing there, only to find King Koopa and his many Koopa kids have followed them. They make friends with the cave people, and Princess Toadstool more or less throws her weight around as royalty to take over, and take-in a young dinosaur named Yoshi (Andrew Sabiston). Each cartoon is little more than 10 minutes in length and DiC wisely dropped the use of song parodies so the syndicated cut and retail releases were able to retain the original music this time around. The show was bundled with Captain N to air as a block and both shows mainly exist to sell video games. There’s not much to the plot of each episode, characters experience little or no growth, and most episodes can be drilled down to a simple formula. Only 13 episodes were produced airing from September 1991 into December of that year. The show didn’t seem to find much success following its initial run as the episode count was likely too small to interest most cable networks. It did receive a DVD release from Shout Factory, and the show today is mostly remembered as being pretty bad with certain aspects of it being enjoyed mostly from an ironic perspective as the character of Yoshi is both annoying and ridiculous, which I guess makes him a tad charming?

The fifth episode for the show is titled “The Night Before Cave Christmas.” It aired before Halloween, but since Cave Christmas is a made-up holiday by Mario I guess it didn’t need to air during the Christmas season? As mentioned before, this is the second, and final, Christmas episode from the Mario universe of cartoons as DiC declined to do one in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3. I’d say it’s a shame we didn’t end up with 3 Christmas cartoons, but considering the first one was pretty terrible, and this one might actually be worse, I guess it’s no real loss.

It looks the show is simply titled Super Mario World, but it’s actually “Super Mario-Super-Mario Super Mario….World.”

The cartoon begins with a brand new theme song. The previous cartoon cheeped out by forgoing a traditional theme for just narration over some video game inspired music, a severe downgrade following the greatness that is “The Plumber’s Rap.” This new theme is a bit of an ear worm, despite not being great. It’s full of tribal drums and has a Caribbean feel to it, though I’m skeptical DiC paid for an authentic singer and probably just had some white dude fake an accent. Mark Mothersbaugh is credited as composing the theme, but I don’t know who actually sang on it. The lyrics are a bit lacking as the song closes by rhyming the word blast with…blast! I’m getting flashbacks to the “Wrap Rap” from last year!

Poor little mammoth…

When the cartoon begins, we find Yoshi and Oogtar fighting over some barbecued mammoth ribs, which are pretty small for mammoth ribs (maybe they picked off an infant). Mario starts complaining to Luigi and the Princess about how Oogtar is a pain in the ass who spends all day getting into fights with Yoshi. Luigi points out it’s not just Oogtar, as we pan to see other cave people fighting with each other. One poorly animated boy and girl pair are just hitting each other like Itchy and Scratchy, minus the mallets. Mario then hatches up an idea based on the notion that people start acting really nice to each other around the holidays. Luigi asks if he means Christmas, because it’s currently the middle of August so that doesn’t make much sense. Mario basically responds by reminding him that cave people are stupid and will believe anything they tell them. This cartoon really shines a light on what’s awful about colonialism.

It’s a sparsely populated village.

Mario then goes over to the squabbling Yoshi and Oogtar and starts telling them about Christmas. Mostly, he wants to convey the message that good boys and girls are rewarded with treats and presents, and Oogtar immediately becomes nervous because he knows he’s a little piece of shit. Mario christens it Cave Christmas and hangs a big wreath on one of the stone huts and announces, “Merry Cave Christmas!” to all of the onlookers. Nearby, Koopa pops his head out of what I guess is a trash can fashioned out of a stump. Referring to Mario as a “pipe-squeezer” (which got a chuckle out of me), he questions the plumber’s sanity by noting it’s the hottest day of the year before closing the lid and returning to his hiding spot.

The smell of freshly cut evergreen should help cover the smell of body odor and dinosaur shit.

The gang then sets to making the place look like Christmas. Mario and an unnamed cave person cut down a tree, while Oogtar and Yoshi help the Princess collect nuts from nearby trees. Koopa and his son Bully (Dan Hennessey) watch and Bully informs his dad he wants a Christmas tree too. We then go back to town where Princess Toadstool is trying to hang candy canes on a tree (that has a creepy face), but Yoshi keeps eating them as she hangs them. She reminds him about how he needs to be good if he wants presents from Santa, and the dinosaur promptly regurgitates the candy canes back onto the tree. It’s not made to look as gross as it could have. Bully and King Koopa pop out of the garbage stump and Bully takes note of the Princess’s description of Santa and calls the guy a wimp. His dad agrees, but then the garbage dinosaur shows up and tosses the whole stump (which seems very inefficient) into a stone dumpster strapped on his back.

Looks like someone is getting a savage beating for Cave Christmas!

Since there is a severe lack of toy stores in a prehistoric setting, the Marios have to make the toys for Cave Christmas. In a dome, they’re hard at work building shadow boxes and jack-in-the-boxes. Luigi’s emblem on his hat is miss-colored, a frequent occurrence in this show. Oogtar has snuck in though and is trying to get a peek at the presents. Luigi catches him hiding in a jack-in-the-box. He bolts and attempts to hide in a box of dolls, but Luigi picks him up by his shirt and tosses him out the door.

Even the Flintstones had sense enough not to make their sleigh out of stone

The Princess is then shown piling gifts into Santa’s sack while Mario appears to be constructing the sleigh out of stone and wood. Good luck getting that thing to fly! The Princess remarks how she can’t wait to see all of the kids react to the presents on Cave Christmas morning (she makes sure to include the Cave distinction), but lurking just outside the window is King Koopa once again. He laughs to himself and remarks that the Princess won’t get to see any of that because he plans on stealing the toys so his kids can have a jolly Koopa Christmas (Kristmas?). Considering he is mean and green, I suppose it makes sense for Koops to play the Grinch in our story.

The one true king.

The next day, Mario and Luigi are seen shoving their stone sleigh out the door. Mario expresses joy that its Cave Christmas Eve and prods Luigi by remarking it’s just like being back home, Luigi isn’t buying it though. As they head back inside their makeshift toy factory, Oogtar slips in and heads over to the sack of toys. With an evil look on his face, he lets the audience know he intends to cherry-pick the best toy out of the sack early leaving the crummy stuff for the goody-two-shoes. When he hears someone coming back in, he panics and dives into the sack of toys to hide. He seemed to think it was one of the Mario brothers that were coming, but it’s actually Koopa! Because DiC thinks its audience is stupid, Koopa has to explain out loud that he’s stealing the toys for Koopa Christmas and casually strolls out with the sack of toys and Oogtar inside.

Laughing at Luigi’s hateful gay joke. Apparently, Luigi plays the role of drunk, racist, uncle back in Brooklyn for the holidays.

Mario, who this whole time was just standing mere feet away from the cave-napping, is trying on his Santa costume (What? Did you think he’d actually let Luigi play Santa?!) which consists of a hat, white beard (his black moustache is still visible) and a red toga-like garment worn by the cave people which is worn over his red overalls and looks stupid. When he asks how he looks, Luigi tells him he wouldn’t get away with wearing that in Brooklyn. Mario gives a knowing chuckle and I have no idea how I’m supposed to interpret this joke. This is from the early 90s, so it reads like a homophobic joke. Would they attempt such in a kid’s show? Koopa did refer to Mario as a pipe-squeezer earlier…

How dare Koopa steal fake Santa’s present on fake Christmas!

Mario then notices the toys are gone! They run over to the empty place where the massive sack once sat aghast that someone would steal toys on their fake holiday. The Princess announces she knows who is responsible, which is cute of her since we all know who did it. She picks up a scale from the ground and says it belongs to Koopa, and I say, it doesn’t matter. Koopa and his kids are the only bad guys in this entire world! Santa Mario remarks this is somehow worse than what Koopa usually does (I don’t remember enough of this show to know if that tracks or not, but it sure feels like hyperbole) and vows to get them back!

Well, at least this Christmas special got one thing right.

Mario takes off in his one-dinosaur sleigh as poor Yoshi has to pull that stone monstrosity through the air with his wings power-up. They do find time to pass in front of the moon. Meanwhile, Koopa empties the sack of toys back at his “neon” castle and finds Oogtar inside. Oogtar, apparently lacking any sense of danger, is still preoccupied with getting all of the toys and gets into an argument over it with Koopa who intends to give them to his kids. Oogtar grabs one gift and Koops swats him across the room, rather gently unfortunately. Oogtar rips it open, only to find a ba-bomb inside it which he promptly tosses back to Koopa. He shouts he’s glad Koopa isn’t his dad with a gift like that, but aren’t these all gifts Mario and the gang wrapped? Were they trying to murder Oogtar?!

Merry Cave Christmas, Ratgoo!

The bomb predictably explodes in Koopa’s face, even though he tried telling it that it’s not supposed to blow until Christmas. Oogtar tries to book it, but Koopa grabs him. He’s got something special planned for Oogtar as he strings him up with a pulley system. The rope is a vine and Oogtar finds himself dangling over a pit in which a hungry dinosaur waits at the bottom. Koopa places a lit candle under the vine and leaves Oogtar to his certain death rather than stay and watch. I’d think he’d want to see the little twerp get it, but I guess he has other plans. As he departs, he chides Oogtar by reminding him that his name spelled backwards is “Rat Goo,” an actual worthwhile zinger for this show! I like this Koopa fellow.

Probably not the most discrete way to travel.

Santa Mario and Yoshi arrive and hear the screams of that little baby, Oogtar, coming from the castle. Mario runs over with his toolbox and spies Oogtar through a barred window. Seeing Oogtar in danger, he then runs to a different window for some reason and pulls out some little dinosaur from his toolbox that he uses to bend the bars. Yoshi, who seemingly lost his wings despite not taking any damage, is then advised to help Santa squeeze through the opening he just created, but he’s still too wide. We get a predictable diet joke out of Yoshi, and Mario informs him that a diet is not in the cards and that he needs to push harder! As Yoshi backs up to get a running star, he sees a terribly off-model Boo ghost and panics, crashing into Mario sending both tumbling into the castle where a horde of mecha-koopas descend upon them.

I’ve always felt the Santa suit could use a cape!

We then go into the chase segment. I think every cartoon in this show features one where the characters go running through the castle, avoiding enemies, all while a song plays in the background. The song is almost unintelligible. It sounds like the Koopa Kids making up a Christmas song. There’s something about a sleigh in there and I can’t make much out. It’s not good. Mario rides Yoshi through part of the castle avoiding catastrophe until they have a trio of the football guys from the video game chasing them down. Mario is able to conveniently find a super feather in a block and becomes caped Santa! He grabs Yoshi and the two fly through a pipe that leads them to Oogtar.

Look at this stupid, smiling, asshole. Hopefully Yoshi is happy because he’s thinking about how he gets to fill Ratgoo’s stocking with dinosaur droppings.

Oogtar, unfortunately, is still dangling over the hungry dinosaur infested pit. The vine breaks and Oogtar heads for doom, but Mario grabs the end of the vine. As Oogtar rises out of the pit, Mario goes in! Narrowly avoiding the chomping jaws of the dinosaur lurking within, Mario is able to fly out of the pit, catch Oogtar, and safely land outside the pit while the poor, endangered, creature in the pit is left hungry. Mario does a “ta-da” pose and a puff of smoke seemingly indicates his cape power wearing off, but when the smoke dissipates the cape is still there. Only when Mario starts laying into Oogtar is his cape finally removed from his model. Oogtar tries to weasel out of the discussion, but Mario points out that he’s already gone through all of Santa’s presents. Oogtar finally cops to being a little shit and Yoshi calls him bad (his eyes are all over the place in this segment too and it’s really distracting). Oogtar then promises to be a good little cave kid for the rest of his life, but Mario notes he’s got his fingers crossed behind his back. Oogtar, astonished, asks Santa how he knew and Mario gives a chuckle that he was once a little “bambino” too. Cave Christmas magic!

There wasn’t much screen time for the Koopalings in this one, which is tragic because they’re easily the best characters in the show.

Mario then comes running out of the castle with the sack of toys, which looks much smaller than before. They’re apparently just going to “yadda yadda” over how he managed to sneak into the throne room and grab them. With Oogtar in the sleigh and Yoshi hitched up, Mario tells him to take off, but there’s one problem – Yoshi doesn’t have any wings! Mario retreats to a nearby castle wall and just starts punching blocks until some wings pop out – the solution was so easy why bother even creating the problem in the first place? With the wings in place on Yoshi, they can finally leave, and just in time too as the threats of Bully Koopa start echoing from inside the castle. The whole Koopa clan races out as Santa’s sleigh lifts off.

Don’t fall for his bullshit, Santa Mario!

Back at Dome City, Santa Mario tucks Oogtar into bed. Before he can leave, Oogtar grabs Santa’s shirt so he can tell him that he’s been a bad kid and doesn’t deserve any presents. Being saved from the dinosaur is present enough (I bet the town wishes they could trade the presents they’re about to get in exchange for feeding Oogtar to that dino), but if Santa wants to leave Oogtar something it would make him happy. Mario remarks this isn’t like Oogtar, implying this one bit of manipulation on Oogtar’s part erases how terrible he is. Mario, predictably, leaves Oogtar a present before he and Yoshi fly off into the night.

Way to ruin Christmas, Mario.

