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December 13, 2022

Dec. 13 – The Ren & Stimpy Show – “Son of Stimpy/Stimpy’s First Fart”

By Joe

The Ren & Stimpy Show burst onto the scene as part of the original trio of Nicktoons in 1991. The other two, Doug and Rugrats, were fairly gentle cartoons. Rugrats could sometimes get a little blue since the main characters were all babies, but the occasional poop joke was hardly something to get offended by. The Ren & Stimpy Show, on the other hand, was far more crass. It felt like a throwback to the days of Bob Clampett and Tex Avery with its manic pacing and outrageous character animations. It also had its own flair in the form of gross, disgusting, humor. It’s hard to imagine another cartoon in the 90s being more influential on what followed in the world of animation than The Ren & Stimpy Show.

This also came with its own set of problems. Certainly, Nickelodeon had to deal with more letters and phone calls regarding the show’s content than it did probably any other show on its network, but it also had to deal with series creator John Kricfalusi, or John K. The less said about him the better, but suffice to say he was very much a demanding boss and a bit of a perfectionist when it came to the show. This meant the show frequently missed deadlines and John K. also frequently ignored suggestions, or mandates, from the network when things got too risqué. I’m all for standing up for your artwork, but John K. agreed to make a show for kids and there’s some battles worth fighting and some that are not. There’s also been plenty of other things shared about him over the years that are not very kind that I don’t want to get into. At the end of the day, I do think he is a talented cartoonist and without his talents The Ren & Stimpy Show likely wouldn’t be what it was, but there were also lots of other talented people involved in the show’s production and without the likes of some of them the show also wouldn’t be what it is.

This very episode captures some of the dance the creators and Nickelodeon entered into with seemingly every episode of the show. The network wanted something heartwarming, I’m not sure if it necessarily wanted a Christmas episode, and John K. was willing to give them one so long as it was done his way. Hence why we have an episode about a fart. The original title is just “Stimpy’s First Fart,” but the network changed it to “Son of Stimpy.” Television networks have long had an adversarial relationship with the word “fart.” I don’t know why, but it is a thing and that’s why it still surprises me to this day that Salute Your Shorts got to have the word appear in every episode via the opening song. In this case though, I think the network was right as the “Son of Stimpy” title is a bit more mysterious and helps the fart joke land a little better.

“Son of Stimpy” is the first Christmas episode from the show and has the distinction of being done with digital ink and paint. Most of the show was animated with traditional ink and paint, but maybe the Christmas deadline forced the show to move a bit faster. The show was also transitioning from Spumco to Games Animation and that is said to have played a role. The content of the episode actually did not please Nickelodeon so it first premiered on MTV instead. It would eventually be run on Nick, but sometimes in an edited state. I can remember catching the first broadcast purely by accident. I was channel surfing in my bedroom and found it on MTV. I was super surprised to see an episode of the show I had never seen airing on the network and I was so excited that I recall telling my mom right away (who probably didn’t care). And it was a Christmas episode too! The episode also uses the full running time to tell its story without any other inserts, another rarity for the show, and contains