The next morning, Mario is snoring away in his very uncomfortable looking vine bed still in all of his clothes. As he sleeps, Oogtar slips in with a wrapped gift as he notes Santa didn’t leave Mario anything. He places the gift by Mario’s bed as the plumber wakes up. Oogtar wishes “Mario dude” a merry Cave Christmas. The episode ends with Mario breaking the fourth wall to ask the audience, “Wouldn’t it be nice if every day were Christmas?”

And that is the rare holiday of Cave Christmas. It’s just like regular Christmas, only Santa is a plumber and his stone sleigh is pulled by a winged dinosaur. Also, the toys look pretty lousy. And it’s set in August. I don’t think I thought much of this episode (or this show) as a kid and have almost no memory of this, specific, episode. As an adult, it’s hard for me to ignore the inherent colonialism in the Mario brothers setting up shop in a remote location among the natives and basically brainwashing them in a bid to control them. It’s actually pretty shitty. It’s made worse by the fact that they’re also spreading a religious holiday to these people, though the religious aspect of Christmas is not touched upon at all, for the better.

Get this piece of rat goo the hell away from my holiday!

Even if I accept that I’m reading way too much into this extended video game commercial, there’s no polishing this turd of a Christmas special. Oogtar is unlikable and pretty damn annoying. I really don’t want to see him learn a lesson or have a merry Christmas in the end, I just want him to go away. He also didn’t really learn anything as I get the impression he just goes back to being a shit the next day once Cave Christmas is concluded. He tried to lie to Santa! Beyond that, the episode is poorly scripted, plotted, and paced and almost demeaning to its audience. The good guys have to be stupid in order to not see a giant turtle monster skulking about town stealing their stuff, and they make sure to tell the audience everything that’s happening because no one apparently trusted the kids to understand this stuff. The only positive I can give this thing is Harvey Atkin is still dynamite as Koopa and he even made me chuckle on two occasions.

You got two tries at a Christmas special, Mario, and you blew it! You are hereby cut off! No more Christmas for you!

If you absolutely must journey to Dinosaur World this Christmas then you’ll be pleased to know that all 13 episodes of Super Mario World are available on DVD. And since the show is bad, you can probably find it for very cheap as nostalgia seekers probably impulse bought it when it was new and then were eager to get rid of it. Nintendo also hates these old cartoons and basically just wants nothing to do with them so no one is actively enforcing the copywrite presently and you can find this one streaming online for free. With seemingly every IP under the sun getting locked into exclusive deals with some official streaming service, this one might actually remain free for awhile since Nintendo doesn’t appear interested in even shopping this stuff around. I’m actually a little surprised they aren’t throwing their weight around to wipe this thing from existence, but I guess their inattention to the show is everyone’s gain. Or loss.

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 3 – The Simpsons – “The Way of the Dog”

It’s not often I get to look at a Christmas special from the same year I’m doing The Christmas Spot, but it also helps when that Christmas special premieres in May of the same of year. May?! Yeah, it’s weird, but for the 31st season finale of The Simpsons the show rolled out a Christmas…

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by Joe

Dec. 3 – Mega Babies – “A Mega Christmas”

Considering how gross a lot of cartoons had become in the 90s, it should come as no surprise that the decade concluded with Mega Babies, a cartoon about literal snot-nosed, super-powered, babies featuring diapers overflowing with excrement in the opening title. Mega Babies was a short-lived production from the Tremblay brothers, Christian and Yvon, who…

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by Joe

Dec. 3 – X-Men: Evolution – “On Angel’s Wings”

Long after the X-Men animated series that originated on Fox Kids had ended, along with basically every other Marvel cartoon at that network, X-Men:  Evolution showed up on Kids WB. It’s kind of odd considering WB owned DC and yet they went in on X-Men, but X-Men were still popular and were gearing up for…

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December 2, 2021

Dec. 2 – Tennessee Tuxedo and his Tales – “The Tree Trimmers”

By Joe
Original air date November 27, 1965

In the early 1960s, content producers were still trying to navigate the lay of the land when it came to television. Animation had been popular for decades in movie theaters and the big studios knew they appealed to kids, but it was just so expensive to produce that few were willing to try it on television. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and one of the earliest Saturday morning cartoons was a production from Total Television titled Tennessee Tuxedo and his Tales.

Tennessee Tuxedo was essentially the heir apparent to the series King Leonardo which concluded the same day Tennessee Tuxedo premiered. The show was conceived of by W. Watts Biggers and Chet Stover and originally existed to sell cereal, as sponsorship was the name of the game back then (and for awhile) when it came to children’s programming. Education was also a component as well and the show was setup in a fashion that allowed the main characters to learn a thing or two and serve as an audience surrogate in the hopes that the kids watching at home wouldn’t figure out it was really they who were learning a lesson.

The show starred Don Adams in the role of Tennessee Tuxedo, a penguin in a hat and bowtie who lives at the Megapolis Zoo. Adams uses the “clippy” voice he would later perfect on the series Get Smart! and even later as the voice of Inspector Gadget to voice Tennessee. The penguin’s best friend is a walrus by the name of Chumley (Bradley Bolke) and together the two are usually up to something that takes them out of the confines of the zoo and presents a problem for the pair. Tennessee’s catch phrase is “Tennessee Tuxedo shall not fail,” even though he usually does. When the problem gets too big for the pair to manage, they turn to the all-knowing Phineas J. Whoopee (Larry Storch), who is literally the man with all the answers and the way for every episode to write its characters out of trouble. The main antagonist of the show is the zoo director Stanley Livingstone (Mort Marshall) who often threatens to skin the pair. Nice guy!

What a way to close out your opening theme song.

In the early 1990s, few cable networks dedicated significant time to children’s programming. Basically, the only game in town was Nickelodeon, but back then the Viacom-owned network did not produce much in the way of cartoons. Instead, the network was forced to license material to air on its network, but couldn’t pay the big money of the major broadcast networks to attract the best shows. That left Nick with a lot of older material, which is how I was exposed to Tennessee Tuxedo. Not long after the show’s original debut came Underdog, which proved to be the more popular show. In licensing Underdog for syndication, his show would often be packaged with other cartoons, many of which debuted as part of Tennessee Tuxedo and his Tales. These packaged shows would air often on Nickelodeon and I watched quite a bit of them, even though I don’t recall actually enjoying them. It was a cartoon and it was on – those were essentially my standards at the time.

As part of the show’s third season we have a Christmas episode. Tennessee is going to take it upon himself to trim the zoo’s tree, even though Stanley would prefer he not do so. I don’t recall seeing this one as a kid and it’s possible the holiday themed episodes were not included in the syndicated package. After all, networks just want to be able to throw these things on at any time and seasonal episodes can mess that up (if the network cares, and often times, they don’t). When this one first originally aired, it was at the end of November and likely the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a plenty appropriate time to unveil a Christmas episode.

The opening title for this one has a very Mickey Mouse Club feel to it, only it looks a lot worse. The scenes in the opening title also seem to suggest kids are getting a show full of high adventure, which is not how I remember the actual show being. It also ends with Tennessee and Chumley dropping onto the title of the show and then two, giant, gun barrels are pointed at them. There’s an explosion, but no animation of the guns actually firing, before the pair is blasted up and out of the shot. It’s a pretty intense close for a Saturday morning cartoon.

I bet you can’t guess what the eagle’s name is.

The cartoon begins with Tennessee and the gang singing a bad Christmas carol. They’re just singing “Merry Christmas to you,” over and over for the most part before they’re interrupted. Flunky (Kenny Delmar), the zoo keeper, comes running over to tell Tennessee that Stanley needs to see him in his office and Tennessee seems particularly annoyed at being taken away from caroling. When Flunky mentions it concerns the zoo’s Christmas tree, Tennessee gets excited as he assumes Stanley wants their help in setting up the tree.

Tennessee and Chumley head over to Stanley’s office ready to help trim the tree. Stanley, who always seems irritated, informs Tennessee he’s to do no such thing! Stanley tells the pair that the mayor has set up a tree contest and that he intends for the zoo to win. He’s hired professional tree trimmers to handle the decorating and wants Tennessee and Chumley to show the decorators where everything is while he’s out fetching the mayor. Tennessee protests a bit and insists he and Chumley can handle it, but Stanley refuses to entertain the thought. Once gone though, Tennessee tells Chumley they’re decorating that tree. Chumley, who speaks in a classic dimwitted voice where every line begins with a “duh,” reminds Tennessee that Stanley forbade them from doing so, but Tennessee insists that they should because it’s the season of giving and decorating the tree will be their gift to Stanley.

This is going well.

Outside of the zoo’s auditorium the pair find a massive tree that Stanley wants setup inside. Tennessee and Chumley each grab one end of the tree which knocks Tennessee flat on his back prompting him to instruct Chumley to, “cut the comedy!” They then try to bring it inside with Tennessee dragging the tree from the top and Chumley from the bottom, only the tree gets stuck about 3/4 of the way through the door. Tennessee tells Chumley to trim off some of the bigger branches so they can fit it in. He does as he’s told and the tree fits, but now the first 8 feet or so of the tree’s base is bare.

The two then go to set the tree up, only the top scrapes the ceiling. Chumley tells Tennessee the tree is too tall, and Tennessee indicates it’s not a problem as they can chop some off. Considering that the bare portion of the tree extends beyond the pair’s head, the viewer is likely supposed to assume Tennessee will cut from the bottom, but he does not, and cuts from the middle. When he’s done, the tree is much smaller, and Chumley remarks that it now looks like a dust broom. Tennessee, once again, assures him it’s fixable as he trims off the “handle.” Chumley then tells him it looks too wide and points out that a Christmas tree should be pointy at the top. Tennessee then takes some clippers and re-shapes it. When he asks Chumley if it’s not the ideal shape for a Christmas tree Chumley agrees, but notes it’s not the biggest tree he’s ever seen as it’s now about a foot tall.

Still less pathetic than Charlie Brown’s tree (which premiered less than two weeks after this episode).

Baldy, an eagle, and Yakkity Yak (both voiced by Kenny Delmar) enter the auditorium to ask what’s going on. Tennessee shows them the tree, and the two immediately start to panic as they know Stanley is going to be pissed when he sees what Tennessee did to his tree. Tennessee Tuxedo, turning to his catchphrase about never failing, tells them not to worry as he’ll just chop down another tree. We then jump to the new tree being setup and it’s actually quite lovely. Now, they need to trim it. Tennessee heads up a ladder and instructs Yak to start tossing him ornaments, only Yak’s aim is terrible and they just smash on the floor. Yak then decides it would be better to simply hand him the ornament and Tennessee places it at the top of the tree. He’s so enamored with the ornament’s beauty that he descends the ladder to admire it and promptly falls onto the other ornaments, breaking half of their allotment.

Tennessee places the rest on the tree and searches for compliments, but Yak is honest in his assessment that it’s pretty bare. He assures him it will look better with lights on it and turns to Baldy, who is about to plug in a string of lights to test them. As he does so, Tennessee examines the string and notes there’s a missing bulb. He sticks his finger in the socket right as Baldy plugs them in and is soon electrocuted. The effect is super basic as Tennessee just slowly flashes different colors before a cloud of smoke explodes.

Electrocution gags will get a lot better over the years.

With the tree bare and lacking lights, the only thing that can save it now is the star. Tennessee heads up the ladder once again to place the star at the top, only the ladder starts to shake right as he reaches to place the star in its rightful place. Despite Chumley telling him to be careful, Tennessee predictably takes a tumble right into the tree. The whole thing comes down and Yak quickly notes that now all of the ornaments are broken. Tennessee, with the star stuck on top of his head, rises from the shattered tree and tells Chumley it’s probably time they go seek the aid of Mr. Whoopey.

Your ornament sucks, Whoopey.

We find Mr. Whoopey casually seated on his desk as Tennessee tells him about their dilemma. Before he can finish, he remarks that Mr. Whoopey has a really fine tree in his office. This sets Mr. Whoopey on his instruction for the day as he tells them how to make shitty ornaments out of paper. The guy loves paper as most of the ornaments and garland he recommends begins life as a piece of paper, which seems really dangerous considering the lights utilized in the 60s were those giant, colored, bulbss that got super hot after about five seconds. He also tells them they can put cookies and candy on the tree as ornaments and shows them how to string popcorn and cranberries using a needle and thread. These guys can’t even work a ladder without destroying a tree, I don’t think they should be allowed to string anything with a needle. The advice all seems terrible, but Tennessee disagrees as the pair enthusiastically head back to the zoo.

Oh Stanley, you’re in for a treat!

We then see Stanley leading the mayor and his wife to the auditorium. As Stanley opens the door, he boasts about hiring professional decorators to trim the tree, but then looks at his tree in horror. He runs in wanting to know what happened to all his ornaments, but soon realizes the tree looks pretty good. And it does, and it magically has non homemade ornaments on it as well as the popcorn garland. They also apparently found more lights. The mayor’s wife really likes it and declares it the prettiest tree she’s ever seen prompting the mayor to inform Stanley they’ve won the contest. Tennessee then doffs his cap (which has switched back to his normal, yellow, hat) to wish everyone a merry Christmas and the whole gang assembles in front of the tree (and Tennessee’s hat has switched back to his red stocking cap) to resume the awful carol the episode began with.

Looks like it’s time to start singing again.

As they all sing, the other zoo animals start popping their heads out of their homes. They all react favorably to hearing the carol as they all start to leave and descend upon the auditorium. They enter and the carolers inside appear happy at their arrival and soon we have a large group shot of everyone singing the song. Tennessee, who now has his yellow hat again (this is insane!), acts like he’s conducting their choir or something. The cartoon closes on an external shot of the auditorium at night and then zooms in on the Christmas Star which sparkles in the night.

And now everyone gets involved!

“The Tree Trimmers” feels like an episode that was written in all of five minutes. Someone must have got the mandate to do a Christmas episode, and the writers quickly came up with Tennessee and Chumley struggling to properly decorate a tree. Even the educational segment was rather weak as Mr. Whoopey gives lazy advice on how to cut paper into half-assed ornaments. Seriously, if your kid came home from school with one of those you’d probably feel cheated. Everything turns out fine in the end because it’s Christmas and it has to. At least the song, even if it’s mediocre, appears to be an original rather than some public domain Christmas carol.

Being a cartoon from the 60s intended for television, it’s probably no surprise to hear that this one is pretty rough looking. The animation is very basic as the characters only move when necessary and they just sort of slide across the screen with no bounce in their step. There’s no wasted movement or embellishment anywhere. I can at least appreciate that they made the effort to put everyone in mildly festive attire with Tennessee and Chumley ditching their usual hats for winter ones. The vocal cast is okay and I do like how Adams plays Tennessee and Stanley is a well-acted antagonist, even if he’s barely in this cartoon. The show wisely lets Adams dominate every scene as the other actors really aren’t asked to do much more than just set Tennessee up for whatever comes next.

The final shot rests on a star. I would have preferred Santa.

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone reading this in 2021 (and beyond) that Tennessee Tuxedo and his Tales is not airing on any network these days. I don’t think it’s even streaming anywhere. The show was made available on DVD by Shout Factory in 2012 so if you want to own this episode, and every other episode, you can. It’s out of print though so it’s not exactly cheap, but also it’s not the sort of thing that has become insanely expensive. It can basically be had for around 30 bucks brand new, which is probably right around the original MSRP. If you were to find it used, maybe you could get it for 20. I don’t think it’s worth it, but at least the option is available for those who do like this show or just like to amass a large collection of animation. This episode can also be found on the internet for free, if that’s your preference. It’s not likely to bring about those lovely Christmas feels, but it’s certainly a Christmas themed episode and since it’s only about 10 minutes you probably won’t feel like you wasted your time. At least not much of your time.

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 2 – Toy Story That Time Forgot

When the credits started to roll in 2010 signaling the end of Toy Story 3 I think most who were watching it assumed this was “good bye.” The toys which had captured the hearts of movie-goers going on two decades were saying good bye to their former owner and playmate, Andy, and so too were…

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by Joe

Dec. 2 – Robot Chicken’s ATM Christmas Special

This is going to be a bit of an experiment. These recaps the last few years have basically focused on cartoons or live-action shows in which a story is told over some duration. I have so far avoided sketch shows, not purposely, but it’s definitely been in the back of my mind that doing a…

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Dec. 2 – The Simpsons – “Grift of the Magi”

Talk to any fans of The Simpsons and they’ll likely have an opinion on when the show ceased to be great. For most, that occurs sometime after Season 8 of the now 30 season show. Some will argue that, while it may have been past its prime, it was still watchable, reliable, programming for a…

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by Joe

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in christmas, Television

December 1, 2021

Dec. 1 – Frosty the Snowman

By Joe
Original air date December 7, 1969

Welcome back, lovers of Christmas, to the 7th edition of The Christmas Spot! If you missed the introduction a few days ago, we’re doing things a little differently this year. Yes, you’re still getting a dedicated write-up each day through Christmas about a beloved or not-so-beloved holiday special, but this year we’re also going retro by this blog’s standards. In order to shine a brighter light on the best of the best in the field of televised Christmas specials, we’re revisiting some of the 25 best as laid out in 2015 and reaffirmed just a year ago on this blog. When the subject was first discussed, the format for The Christmas Spot was to do a mini review of each special as opposed to the full-on walkthrough it has turned into. It didn’t make sense that so few words were reserved for the best the holiday had to offer, so we’re going to start rectifying that this year. Not every one of those inaugural 25 are being rehashed this year, just a select few of my choosing. Maybe next year we’ll look at some more, maybe we won’t, it’s all rather fluid.

Today, we’re kicking things off with a lookback to one of those 25: Frosty the Snowman. The Rankin/Bass classic was originally ranked at number 15, but was dropped down to 19 last year. Being in the top 20 is still nothing to sneeze at as Frosty is here to stay.

The 1969 classic is now one of the longest running Christmas specials on television today. For the past several years it has been the unofficial start of the holiday special season as CBS has chosen to air it the day after Thanksgiving for quite awhile now. As streaming services continue to take over, the days of the event special may be coming to an end. Last year saw Charlie Brown and the gang get axed from a network timeslot all because Amazon scooped the property up and intended to put an end to the tradition. What happened was people were so pissed about missing out on annual viewings of the Peanuts holiday specials that Amazon rethought its position and made the Thanksgiving and Christmas special available for one night only each on PBS. They aired at 7 EST and were barely in prime time, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. ABC also seemed to reduce their holiday output since it now has Disney+ to stash its specials on. It’s likely we’ll continue to see massive corporations hoard these valuable pieces of television history and what was once a shared, viewing, experience each year is just another thing to binge at your leisure.

For now, we still have Frosty. The special, which is obviously adapted from the song written by Walter Rollins and Steve Nelson, was written by Romeo Muller and directed by the tandem of Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass. It’s narrated by comedian Jimmy Durante and features voice work from Jackie Vernon, Paul Frees, Billy De Wolfe, and June Foray. It’s a special that always stood out to me as a kid because, unlike Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, it was a cel-animated production from Rankin/Bass instead of stop-motion. I feel like everyone associates Rankin/Bass with stop-motion, but their more traditional animated works are pretty noteworthy as well. When it came time to animate the special, Rankin/Bass turned to Mushi Productions, the animation studio based in Japan founded by the legendary Osamu Tezuka. Yes, Frosty the Snowman is basically anime. It would be more obvious if Rankin/Bass had not hired Paul Coker Jr. to first design the characters for the special, but you can certainly see the Japanese influence in several places.

Jimmy Durante will be our guide through the story, and song, of Frosty the Snowman.

Frosty the Snowman opens in idyllic fashion. Snow is falling and the people of this small community are busying themselves getting ready for Christmas. Our narrator, Jimmy Durante who is animated to resemble himself, explains that this is the first snow of the season and that it’s actually a Christmas snow. Why is that important? Apparently, when the first snow of the season happens to fall on Christmas Eve, something wonderful is bound to happen!

Our attention then shifts to a small school house. The kids are restless as they want to go play in the snow and their teacher (voiced by June Foray) has organized a Christmas party. Yeah, those days were always long even if they weren’t filled with education as no one wants to be in school so close to the holiday (and basically no one goes to school on Christmas Eve these days). The teacher informs the students that she’s hired a magician to entertain them. Considering the teacher had to pay out of pocket to bring this guy in, you can probably guess just what kind of magician a teacher’s salary can afford.

Behold! The worst magician in the world!

Professor Hinkle (Billy De Wolfe) is introduced by the narrator as probably the worst magician in the world. He begins his routine by tossing some eggs into his “magic” hat, says some traditional magic words, and then turns the hat upside down only for the eggs to fall out and smash on the floor. The kids are disappointed, which is perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of this special about a snowman coming to life as any group of kids I know would have laughed at a trick going so poorly. Hinkle then tries to retrieve a rabbit out of the same hat, which is going about as well as the egg trick. Declaring the hat is only fit for the trash can, he chucks it towards the waste basket only for the rabbit to finally pop out. Before the kids can react to the reveal of Hocus Pocus, the bell rings and they storm out of there basically trampling the magician in the process.

Once outside, the kids race through the snow. Most apparently did not consult a weather report earlier in the day as several are wearing shorts. One girl is sporting short sleeves and a pink skirt with suspenders which really can’t be comfortable. Some of the boys immediately start building a snowman, and it’s during this process we really get to meet Karen (who was voiced by Foray in the original, now lost, airing and re-dubbed by Suzanne Davidson) as she volunteers to build the head for the snowman. She declares it’s the most difficult part of snowman construction, and even challenges the boys to ask anyone on the subject for confirmation. Well Karen, I’ve built a few snowmen in my day and I have to strongly disagree. The head is quite possibly the easiest part, especially if you’re building a snowman like Frosty who has actual legs! Seriously, that’s damn near impossible.

Never in my life have I been able to make a snowman half as good as what’s present in cartoons.

Once the snowman is assembled, the kids gather around to choose a name. After some truly wretched suggestions, including an unintelligible suggestion from one kid who apparently just speaks in sound effects, Karen proposes Frosty and the kids all seem to agree this is a fine name. They then clasp hands and spontaneously break-out into song. Either they’re all amazing at improv, or they’re just as unoriginal as most kids and they named their snowman after a song that already exists in their world. While they’re singing, the rabbit Hocus Pocus comes bounding out of the school house in the discarded hat which Karen tosses on Frosty’s head to complete his ensemble. Much to everyone’s shock, the hat brings Frosty to life as his lifeless, coal, eyes become whole and he greets everyone with a “Happy birthday!” Considering it is essentially his birth day, it’s an appropriate greeting, if a bit unexpected.

Professor Hinkle is there to witness the whole thing as he had been chasing Hocus. When Karen declares the hat must be magic, Hinkle decides he wants it back as a fortuitous wind blows it off Frosty’s head and into his waiting arms. When the children protest, Hinkle plays dumb and claims he didn’t witness any such nonsense. He admonishes the children informing them that when they’re grown up they’ll understand snowmen can’t come to life. As he takes off with his hat and rabbit, the kids turn forlornly towards Frosty and reassure the snowman that they did see him come to life. Durante then comes back in to sing a jolly rendition of “Frosty the Snowman” as we’re finally shown the opening credits for the special and the major network gets to toss some commercials our way.

Get a load of this asshole.

When we return from the festivities, our informative narrator makes it clear that Professor Hinkle was wrong to take Frosty’s hat. He doesn’t elaborate, but I guess we’re to hold him to his momentary anger at the hat when he tossed it at the garbage. That seems a bit extreme, but it’s important the viewer hates this guy (and denying life to a snowman is a pretty shitty thing to do) as Hocus Pocus is about to take action. As the magician walks past people on the street greeting them happily, Hocus quickly swaps the hat with a wreath and bounds off.

When Hocus returns to the site of Frosty’s awakening, the kids are still just standing around accepting defeat. Karen notes the hat is back, seemingly oblivious that it was the rabbit who returned it, and she places it back on Frosty’s head. He once again greets the children with a “Happy Birthday!” and then begins to question his existence. Rather than be burdened by some truly out of this world thoughts on who he is and why he’s here, he just humbly accepts that life has been granted to him and then begins to test out his bodily functions. No, nothing weird or gross, mainly just juggling and checking if he’s ticklish. Okay, that does sound a little odd. His right hand also sprouts an extra finger so he can count to five (like most cartoon characters, Frosty only has four digits normally), but that’s just one of many odd animation quirks we’ll endure.

Frosty admiring his own rump.

Once Frosty is satisfied that he’s alive, the dancing can commence! We get a little more of the song as sung by Jimmy Durante as we’re basically just going to hear a verse here and there until the special is over and the song concluded. Once they seem to get over the thrill of life, Frosty wipes some “sweat” off of his head and takes note of a nearby thermometer. I question its accuracy, as it appears to be pushing past 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but the point is made and that’s snow is destined to melt, which means Frosty is destined to melt. This is where the special takes a hard pivot from the song. The lyrics make it sound like Frosty accepts his fate as all snowmen must melt and resigns himself to have a good time until the moist, dripping, splash of death consumes him. In the special, he immediately decides death is quite a bummer and a thing to be avoided. Where can a snowman cheat death? Why, the North Pole of course! When Frosty shares this bit of info the children decide they have to help him get to the North Pole, so they have a parade! All right, that part is a little weird, but I guess if you need to head to a train depot you might as well make a parade of it.

We deserve a sequel that explains if this guy ever got his whistle back.

As Durante sings more of the song, we see Frosty lead the children through town (with Hocus in tow) which contains some visual gags of people reacting with shock at the sight of a walking, talking, snowman. The parade comes to a halt when they encounter the traffic cop the song makes mention of. He’s directing pedestrian and automobile traffic and has to scream at Frosty in order to get him to stop. This begins a 1920s-esque bit of shtick as the cop questions Frosty on the various signs and signals all around him, never once seeming to realize he’s speaking with a snowman. Frosty is ignorant of basically all things, and Karen has to explain he just came to life and the cop then backs off. After instructing the gang to move along, he remarks to himself that snowmen are so stupid when they first come to life. Only then does he realize how absurd the whole situation was as he exclaims to himself “Come to life?!” and swallows his own whistle.

The parade finally reaches its destination, a train depot. The clerk (Paul Frees) working the ticket counter is fast asleep when the kids approach requesting a ticket to the North Pole. He then springs into action as he stamps a whole sleeve of tickets remarking how their journey will take them through the Klondike and for some reason mentions aurora borealis. He’s clearly lost in his work. He returns with a stack of tickets, as this journey is going to require quite a few trains, and then requests payment: three-thousand dollars and four cents (including tax). When Karen sheepishly responds that they don’t have any money, the enraged clerk slams his fist on the table causing the whole pile of tickets to spring up and wrap around him. He then utters perhaps the most quotable line in the entire special, “No money, no ticket!”

He’s so angry that he just closes up shop and quits the business right here and now.

Well, if you can’t buy a ticket to the North Pole, just do like the old hobos do – stow away! One of the kids takes note of a refrigerated box car on a train apparently heading north. That’s good enough for Frosty as they inspect the car. It’s full of ice cream and frozen Christmas cakes, which we’ll find out is a splendid way to travel for a snowman. Frosty climbs aboard, and so does Karen. All of the other kids have sense enough not to attempt to travel to the North Pole on Christmas Eve, and Frosty is too dumb himself to point out that Karen climbing aboard is a bad idea. She seems to think she can get there and back before supper which begs the question how old is Karen supposed to be? Hocus Pocus also climbs into the car as I guess he would prefer the North Pole to whatever town they’re currently in. As the train speeds off, we see there’s another stow away on board – Hinkle!

After the break, we take a look inside the box car to find a contented snowman and relaxed rabbit, but a freezing girl. It takes Frosty a few seconds to realize that this is a bad situation for a little girl. Proving he’s not some selfish jerk, he elects to scoop Karen up in his arms and leave the frozen confines when the train has to stop at a crossing (the animation makes no sense as the train goes past the junction, then stops, and an express train goes past behind it). Hinkle, still clinging to the caboose, sees the trio hop off as the train starts to leave and thinks they’re trying to ditch him. As he shouts at them “No fair!” it’s hard to tell if Frosty actually takes note of him or not. Hinkle is then forced to jump from a moving train if he has any hope of getting his hat back. He hits the ground and stats flopping down a snow-covered embankment before finally crashing into a tree. As he falls, the person doing the sound effects just goes nuts as there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the sounds we’re hearing, but it certainly sounds painful for Hinkle!

He deserved that.

Frosty, Karen, and Hocus wander through the cold, darkening, woods as Frosty frets about finding warmth for Karen. Hocus, through pantomime, suggests he build her a fire, but that’s not something a snowman can do. They press on and eventually come across a bunch of animals. They’re slightly personified, sort of like Hocus, and they’re decorating the forest for Santa’s arrival that night. It’s a bit preposterous, but I suppose not out of character for a Christmas special. Frosty asks Hocus to communicate with the animals about building Karen a fire. He does as he’s told, and soon the deer, squirrels, and such get a roaring fire going for Karen to get warm by. It’s pretty damn goofy to behold.

As Karen warms herself by the fire, Frosty stays far away. With Hocus by his side, he contemplates how he can get Karen home and himself to the North Pole. Hocus acts out some suggestions including the marines and President of the United States. Hocus then covers his face in snow like a beard and struts suggesting Frosty seek the aide of Santa Claus. Frosty thinks that’s a great idea and smiles at the camera apparently happy with himself. Hocus is ordered to be a Santa look-out, and once the guy flies overhead, he’s expected to somehow get his attention even though he’s a fluffy white rabbit standing amongst a bunch of snow.

It’s belly-whopping time!

Unfortunately though, a roaring fire in a dark forest is quite visible and Hinkle soon stumbles upon Karen. He taunts her before laughing then demonstrates he has some amazing lungs as he literally blows the fire out. Frosty comes running over and Hinkle demands he hand over the hat. He makes an empty threat, which Frosty calls him on, and Hinkle just stamps his feet like a toddler screaming to get his hat back! When he makes a lunge for it, Frosty deftly sidesteps him and drops down onto all fours. Frosty tells Karen to jump on his shoulders and our narrator interjects that Frosty, being made of snow, is the fastest belly-whopper in the world! He basically shoots off like a rocket across the snow, down a small hill, up another, and down again leaving Hinkle far off in the distance.

This is where Hinkle goes from annoying to evil.

The ride comes to an end at a random green house in the middle of no where filled with poinsettia. Karen is pretty cold from the ride, and also likely because she’s currently being cradled in the arms of living snow, so Frosty decides to bring her inside. She reminds him he’ll melt in there, but he suggests he’ll only stay in to melt a little and makes a joke about losing weight. Hinkle then arrives, suggesting he not only has tremendous lung capacity, but he’s also really damn fast. Honestly, I feel a little betrayed by the narrator who said he was left far off in the distance just seconds ago. Anyway, Hinkle sees the snowman in the green house and promptly slams the door shot. It must lock from the outside, or Frosty just isn’t very confrontational, because they’re trapped. Hinkle laughs devilishly proclaiming the hat will soon be his as Frosty looks on with horror.

Up in the sky, Santa passes by! Maybe he’s just out for a quick preflight check or something, because he only has four reindeer and no sack of presents. He comes across the woodland critter celebration where he is informed by Hocus what’s going on with Frosty, Karen, and the magician. Hocus leads the big guy to the green house, but when they arrive they’re met with a terrible sight. Karen, on her knees sobbing, is beside a puddle and Frosty’s “parts” are floating in it. I feel like there’s a darker cut of Frosty the Snowman where we watch the poor snowman melt and Karen is forced to look-on helplessly. That girl has seen some shit and Hinkle, who presumably watched it all unfold too, is quite an evil soul.

She’s going to need some therapy.

The narrator tells us that Santa is too late, but he breaks the fourth wall to correct him. With a big, booming, voice, Santa (Paul Frees) shouts “Nonsense,” at the suggestion of being too late and then sets to comforting Karen. He tells her that Frosty, being made of Christmas snow, can never disappear completely. This does little to cheer up Karen since her friend is still a puddle, but Santa just chuckles and opens the green house door. He commands Frosty to basically pull himself together as a cold wind enters the green house, scoops up Frosty’s parts, and recreates the snowman outside the green house. The only thing left to do is return the hat to Frosty, but now Hinkle makes his presence known demanding the hat be returned to him.

Santa, who almost looks ready to throw-down, instructs Hinkle not to lay a finger on the hat. Rather than threaten him with the violence he so richly deserves, Santa just tells him he’ll never bring him another Christmas present so long as he lives. Earlier, Hinkle seemed to think a magic hat would make him a millionaire magician so I don’t know why he places any value on future Christmas presents, but he’s not the sharpest guy. He immediately begins to pout and kicks a can that mysteriously appeared in the snow before remarking, “We evil magicians deserve to make a living too.” Santa then tells him that if he goes home right now and writes one-hundred-zillion times that he’s sorry for what he did to Frosty, then maybe he’ll get a new hat for Christmas. Despite being handed an impossible task, Hinkle seems pretty happy with this arrangement as he starts hopping up and down with excitement. In probably my other favorite quote from this special, he hollers “Sorry to lose and run, but I’ve got to get busy writing! Busy! Busy! Busy!”

Santa will make everything right!

Santa slips in a little chuckle as Hinkle disappears into the night, then turns his attention back to Frosty. He returns the hat, and once again Frosty greets everyone with a “Happy birthday!” I guess it still is his birthday, after all. We then slip into a bit of a montage as the song returns. The group celebrates a bit before getting back to business. Santa, after all, has a long night ahead of him, but he still finds time to return Karen home. Maybe he’s a little ticked off though about the extra work on Christmas Eve since he leaves her stranded on her roof before taking off with Frosty. The narrator then pops in to let us know that Frosty would return every year after that and the whole town would have a big celebration in his honor. The song gets into full swing now and we basically see everyone from the special in Frosty’s parade, including Professor Hinkle in a new hat. Jimmy breaks from the song again to wish us all a very, merry, Christmas as Santa swoops down in his sleigh (again, only four reindeer) to retrieve Frosty as the song ends. Frosty gets the last word in as he alters the closing line of the song, “I’ll be back on Christmas Day!”

Santa finds time to fly past the moon, now how the hell is Karen getting off of that roof?

Frosty the Snowman is sort of like the Christmas special baseline. It’s cheerful, charming, magical and it has some memorable characters. It helps that it’s anchored by the classic song, which is catchy enough and isn’t as overplayed (or annoying) as other Christmas songs. It might not be anyone’s favorite Christmas special, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who hated it. There’s definitely some goofy logic at times, and the animation is merely adequate. This is from the 60s so I think most of the animation warts are only really apparent with modern eyes. I don’t think it’s as good looking as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but it’s definitely better looking than A Charlie Brown Christmas. And it has character with the design of Frosty being simple, but pleasant, and Hinkle looking quite memorable. About the only thing I don’t like when it comes to the visuals are the deer. They just look stupid, but not offensively so.

Rankin/Bass seemed intent on transforming Frosty from a character that was just a wintertime creation to a Christmas icon. As much as the old song is associated with the holidays, it doesn’t make mention of Christmas at all. Maybe that’s why when Rankin/Bass did return to the character with Frosty’s Winter Wonderland they left Christmas out. They did produce Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July, one of the lesser stop-motion efforts from the studio, but otherwise Frosty has mostly left Christmas behind. Today this special is almost always joined by the non-Rankin/Bass production Frosty Returns every year, even though that special has nothing to do with Christmas. In 2005, Classic Media produced another pseudo-sequel titled The Legend of Frosty the Snowman. That one features a Frosty that looks identical to the one presented here (and that’s because Classic Media bought up the Rankin/Bass library), but otherwise tells a new story and also has nothing to do with Christmas.

He says he’ll be back on Christmas Day, but it’s an empty promise.

This Frosty the Snowman is truly the only worthwhile one. I don’t particularly care for the other animated specials, and the feature with Rudolph is a tremendous slog that shouldn’t be viewed by anyone. This one though is an annual tradition and no Christmas season goes by without at least a viewing of Frosty the Snowman in my house. It’s become a favorite of my kids, so I actually am subjected to it a lot each year and I’m totally fine with that. If you’re hoping to catch it on television this year, check cable and keep an eye on CBS. They already did the first airing, but often will re-air it later in the month. It’s one of the harder ones to miss.

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 1 – DuckTales – “Last Christmas!”

It’s that time of year once again! Every day goods are a little pricier, egg nog is invading the dairy case at every grocery store, and red and green versions of every candy in existence flourish in the seasonal section of department stores. Yes, it is Christmas time and it would be obnoxious if it…

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by Joe

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November 30, 2021

Lego 21330 – Home Alone

By Joe
Just in time for the holidays!

I love building Lego sets. It’s something I didn’t completely realize until I was an adult. It just puts me in a very serene sort of mood when I’m constructing some massive Lego set. And I liked doing it as a kid, I just never got the big sets when I was young. Only as an adult have I been able to grab things like the Ghostbusters Fire House and The Simpsons home. The only drawback is what to do with these things once they’re complete? These things aren’t like jigsaw puzzles where you put them together then toss them back in a box. They’re like sculptures, and also function as toys. I’m not going to just build them up to tare them down, but finding the space to display them is quite the chore.

Because of that, I try to limit my Lego purchases. If they ever went back to The Simpsons I’d definitely take a look, but mostly I try to stick to Disney. And by Disney, I mean theme park inspired sets. And that’s because my wife and I are really into that sort of thing. And I’ve been doing fine in that regard, but then Lego had to go and do something like create the house from Home Alone in Lego form.

If these product shots don’t make you want this set then nothing will.

Since the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney, Home Alone is now technically a Disney movie and this is technically a Disney set. More importantly though, it’s Home Alone! I loved that movie as a kid, I still enjoy it as an adult, and now my own kids love it. We’ve already watched it a few times this fall because it’s really become a favorite of my daughter’s. She’ll want to watch it in June, she doesn’t care that it’s a Christmas movie. When I saw Lego was making this thing a reality, I had to get it: for myself, for my wife, and definitely for my kids. When it went up for sale, I pounced, and then I waited. I wasn’t sure when to spring it on my kids, and eventually I settled on the day after Thanksgiving. That’s the day I devote to decorating for Christmas and this year it was rainy, so it ended up being a good thing I had a Lego set to work on since setting up lights outside was a no-go.

It’s a big house in the film and pretty big as a Lego set measuring 12″ wide, 10 1/2″ high, and 8 1/2″ deep.

The Home Alone house is based on the home of the McCallisters as seen in the films Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. It’s definitely more evocative of the first film since that film takes place almost entirely within the house as young Kevin has to defend himself against two robbers, the notorious Wet Bandits! Bringing the house into Lego form requires nearly 4,000 plastic bricks leading to a rather large set. The build process is spread out over 24 steps, ingenious as this basically doubles as an advent calendar, and it’s part of the Ideas series and was designed by Alex Storozhuk so it includes a large instruction manual with background info on the design. It also includes five mini figures: Kevin, Kate, Old Man Marley, Harry, and Marv. And it’s not just the house, as it also includes the tree house and the plumber’s van that the Wet Bandits use as a cover for their illegal activities.

Opening it up only makes it bigger.

Building the set was fairly painless. All of the instructions are clear and the build order was pretty logical. It starts with the van and then moves to the house building from the ground up. I worked on it at a leisurely pace over the long weekend, sometimes by myself and sometimes with my kids, and by Sunday night I was finished. The steps are organized in such a manner that there’s no tedious parts. The outer walls and roof are spread out by working on interior objects and the like to keep things fresh and fun. And if you’re a fan of the film (and I assume you are if you’re interested in this) you’ll have a ball as you uncover things pulled directly from the film.

The placement of the rear door is not screen accurate, but at least you can still shoot robbers in the dick.

Now, because we’re taking a large house and trying to cram it into a not-to-scale replica, some sacrifices have to be made. Lego houses routinely omit the basements, and that’s because they would look pretty weird if every house sat on top of a foundation. Unfortunately, the basement plays a large enough role in the film that it can’t be ignored, so Lego figured out a compromise. The house looks the part from the outside and even includes a section that breaks the rectangular shape by sticking off the back. Lego elevated that part, which is the kitchen in the film and in the set, so they could put a small piece of the basement underneath. This means you lose the steps that Marv slips down leading to the back door and the kitchen is actually elevated above the dining room inside. There are also no stairs going up from the basement into the house proper, so in order to do laundry the McCallister’s have to walk outside and around the back of the house to access their basement. It’s not perfect, but Lego made it work well enough and doing it this way means they were able to put the laundry chute in the kitchen so an iron can fall and smash Marv in the face.

And you can still make sure Marv’s face gets smashed with an iron.
Kevin’s dining room where it’s always 9 o’clock.

The house is constructed for display and for play so there are four hinged pieces on the front. This allows the house to open wide for a view of the inside. On the right, is the dining room complete with grandfather clock and an uneaten macaroni and cheese dinner on the table. Behind that is the previously mentioned kitchen containing a refrigerator (with more mac and cheese dinners), island counter, television, microwave, rear door with doggy door (despite the family apparently not owning a dog or cat) and sink. It’s cramped compared to the massive kitchen in the film, but it looks the part. There’s also two boxes of pizza from Little Nero’s, one closed and one that’s opened, though the pizza inside appears to be topped with pepperoni, olives, etc. Big mistake, Lego, as Kevin only eats plain cheese!

Totally not Michael Jordon.
Oh, Kevin.

In the center of the house is the staircase and Kevin can ride his toboggan down it and out the front door, though his figure throws off the weight of the sled and it rarely works properly. To the left of the stairs is the living room. There’s a fireplace, Christmas tree, lounge chair, and a model train set. A not Michael Jordon cutout is affixed to the train and it, along with a mannequin on a record player in the dining room, can rotate by working a handle on the outside of the house. This is probably the favorite feature of my kids. The mannequin is more of a bust though, which is a bit of a bummer, but at least the gag is represented.

Hey Buzz, we’re going through all of your private stuff…

On the second floor are the bedrooms we saw in the film. Now, Kevin has four siblings to go along with two parents, but we only see a bedroom for his brother Buzz and one for his parents. Naturally, Lego saw fit to only do those bedrooms so where everyone else sleeps is a mystery. Buzz’s room is on the left (when looking at the house from the front) and there’s a desk in there with a Christmas catalog on it (sorry, no Playboy) and shelves that can be made to “fall down” by pulling on a tab. There’s money, firecrackers, and a motorcycle helmet plus an old fashioned rifle mounted on the wall to represent the BB gun (there’s a second gun included so you can arm Kevin without needing to steal from Buzz). There’s also a chest to represent Buzz’s private stuff, but inside is just a heart. His girlfriend’s photo is mounted to the wall for Kevin to “admire.”

This is where I point out that this house lacks a shower or bath tub. Kevin must stink.
The master bedroom definitely got the short end of the stick.

At the other end of the floor is a bathroom with stolen toothbrush. I like that Lego used a mirrored sticker for the mirror so your mini figure can actually see himself and scream accordingly. On the other side of that wall is the master bedroom, which is definitely a little cramped. It can’t really be accessed without taking the third floor off of the house, but inside is a neat looking wood stove and a large beg with popcorn and an alarm clock that will forever read 12:00. In the center of the floor are more stairs leading up to the attic. The paint can trap is here and it works reasonably well. It can only fit one can though, but it’s sufficient for taking out two Lego figures.

Kevin’s attic lair.
Kevin’s tree house, equipped with clippers.

The attic is rather cramped, but that’s to be expected. The one in the film was impossibly large, but Lego was still able to fit the hide-a-bed along with a desk for Kevin’s battle plans. There’s also a gumball machine that’s a clever build and the top of the house is on a hinge so the attic can be accessed easily. The rear also features a window with opening shutters so Kevin can zipline to his tree house. The tree house is a simple, but effective, build and serves its purpose as Kevin’s evacuation plan. I’m tempted to try and assemble a second set of bricks to build another tree house to put with my Simpsons house.

Kevin’s escape route is intact.
The other room seemingly most compromised for this form is the kitchen, which had to be downsized significantly from its film presentation, but Lego still managed to fit in most, if not all, of the important details.

The house is really quite impressive. I’m surprised that Lego was able to work basically every room we see in the film into this. Sure, it’s not 1:1 as the living room lacks a TV and the bathroom isn’t connected to the master bedroom as it is in the film. I know in the second film we see a hallway bathroom, but I don’t really care about the second film. I mostly just have nitpicks with the presentation of the house. I’m pretty sure Buzz should have a red or green comforter on his bed since everything in that house is red, green, or white. If you’ve never noticed pay attention next time, it’s kind of crazy. I think Lego just got sick of that color palette as there’s more teal and such in use here and there. I also don’t like the dining room chairs. Lego used these tusks or spikes for the legs and they just don’t support the weight of a mini figure as they just topple over. I would have much preferred something more stable. That’s really it though. The little functions work fine, aside from the toboggan, and there’s even an illuminated brick for the basement furnace that’s pretty cool. The only other Lego “house” that I have is The Simpsons one and for that Lego had to make huge compromises to bring it to life by eliminating multiple rooms. I was expecting similar with this one, but the Home Alone house is far more impressive as far as screen accuracy goes. I will say, there are 34 stickers that need to be applied which feels excessive for an expensive set. It is what it is though and I can understand Lego not wanting to do screen printing for a Little Nero’s design it will never use again.

The basement was also shrunk significantly, but we still get a cool light-up furnace!
Obviously, we need the Wet Bandits to make this set feel complete.

And it’s not the only thing! We do get the mini figures and the van. The van is just okay. It’s more or less in scale with the house, but it is on the small side. The rear opens with a swing-out shutter and the Wet Bandits can store their loot in the back. There are no doors though on the cab so the only way to get Harry and Marv inside is to pop off the roof. It works, it’s just a fairly compromised add-on that could have been done better.

Marley has what he needs: shovel, garbage bin, and beard.
We also have Kevin’s mom, who can smile or scream. I choose scream.

The five mini figures are also serviceable. Kid Lego characters are always hard to get right, and Kevin is really no exception. He’s in his maroon sweater so that at least makes him identifiable. His head also features two expressions: a smile and a scream. The hair piece, which is very blond, seems a little off to me. He does have a scarf and a hat, though the hat is a simple knit beanie and doesn’t resemble the pom-pom one from the movie. I wish he had a second torso for his jacket, but oh well. Kate also doesn’t really do much for me. She just looks like a generic character, but also gets to smile and scream. The Wet Bandits fair better as there’s enough personality to their design to make them apparent to anyone who these characters are. Harry uses the kid legs since he’s so short and he has his gold tooth printed onto his smile. Since he doesn’t have hair, he only gets one expression, but he makes up for it by having a police hat he can swap his black, knit, beanie for. Marv just plain looks like Marv. He gets to feature a smile and a face that’s been burned by an iron, a fun and necessary touch. Lastly, we have old man Marley. He’s got his beard and shovel and looks okay, though they were very generous with the hair. It’s a solid assortment of figures. I don’t think a Home Alone set needed anymore to feel complete (and really, it probably only need Kevin and the bandits), though I would have loved the pizza delivery boy or Johnny and Snakes. Johnny does make an appearance via a decal for the TV.

This set is just a lot of fun, so if you have the means and a love for Home Alone, I say go for it!

Lego’s take on the iconic house from Home Alone is quite impressive and a lot of fun. I suspect my kids will play with this one throughout the holiday season this year and maybe even beyond. I don’t intend to put it away with the Christmas decorations, so this sucker is here to stay. Customizers will likely also find a lot of fun to be had with this by making lights to pair with it, or even that pizza boy I’m missing. He wouldn’t be a hard figure to come up with, and we already have the Little Nero’s stickers. If you’re looking to add this one to your own collection this Christmas, it’s currently available now for $250 through both the Lego Store and the Disney Store. Both show it as out of stock for now, but I would expect more to be on the way. Will they be in time for Christmas? Maybe not, but I bet this thing is just as fun to build in March as it is in December. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!

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November 28, 2021

The Christmas Spot Returns for 2021!

By Joe

It’s that time of year again! Every year since 2015 when the calendar hits December 1 this blog turns into The Christmas Spot; a place to countdown the days until Christmas while basking in a festive, holiday, special of some kind. It will be 25 days of 25 posts, most of which will feature a Christmas special or the occasional special adjacent topic. It’s never a guarantee to be a great special, but at least it’s festive.

The first year this blog underwent such a transformation I dedicated each day to ranking the best Christmas television specials of all time. Last year, I decided to revisit that list and rearrange some things. In doing so I was reminded of how this concept had expanded over the years. In 2015, I was rather busy and my planning wasn’t the greatest. I was also intimidated by the concept of doing so many posts in such a small window of time so each entry that year was basically a mini review of the post’s subject. Since then, the format for this has changed to be more of a synopsis of the special as we go on a little journey together through the special making it almost like a written commentary track. And that’s the format I like best for The Christmas Spot and it’s the format I intend to continue.

The issue with that is, I’ve already talked about some of the greatest Christmas specials ever. Once I cover a subject, that’s it. It’s done. On the other hand, how can I allow this blog which celebrates Christmas on an annual basis to allow some of the greatest Christmas specials of all time to have such brief write-ups? In short: I can’t. This year, The Christmas Spot shall set out to write some of those wrongs. As part of the 2021 countdown, I’ll be revisiting some of those favorites I first blogged about in 2015. I’m not going to rehash all of them this year, because that would be a little too much redundancy, but in time perhaps I will revisit each and every one on that inaugural list. For this year, I have selected six specials to revisit and they’re spaced out to appear on every fifth day starting with the first post on December 1st. That means the other Christmas Spot Classics will appear on the fifth, tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, and conclude on the twenty-fifth. Revisiting these also accomplishes two goals: it gives each of these specials their proper due, and it allows me to preserve more specials for future years. There are a finite amount of Christmas specials out there, so anything that helps keep me from running out is a good thing.

With the “classics” appearing every fifth day, you can expect something brand new to The Christmas Spot on all of the other days. And we’ve got some good ones to talk about this year, including one that I placed in my top 25 last year that has never been discussed in full on here! So keep your eggnog handy, your chestnuts roasted, and your Christmas tree free of chipmunks as we count down the days until Christmas!

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July 16, 2021

A little Christmas in July

By Joe
I’ve had Super Nintendo under the tree once before, but never on the tree!

As someone who loves Christmas time, the concept of Christmas in July should sound appealing. Instead, I’ve always kind of thumbed my nose at it. Part of what makes Christmas so special is the fact that it only comes once a year. Even though the actual holiday season is pretty lengthy, it still never overstays its welcome, for me anyways. And when it’s over, it’s over. I always put out my Christmas stuff on the day after Thanksgiving and I’m quick to put it away. Sometimes I leave stuff out until New Year’s Day, but if there is some unseasonable warmth between the 25th and the first then I’ll take advantage of that when it comes to the outdoor decorations.

Christmas in July is something that exists because it’s halfway until Christmas, and probably because Christmas is such a strong performer at retail. I’m assuming most of the Christmas in July mindset is driven by corporations looking to make an extra buck during the summer months and for companies like Hallmark, it’s become the time of year to unveil the latest in holiday décor. As a kid, I can recall Cartoon Network also using it as an excuse to tap into the trove of Christmas cartoons and fill some programming blocks during leaner times. Their Christmas in July programming was never appointment viewing or anything for me, but it wasn’t something I was offended by either. Even though in my household growing up we had a Christmas Tape; a VHS of Christmas specials recorded off of TV. That tape was completely off limits between New Year’s and Thanksgiving and it wasn’t as if it was under lock and key, it was just understood that to indulge in such when it wasn’t Christmas was borderline offensive. That tape, by the way, still exists to this day.

As an adult, I’ve softened a bit on the whole Christmas in July thing. The past couple of years I’ve caught Christmas episodes of popular shows on television during this time of year. Just last weekend Disney aired the excellent Duck the Halls, and getting in an early viewing was actually somewhat pleasurable. In 2020, it was positively delightful to take in some Christmas programming during a long year of lockdowns and isolation and catching a show set in the winter time is a bit therapeutic during a heatwave. No, I’m not getting out the decorations and breaking out the Christmas Tape, but a little holiday cheer in July isn’t so bad.

Isn’t it cute? Sadly, the NES ornament from last year is put away with the other Christmas stuff so no comparison shot with that.

One thing that’s good for Christmas lovers during the summer months is it’s a good time to do some shopping. Around the holidays, anything Christmas related is sold at its peak value, but during the rest of the year you can score some deals. I’m always on the look-out for stuff I like that I don’t have, and I’ll share some of my more recent scores shortly. Things that aren’t cheap or on-sale though are Hallmark ornaments. Like a lot of people who enjoy Christmas, I have probably more ornaments than can reasonably fit on an average-sized tree. And with the kids reaching school age, I’m probably due for a lot more homemade ones too that I’ll have to find room for. As a result, I tend to be rather picky these days with what ornaments I invest in, but one I couldn’t turn down was the new Super Nintendo ornament from Hallmark.

Part of me wishes the controllers weren’t glued down, but I’m sure there are some grooves in the sculpt for them so it probably wouldn’t look as good if someone were to pop them off.

Last year, I grabbed the Nintendo Entertainment System ornament from Hallmark and was quite enchanted by it. The sculpt is fantastic and it plays the theme from Super Mario Bros. when you press the power button. Naturally, I had to pair the SNES one with it when I was made aware of it. The SNES one is modeled after the US SNES and it features two controllers and has a copy of Super Mario World in the game slot. When you press the power button, it plays the main theme from the game complete with sound effects as-if you were watching the demo screen. The Super Mario World theme isn’t as beloved as the Super Mario Bros. one, but it’s still an ear worm all its own and an appropriate choice for the ornament considering it was a pack-in game originally (and I originally received my copy and a SNES on Christmas, as I imagine many kids did who had one). It might have been cool to see a different Nintendo franchise get to shine a little, but it’s also hard to fault Hallmark for just sticking with Mario. The ornament was created by artist Jake Angell and retails for a pretty reasonable sum of $20. It comes with the batteries needed to work the music, though Hallmark continues to cheap out on us by not including an ornament hook or ribbon to actually hang the thing from the tree.

Even the backside is accurate. The only question remaining is will this thing yellow over time like the real thing?!

The ornament itself though looks terrific. It’s pretty tiny, measuring approximately 2 and 7/16″ wide by nearly 3″ long. The power, reset, and eject buttons are sculpted and detailed, though only the power button functions. It also presses down instead of slides. Both the Player 1 and Player 2 controllers are sculpted separately and attached to the ornament; one on the left side and one on the top-rear. The attention to detail is, again, superb as the shape of the face buttons are even accurately represented in addition to the colors. The L button on the Player 1 controller kind of words on my ornament as well, though it doesn’t actually do anything and I’m not certain it’s supposed to have this much play. I am left wishing the controllers weren’t glued to the unit though. If the wires had been done to be bendy that would have been pretty near. Especially because the Player 1 chord wraps under the console so it doesn’t sit perfectly flush on a surface should you choose to utilize this as a desk adornment instead of a tree one. The rear of the unit is also accurately represented with really the only thing missing being the 1-800 Nintendo repair sticker.

It even fits in pretty well with your quarter scale action figures!

It should also be noted, the song is loud! I was pretty surprised when I hit the button for the first time that such a small device can generate such a big noise. As stated though, you get the regular theme from Super Mario World with some sound effects of Mario jumping around and finding Yoshi. It then breaks into the victory theme to close it out which is a nice touch. All in all, if you’re a Nintendo fan then you’re probably getting this thing or someone who loves you is planning on gifting it to you in December. It will probably be a big seller if it’s anything like last year’s ornament so it’s actually a good thing that it’s out now so you get several months to try to score one. They’ll be stocked regularly from now until the end of the year and you can pre-order it from some stores right now so anyone who wants it should be able to get it for retail. It might get harder though the closer we get to the actual holiday.

New ornaments are fun and all, but what people really love are novelty, singing, dancing, figurines which is why I invested in a Santa Dancing Homer. This guy comes courtesy of eBay as he’s no longer in production. He features a 2002 copywrite which makes sense as this was when Simpsons merch was still pretty robust. It would fall off not long after and resurface for the 25th anniversary, though surprisingly little seemed to come out for the 30th. Are we as a culture just officially sick of The Simpsons? Maybe, though I’m not. I hope it never ends! There’s just something comforting about there always being new episodes of a show that’s been on since I was a kid and it’s not some dumb news program or pro wrestling. And yeah, I know, it past its peak in 1999 or so, but so what?!

In case you’re wondering, yes, that countdown is accurate.

Homer is festively attired in a Santa suit which has a soft, though somewhat rigid, texture. Not including the base he’s attached to, Homer is about 12″ tall with the base adding roughly 1 1/4″ to that height so he doesn’t require a lot of room for display. The portions of his body that are visible are cast in yellow plastic and the added details, like his eyes and trademark stubble, are painted effects. I suppose it should be noted this Santa suit is a bit nicer looking than the one he wore in the series premiere, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” though it’s pretty similar to the much later Christmas episode “Grift of the Magi.” The main difference between the two is the original costume came with a scruffy beard.

Homer runs on double A batteries and is not, by himself, posable. When you have fresh batteries in him, you can either activate him via the yellow button or by a switch on the bottom of the base. The yellow button will make him wiggle and utter one of his many phrases or sing a song. The button on the bottom of the base is for activating the motion-sensing function so you can scare people who walk by him. When he does animate, his lower jaw moves and his hips sway. Sometimes he’ll turn his head too. If he goes into song, his arms will move up and down a bit along with the hip swaying and mouth-flapping. The songs are pretty amusing as Homer doesn’t know all of the words. When he sings “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” he mostly just says the song’s title over and over and ad-libs a bit all while adhering to the song’s melody. The speaker is a little fuzzy, but Homer can be understood clearly and obviously the lines were recorded by Dan Castellaneta. It’s a novelty Christmas item, so how much you enjoy it probably depends on how much you like Homer Simpson. I love Homer, so this decoration is an easy win. It also wasn’t hard to come by, nor was it super expensive. I think I basically ended up paying retail for it, though he’s used. Another neat feature is that you can use a 6V wall plug to power him if you would rather not use batteries. It’s not a bad idea since batteries being left in a Christmas decoration like this one throughout the year can often lead to leakage and a ruined toy.

The last holiday item we’re going to look at is a simple one: this plush Santa Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was in reading the book Rad Plastic earlier this year that I was reminded about the plush line of TMNT toys from the early 90s and it was the first time I can recall being made aware of this Christmas variant. It pains me that the original Fred Wolf cartoon never did do a Christmas episode, but this plush kind of makes up for that. Well, not really, but hey, it’s Christmas!

There’s not much to say about this guy though: what you see is what you get. The tags on him reflect a 1990 release for this guy and that agrees with the book. It’s basically the same as the regular plush turtles that were available, only this one has Santa pants and boots stitched onto it. He’s about 17″ long from the top of the head to the tip of his toe as his feet are kind of outstretched as there’s no stitching to orient his feet in a standing position. The coat can probably be removed, as I don’t see any stitching holding it to the body, but it has white elbow pads stitched to it that are pretty tight and I don’t want to risk messing this up. The white elbow pads are actually a nice touch and the white cuffs on the boots basically line-up with where Raph’s kneepads normally would end up. It even appears he has his red elbow pads on underneath the jacket, though it’s impossible to say if the same is true for the knees. He also comes with a removable hat that mostly just rests on his head. I wish it was a bit bigger, but it’s all right.

“Aww c’mon, man! You’re embarrassing me and the other Raphs around here with that get-up!”

As you can probably imagine, this was another eBay purchase and yet another inexpensive one. For a 30 year old plush, Raph is in pretty good shape. The whites are still white, and the only sign of ware really is on the eyes which are a bit scratched. This style of plush is definitely assembled on the cheap, so there are exposed seems and I don’t really like the material used for the mask as it’s thin and prone to wrinkling. On the plus side, he has no odor which is always the risk when buying an old, used, plush and he’s still quite soft to the touch. It’s probably helped that he’s a Christmas decoration and whoever owned him before me may have had him put away 11 months out of the year lessening the annual ware and tare. He’s kind of dumb, but what can I say, I like him!

Well, that’s about all of the holiday cheer I have in me at the moment. Maybe I’ve inspired you to hit a Hallmark store or check popular resell locations for some Christmas stuff while the getting is good. It’s a good time to be on the hunt right now, but things tend to change quickly. If you need more Christmas in July though, you could always head on over to The Christmas Spot and check out several year’s worth of Christmas goodness. I’m already at work on the 2021 version and I’ve got some slight changes in store for this year, but don’t worry, you’re still getting 25 posts in 25 days about a Christmas special of some kind. Unfortunately, there will not be anything TMNT related this year, but it’s a safe assumption we’ll be heading back to Springfield, at least. And you know what? Mario may make an appearance this year too. Be sure to check back in December! Merry July, everybody!

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December 25, 2020

Dec. 25 – Sonic Christmas Blast

By Joe
Original air date November 24, 1996

It’s Christmas morning, and if you woke up to a tree packed full of presents you have only one person to thank for that – Sonic the Hedgehog! What? You didn’t know that Sonic took over for Santa back in 1996? Oh, well find yourself a comfy chair and a plate of chili dogs while I tell you the tale of An X-Tremely Sonic Christmas Sonic Christmas Blast!

Back in 1993, Sonic the Hedgehog was so popular that he warranted two separate cartoon series: The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and the more plainly named Sonic the Hedgehog. Adventures was the direct-to-syndication cartoon and aired on weekday afternoons, while the other cartoon aired on Saturday mornings as part of ABC’s block of cartoons and came to be known as Sonic SatAM. Both cartoons were produced by DiC and both featured everyone’s favorite nerd (at the time), Jaleel White, as the voice of Sonic. The executive producer on both was Andy Heyward, who you may recall was also the executive producer for The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. He may be the first person to work on official productions of both Mario and Sonic, which I guess is pretty cool. While the Saturday morning program had a more serious tone, the afternoon Adventures was more of a typical screwball comedy where the wily Sonic outsmarted and outwitted his nemesis, Dr. Robotnik (Long John Baldry), on the regular.

Sonic has arguably never been as popular as he was in 1993. That’s because he had a host of games on the Sega Genesis that were well received. In 1996, Sega was promoting the Sega Saturn console and looking to unleash its mega-popular hedgehog on that machine. The game was to be called Sonic X-treme, and in order to market it, someone got the bright idea to commission a Christmas special. It would be in the style of Adventures and would be produced by DiC, though it would no longer be in conjunction with Bohbot Entertainment. The problem was, the game was never released. Sonic X-treme was cancelled, but Sega still had a cartoon it paid money for and intended to air. The solution: simply change the title!

This one is like a regular episode of the show, but it’s Christmas!

Sonic wasn’t leaving the 16-bit world in the dust just yet as Sega was prepping a title for the Genesis: Sonic 3D Blast. It was an experimental game that attempted 3D on the aging Genesis hardware via an isometric perspective. If you do not remember it there’s a good reason: it was terrible. Bad game or not, it was still worthy of promotion so the Christmas special was re-named Sonic Christmas Blast and released on VHS and aired on the USA network.

A few days ago we did Mario Christmas, so it only felt right to do Sonic as well. Plus, Sonic has the distinction of being the best movie I saw in a theater in 2020. No, it’s not a fantastic film, but it got to win that coveted crown by simply being the only film I saw in a theater in 2020! Thanks, COVID!

Meet today’s audience surrogate: Ugly Kid. He has no name, but an ugly character model, therefore we shall call him Ugly Kid.

This one starts off with a festive remix of the traditional intro, except most of the footage has been removed and just replaced with clips from the special to come. Boring. It then picks up in the city of Robotropolis, a city from Sonic SatAM that I do not believe was ever depicted in Adventures. At any rate, it doesn’t resemble the city from the other show, it just shares a name.

Something’s not right with this Santa…

Citizens are gathering to view a giant television that is apparently about to broadcast a message from Santa (do they not have malls here?). The camera is rather focused on an ugly little boy with no name (Eric Pospisil). I don’t mean he’s ugly as far as Sonic Society is concerned, just that his character design is rather offensive to the eyes. Santa (Jay Brazeau) appears on the big television screen with a rather important announcement. For one, he’s clearly a robot as he has pins in his elbows and he doesn’t appear to move very well so I am rather suspect of this forthcoming announcement.

Robotnik has somehow become even more insane looking.

And that announcement is that he is retiring! Yes, the unthinkable is happening at Christmas! Not to worry though, for Santa has already named a replacement. And that man is: Robotnik Claus! Yes, the evil Dr. Robotnik is set to take over for Santa and he is introduced to a stunned audience. For some reason, he looks like a homeless Santa as his suit fits rather poorly exposing his hairy gut and his shoes are torn. Robotnik’s first announcement as Santa is that this year things will be different. Rather than Robotnik Claus delivering presents to all the good little boys and girls of the world, they are to deliver presents to him! The madness!

Judging by that smile on Ugly Kid’s face, it would seem he was initially hopeful about this whole Robotnik Claus thing.

Scratch (Phil Hayes), the robotic chicken with the incredibly annoying voice, and Grounder (Garry Chalk) are positioned as cheer leaders for Robotnik Claus, but they annoy him more than support him. We then have it confirmed that this world does indeed possess malls as we see Robotnik Claus seated in a chair with a line of children waiting to see him. Ugly kid from earlier hops on his lap and Robotnik rather enthusiastically asks the child what he’ll be giving him for Christmas. The kid responds by punching him in the gut and informs him that he will do no such thing. Robotnik is rather pissed, but apparently he is still only cartoonishly evil as he doesn’t kill the little squirt, but he does order him imprisoned in his robot factory.

Hey! Look! It’s Princess Sal, in her original pilot colors! She looks like she has something to say in this image, but she actually has nothing to say. Absolutely nothing.

Elsewhere, Sonic is gearing up for Christmas with Princess Sally Acorn (Tabitha St. Germain is credited, but the character has zero lines). Apparently Sally gave Sonic a fancy ring last Christmas and he gave her squat, so he’s dead-set on getting her a bunch of stuff this year, even though she apparently wants nothing. Before she can utter a word of rebuttal, Sonic takes off with his buddy Tails (Chris Turner) to go do some shopping. While he runs, he decides to jump up and grab onto a tree branch for no particular reason and just dangle there. A bird in its nest takes notice of Sonic’s ring that Sally gave him which features an unusual marking. Ah, he grabbed the tree as a plot device since this ring is going to be important. Logical.

These two clowns are up to no good, but at least they’re well dressed.

In town, Scratch and Grounder are going door-to-door Sheriff of Nottingham style to collect presents for Robotnik Claus. They confront one poor sap who claims he has nothing to give, so they tell him they’ll be taking his house. And not in a way a bank would, but by literally using an excavator to take the man’s house while he begs them not to. Vicious.

Oh, good. Ugly Kid made it out of Robotnik’s factory unharmed. I was real worried for a sec.

Sonic and Tails arrive at a mall to find it completely barren. Someone has taken all of the wares and Sonic is apparently out of the loop. Outside, they run across Ugly Kid who tells them that he escaped from Robotnik Claus and informs Sonic of what’s going on. Scratch and Grounder then appear and like good, ineffective, hench-robots, inform Sonic of Robotnik’s plan to take over Christmas and get lots of presents for himself. They also tell him that they kidnapped Santa and used a robot to transfer his role over to Robotnik without a hitch. They even brought the robot with them as proof of their misdeed. They also brought some giant tank too.

Well, at least they seemed to have come prepared. Not that it will make any difference.

Scratch then wishes Sonic and his pals a “Merry Crush-mas!” as he tries dropping a big, spiky, block on the trio. Sonic is too fast for it though, and he goes all buzz-saw and lands in their cockpit. He then controls the giant arm of the tank to position a magnet over them sucking up the three robots and then dropping them to the ground in a heap of parts.

Nothing puts me in the Christmas mood like a pile of broken body parts.

As Scratch and Grounder begin reassembling themselves, while mostly ignoring the destroyed Santa robot, Sonic comes waltzing by dressed as a janitor. He’s a bit like Bugs Bunny in this show in that he can always produce a not-so-clever disguise that fools the bad guy every time. He plays friendly and gets the two to spill the beans on where Robotnik is keeping Santa before splitting, but not first without revealing his identity to Scratch and Grounder and smashing them to bits again with a garbage can.

Why does he have a butt?

Scratch and Grounder head to the home of Robotnik which is currently being outfitted with many, many, chimneys. Robotnik is even demanding more of his robot minions for he wants enough chimneys on his home so that every citizen in the city can enter his home at once with big sacks of presents. The brainless duo flags down Robotnik with the bad news, and they’re informed that they can no longer expect a Christmas card this year. Robotnik then orders his defenses be increased while also informing the duo that they are to bring him the most important of Christmas presents this year: Sonic the Hedgehog! Hey, that’s the same thing my kid asked for!

Some “scary” looking robots.

Sonic and Tails are shown in a cold environment heading to the location of the kidnapped Santa. It’s surrounded by Swatbots, but they do not at all resemble the Swatbots from Sonic SatAM. They just look dumb. Sonic gets past them rather easily and finds Santa in a frozen cell. He tells Sonic they need to get to his workshop fast if they intend to save Christmas.

A clever use of exponents.

At Santa’s workshop (apparently titled Ho cubed), the heroes find out that Robotnik Claus has already paid a visit to the workshop and stolen everything! Santa is rather despondent, but Sonic thinks there’s still time to recapture the presents and save Christmas! As they sit and think, Santa notices Sonic’s ring. He recognizes the marking on it from the cave Robotnik had kept him at (how convenient!) and they return to consult some glyphs. Apparently, Sonic needs to complete a series of trials to unlock the secret of ultimate velocity. I don’t know how Santa got that much out of the wall, but it should fill some time.

Well, that was hardly a challenge.

They head to the location of the first trial: Ice Pick Peak. Sonic merely has to race up a mountain – no problem. Trial number two is to snowboard down Calamity Cliffs. This is amusing since the Mario Christmas special rather prominently featured a snowboard as well, and it too was orange!

Nothing’s more “X-Treme” than snowboarding, man!

As Sonic snowboards, Scratch and Grounder spy him and place a giant bear trap in his way. Sonic sees it, and just swerves out of the way spraying a bunch of snow in their face which buries them with the bear trap. Sonic then grasps a hang-glider and soars over the pair and dumps his snowboard on them.

This Santa is a real buzz kill. I think I like Robotnik Claus better.

The last piece of the trial is a bike ride. Sonic rides over the frozen tundra dodging moving icebergs. The animation is offensively bad and little of interest occurs during Sonic’s ride. When all is said and done, they’re back at Santa’s workshop and Sonic has apparently attained super speed. He didn’t physically receive anything, there was no flash of light, he just is faster, I guess. Santa still thinks all is for naught though, but Sonic is ever the optimist!

I am legitimately shocked at the absence of exposed butt-crack.

Sonic speeds off to Robotnik’s home where the jolly, fat, man is rummaging through the presents under his tree. He’s in an impossibly good mood, so it’s the perfect time for Sonic to swipe everything! He moves as a blue blur taking not just the presents and ornaments, but Robotnik’s clothes as well, leaving him to stew in his underwear proclaiming his hatred for that hedgehog.

Well, looks like he’s happy. I don’t know what I would have done if Ugly Kid didn’t get to have a merry Christmas.

We then check in on Ugly Kid, who is in his living room with a naked Christmas tree. The blue blur whizzes inside and decorates the tree while depositing a large amount of gifts under the tree. The kid can’t believe it, but he knows who to thank. He opens his window and shouts out thanks to Sonic.

Once again, you would think she’d have something to say.

Alone on a snowy hill by a campfire, Sally does her best Karen impression from Frosty the Snowman as she looks cold and lonely. Sonic then pops in with an arm full of presents he promptly buries her under. She says nothing, just looks surprised, while Sonic rambles on about wanting to give her a merry Christmas. He removes a present to expose her head, waves some mistletoe over her, and smooches her forehead before re-burying her. He then runs off before she can even react to his gesture. Honestly, I don’t know why they bothered including her if she wasn’t even going to say a word.

And now Sonic is Santa, how’s that for a resolution?!

Sonic returns to Santa’s workshop to celebrate a Christmas well done. There he receives some rather shocking news: Santa does indeed intend to retire! Sonic can’t believe it, but Santa informs him there’s no need to worry, for he has found a suitable replacement: Sonic! Tails slaps a hat on his head proclaiming him Sonic Claus. He seems unsure at first, but one look in a mirror seems to convince Sonic that this is the way. He and Tails then stand and wave at the camera while Sonic wishes us an “X-tremely Merry Christmas,” the one relic of the original title, as the credits roll.

And that’s the story about how Sonic came to be Santa Claus! If your tree is looking rather bare and has been for years, that’s likely because you’ve been leaving out a plate of milk and cookies as opposed to chili dogs and Mountain Dew (I just assume Sonic would do the Dew). I suppose I should have filled you in on that important piece of information prior to today, but there’s always next year!

Sonic Christmas Blast is a terrible Christmas special. Things just happen to advance the plot, and almost everyone is dumb and annoying. Sonic is fine, and I have no issue with Tails, but all of the other characters are just too stupid to even be funny. I’ll give it credit for coming up with an original plot. It’s sort of like The Grinch, except Robotnik is direct and open about his thievery, with a dash of unconvincing trickery too. It’s still not entertaining, and the resolution of Sonic becoming Santa is rather preposterous. I guess it’s the kind of thing you can do when you know there are no more episodes of this particular show coming.

I will say, as ridiculous as he is, I do mostly like this take on Robotnik.

Adding further insult to the special is the fact that it looks pretty bad. It’s definitely in style with Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, but it was also handled by a different animation studio. Believe it or not, this actually looks slightly better than a typical episode as far as character animation goes. The backgrounds though are terrible, and the non-regular characters (like the ugly kid and various robots) look like they were designed in five minutes, and drawn just as quickly. There isn’t any one scene or piece of animation that I’d call fun to look at while the audio is basically what you would expect of any episode from the show.

If you wish to ignore my warnings and spend Christmas with Sonic, Sonic Christmas Blast is X-tremely easy to come by. It’s currently included with a subscription to Amazon Prime so you can freely stream it there. It’s also available for free on YouTube along with apparently every other episode of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and in great quality at that. It also was released on DVD and will probably be in discount racks tomorrow for five bucks, but the only folks who should own this one are Sonic diehards and they probably already have it.

This concludes the 2020 edition of The Christmas Spot! It was a truly bizarre and eventful year and I’ll be happy to kiss it good by in a week, but hopefully these past 25 days have helped bring you a little Christmas joy. Thanks for reading, and merry Christmas!

Can’t wait until next year for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 25 – Samurai Pizza Cats – “The Cheese Who Stole Christmas”

Welcome, Christmas Day! Hopefully you’re not hungover from too much Christmas partying last night, and if you are, hopefully it was worth it. By now, Santa should have deposited presents under the tree, if you were good this year, and hopefully he remembered the batteries. It’s been fun, but this post means we are done…

Keep reading
by Joe

Dec. 25 – A Jetson Christmas Carol

Merry Christmas! We have reached the end on our advent calendar celebration of the holiday season. This is the third complete 25 day advent calendar here at The Nostalgia Spot and fourth overall. For this year, I managed to shy away from the tropiest of the tropes when it comes to Christmas television specials -…

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by Joe

Dec. 25 – Daze Before Christmas

Wait, what is this? We’ve reached the final day of this year’s advent calendar style countdown of Christmas specials and it’s not even a show, movie, or stupid commercial? No friends, for December 25th we’re taking a look at Daze Before Christmas, the Sunsoft produced 16-bit Christmas video game that never saw release in North…

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by Joe

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December 24, 2020

Dec. 24 – The SpongeBob Christmas Special

By Joe
Original air date December 6, 2000

When I listed out the best Christmas specials over a week ago, I included the stop-motion A SpongeBob Christmas. And I stand by that as that special is pretty great. Before there was A SpongeBob Christmas, there was The SpongeBob Christmas Special. Confused? Well, there are only so many ways to title a Christmas special. To make things a bit easier (or more complicated) it’s also titled “Christmas Who?” This was a milestone episode of sorts for the now long-running SpongeBob SquarePants as it introduced Patchy the Pirate and his parrot Potty and told the story of how Christmas came to Bikini Bottom. It was also the first double-length cartoon for the show as most episodes are split into two segments. It’s probably not quite double-length though due to the live-action segments featuring Patchy, but you get the idea.

Meet the president of the SpongeBob fan club, kids!

SpongeBob Squarepants was created by the late Stephen Hillenburg, who got a lot of coverage on this blog in 2020 since I went back and revisited Rocko’s Modern Life, a show he was intimately involved with. It was due to the success of that show that Nickelodeon took a chance on a cartoon headed up by Hillenburg himself. Other veterans of Rocko joined him on SpongeBob, including Tom Kenny and Doug Lawrence, and his show has largely eclipsed the former in terms of popularity. It’s probably become Nickelodeon’s most recognizable show at this point and I’m not even sure another show could really challenge it for that title at this point.

Do you like alternate titles, because we’ve got one here.

In spite of SpongeBob’s popularity, the show has mostly been a blind spot for me. The show just came at a time when I wasn’t watching the channel, and even though I have kids of my own now, they’ve yet to really latch onto anything on Nickelodeon. Maybe they will in time, though with everything moving towards a streaming format I’m less certain of that. Even though SpongeBob SquarePants isn’t my childhood, I can recognize it for what it is: a pretty solid comedic cartoon. I see a lot of influences from past cartoons in it the few times I watch it, and I’ve never really had much of a reaction to it beyond that.

For today’s special, we’re heading to the home of Patchy the Pirate located in the unfestively warm California (I have a cold weather bias when it comes to Christmas).

Even though I’ve seen very little of SpongeBob SquarePants, I still really enjoyed the stop-motion special so I’ve always wanted to check out this one. It just took me going out of my way to make sure I saw it. Thankfully, I have cable still so I didn’t have to go out and buy this thing, and with 2020 just being a tenacious pile of misery, I actually welcomed Nickelodeon’s Christmas in July programming during the summer. That’s how I finally experienced the first SpongeBob Christmas special. Maybe it’s not the authentic, December, experience it was meant to be, but it also meant I got to re-experience it later in the year too thanks to the wonders of DVR!

The bird is the real star.

After a festive rendition of the show’s theme, the special begins at the home of the president of the SpongeBob fan club: Patchy the Pirate. Played by Tom Kenny, Patchy is happily preparing for Christmas in the not idyllic setting of southern California. Even though there’s no snow to speak of, Patchy’s house is pretty well decorated and he’s got his parrot, Potty (voiced by Hillenburg) by his side as well. Patchy is a pretty conventional looking pirate, while Potty is an intentionally obvious puppet. Patchy is welcoming, like a classic holiday special would be, though he has an antagonistic relationship with his parrot. He’s in the process of making cookies, and isn’t eager to share the dough with Potty.

R.I.P. Potty…

The segment is pretty long and probably overstays its welcome. There’s some visual jokes, like a predictable bubble pipe joke, but little truly lands. I did like that Patchy flips his eyepatch up to read a letter, revealing a perfectly functional right eye, and dons a pair of glasses with the right lens blacked out. The setup for the introduction of the cartoon is created when a letter received by Patchy asks about Christmas in Bikini Bottom, prompting Patchy to tell the audience that the dwellers of Bikini Bottom didn’t always celebrate Christmas. Before we can get to the cartoon though, Potty has to consume the cookie dough, and explode. It leads to the very bizarre image of Potty’s dismembered head suspended in the air while Patchy looks on with amusement. Poor Potty, Patchy is the asshole in this segment and yet it’s the bird who gets blown up.

Well Sandy, if you’re going to live underwater you should expect to get wet now and again.

The actual cartoon begins with SpongeBob (Kenny) outside the home of Sandy Cheeks (Carolyn Lawrence). Sandy is a squirrel living in the outskirts of Bikini Bottom, and being a squirrel, she needs oxygen in gas form to breath, so she lives in a bubble. SpongeBob is looking to infiltrate the bubble to drop some karate moves on her. I assume this is supposed to be a good-natured prank as SpongeBob doesn’t have a mean pore in his body.

Turns out, oak trees make pretty nice Christmas trees!

As SpongeBob prepares to enter the bubble, he notices Sandy lighting up a tree with lights. Mistaking this for fire (he’s not very smart), SpongeBob grabs a bucket of water and races inside only to douse Sandy herself. She’s rightfully annoyed, but soon realizes that SpongeBob has never seen a Christmas tree before. Not only has he never seen one, he’s never even heard of Christmas before. We then receive a montage of Sandy explaining Christmas to SpongeBob. We don’t actually hear what she’s telling him and can only see her pantomiming various parts of her lesson, most of which appear to have nothing to do with a discussion on Christmas (that’s the joke).

I love Squidward’s energy here.

SpongeBob is quite taken with the whole concept of Christmas (and who wouldn’t be?) and races over to The Krusty Krab to inform the others what Sandy has taught him. There he regales Squidward (Rodger Bumpass), Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke), and Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) a tale of Christmas with emphasis on Santa Claus. Mr. Krabs thinks it’s pretty great to hear about a guy who will give you whatever you want for Christmas and he’s eager to write a letter to the jolly, fat, man. Patrick is equally excited and sets out to write a letter to Santa as well.

SpongeBob is shockingly literate.

Squidward is the lone holdout. He finds the story preposterous and refuses to participate. SpongeBob tries to talk him into it, but he’s not coming around. All the while, Patrick keeps interrupting their conversation because his piece of paper has split in half. After he requests a new page a few times, we see what’s causing the problem. Patrick is sitting down with the pencil in between his legs pointing up. He then presses the paper down against the pencil in order to write on it. I’m now curious if he often has problems with the written word in other episodes.

Is he an inventor? I’m so confused by the existence of this competent machinery.

After the letter-writing is over, SpongeBob shows Patrick the machine he’s come up with to deliver the letters to Santa. They place each letter in a bottle and the machine fires it up to the surface of the ocean. It (shockingly) works just fine, and SpongeBob starts sending the letters to the surface. For his gift, he just wants to bring Christmas to Bikini Bottom, but the others want something more material. Patrick wishes to have more paper, and the message in his bottle is clearly ripped in half, while Mr. Krabs wants a pony…with saddlebags full of money. He gets it!

This is probably going to ruin the life of some castaway.

The other townsfolk get involved too and soon the surface of the water above Bikini Bottom is full of letters. Squidward is still holding out, and SpongeBob and Patrick get set to making the town look merry for Christmas via song. It’s called “The Very First Christmas,” and it’s plenty catchy. It’s not as good as “Don’t Be a Jerk,” but it’s fine. During the song, we see SpongeBob and Patrick chop down Squidward’s coral “tree” to set it up in town and decorate it with glowing jellyfish. Patrick is a natural fit for the top of the tree as the star.

Time for an image blitz because there’s a lot going on. First, SpongeBob and Patrick chopping down Squidward’s…tree?
At least they made it look nice.
Mr. Krabs coming in with the high notes.

When the song is over, Squidward is relieved that he can now peacefully go to bed. Only he can’t, because the entire town is outside his house to sing another song welcoming Santa. It’s basically “Jingle Bells” only with the words changed to reflect their Santa-eagerness. Time passes though, and as Squidward sleeps peacefully the folks outside sing all night to no avail. When the morning comes, everyone is still there, but there’s been no sign of Santa. The crowd angrily turns on SpongeBob, who shrinks before their gaze.

So who told them they should all stand outside and wait for Santa? Maybe that’s why things start to go wrong from here.
I admire that one fish in the front row still looking pretty hopeful.
This is how I felt right around noon of every Christmas Day for much of my youth.

Squidward rises to the misery, and is delighted! When the crowd leaves, he races outside to taunt SpongeBob about how wrong he was about Santa. SpongeBob doesn’t put up a defense and just stands there looking miserable. Squidward snaps a photo to remember this moment, and for some reason he gets off by putting his ass in SpongeBob’s face and slapping it. The cartoon literally tells us he’s being a jackass by superimposing an image of a donkey over him.

Squidward, feeling pretty god damn fabulous!
I don’t think SpongeBob can possibly be drawn any sadder.
Whoa Squidward! This is trending towards harassment here.
You’re lucky SpongeBob didn’t give you any advice on where to shove that thing. Don’t you feel like an ass now, Squidward?!

With Squidward’s antics mostly over, SpongeBob hands over the gift he made for him. SpongeBob was concerned that Squidward would be the only member of Bikini Bottom to not receive a present since he didn’t write a letter to Santa so he made him one instead. SpongeBob drags himself away leaving a stunned Squidward to stand there alone holding his gift. He opens it to find a clarinet that SpongeBob had made himself and instantly feels bad. Meanwhile, SpongeBob is miserable as he begins to take down the Christmas decorations he put on his own house as well as Squidward’s.

Raining underwater? It’s a Christmas miracle!
Looks like someone’s been hiding a secret Santa fetish…

Uncharacteristically, Squidward decides he needs to make things right. He goes home and puts on a Santa costume. I have no idea why he had such a costume in his house, but hey, it’s needed for the plot! He calls out to SpongeBob from his roof, before falling, leaving SpongeBob stunned with silent glee.

What’s with that look, Squidward? What did you think would happen?

Squidward gets SpongeBob to snap out of his trance long enough to tell him he’s here to thank SpongeBob for bringing Christmas to Bikini Bottom. He has to endure a pair of hugs from SpongeBob, but the exchange goes well for Squidward as SpongeBob heads back to his house. Feeling pretty good about himself, Squidward turns to enter his own home, but a little girl is standing in his way. She asks for her gift, and SpongeBob then reappears to encourage “Santa” to bestow a gift on this deserving young girl. Not knowing what else to do, Squidward ducks into his house for a present and ends up giving away a monkey wrench.

Squidward was not prepared for this contingency.
And he especially was not prepared for this!
Everyone seems to take their crappy gifts in stride, like this woman who wanted a new hairstyle, but instead was gifted a bowl of mashed potatoes.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t solve Santa Squid’s problem. A line of citizens has formed outside of his house and they all want a present. He goes in and out of his house getting items and gifting them to the people outside. They’re never what is asked of Santa, but the fish receiving them make do with what they have. They all seem to leave pretty happy, but they also leave behind an empty house for Squidward.

More or less how I feel every year when Christmas is over. Only there’s more stuff, a lot more stuff, in my house thanks to my kids.

With the crowd gone, Squidward removes his costume and wonders why in the world he just got rid of all of his personal belongings just to make SpongeBob happy. Oh Squidward, you just got caught by the Spirit of Christmas! A knock on the door comes from SpongeBob, who excitedly tells Squidward all about Santa, apparently oblivious to the fact that it was Squidward he encountered and not the real Santa. He mostly keeps repeating that Santa has a really big nose, though Squidward seems to take this all in stride.

Apparently someone was watching.

When SpongeBob finally returns home, Squidward notices a letter has been left outside his door. It’s from Santa! It thanks Squidward for bringing Christmas to Bikini Bottom, though makes no excuse for why Santa passed them by. Squidward can hardly believe it, but sure enough, up in the…sky?…is Santa in his sleigh. He’s portrayed with a live-action actor, played by Michael Patrick Bell, and he does a lot of “Ho ho ho’s” and waves. Squidward thinks he’s going insane and returns to his empty house. He breaks out his lone material possession, the clarinet SpongeBob gifted him, and seems to enjoy insanity. Above, we see Santa fly in front of a setting sun.

Santa, surprisingly being played by someone not named John Goodman or Ed Asner.
Squidward’s just taking it all in stride.
Hey look! A twist on the old moon shot!

At Patchy’s house, the special is over. He’s acting out some sea wreck thing and we interrupt him. He finds a present from a reassembled Potty has been left on his head, a nest full of wrapped eggs. Patchy doesn’t seem too interested and is more focused on the mistletoe hanging in his home. He stands under it hoping a woman will magically appear and give him a kiss, but instead Potty comes soaring in to do the honors. The episode ends with Patchy basically running from the sex-crazed puppet. The special ends on an external shot of Patchy’s ranch with a “Happy Holidays” message spelled over it.

A last bit of chaos at Patchy’s house lets us know we’re done.

The SpongeBob Christmas Special is a pretty satisfying piece of Christmas comedy. It starts with a solid premise, and then does a good job of playing with the viewer’s expectations. Squidward was setup to be a Scrooge, and I even found his choice of pajamas to be very Scrooge-like. I thought for sure we were going full parody when he went to sleep on Christmas Eve, but instead we got something very different. Squidward had to learn on his own that wishing misery upon others really doesn’t bring about good feelings in himself. It was sweet to see him affected by SpongeBob’s sadness, and he actually had to learn about Christmas the hard way when he gave all of his stuff away to maintain his ruse. I liked that he wasn’t rewarded with anything material in the end, he just did what was necessary (albeit, in a comedically exaggerated fashion), and found the true meaning of Christmas within himself.

When I saw this outfit I thought we were going full Scrooge. I’m glad I was mistaken.

The odd part of the special is the fact that Santa apparently planned all of this? Did he decide to fulfill SpongeBob’s wish through Squidward? Or maybe we’re supposed to assume that SpongeBob’s unorthodox way of getting everyone’s letters to Santa was simply a flop? SpongeBob did wait until the last minute to get those letters out and Santa is only capable of so many miracles.

The part of the special that didn’t add much for me was the live-action component. I just don’t find Patchy all that funny. I’m also not 7, so maybe it’s just not for me. The cartoon was entertaining, just that component felt a bit long. It doesn’t ruin it or anything, I could just do without.

The Christmas card ending; a tried and true classic.

This Christmas special isn’t as good as the one that follows, but it’s plenty entertaining for an annual viewing. And I feel confident in saying that anyone who likes SpongeBob probably enjoys this episode too. If you have cable, this one should be very to easy to view even this late in the game. It’s possibly available for streaming on Nickelodeon’s website, and it may even air today! It’s also available on various holiday themed DVDs and as part of the second season of the show. It’s also available digitally because it’s SpongeBob, one of the most accessible shows around. If you have yet to view it this year then find 20 minutes today and rectify that.

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 24 – Silly Symphony – “The Night Before Christmas”

We have reached a day of great, holiday, release – Christmas Eve. And what better way to mark the occasion than with a holiday short titled The Night Before Christmas. A lot of cartoons have made use of this title, but today’s subject is the Silly Symphony short that falls under that heading. It felt…

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by Joe

Dec. 24 – Ren & Stimpy’s Crock O’ Christmas

In 2018, it feels like the novelty music genre is mostly dead. Back in the day when radio was the primary vehicle for delivering new music the novelty song had a place. Usually they would be part of commutes or morning shows when producers thought a laugh was in order. I know where I grew…

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by Joe

Dec. 24 – Chucklewood Critters: T’was the Day Before Christmas

In the 80s, if you had any connection to a successful animation production unit you could probably get a shot at creating your own series. Such was the case for former Hanna-Barbera animators Bill Hutten and Tony Love. They left that famous cartoon factory to create a series of holiday specials that would eventually lead…

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by Joe

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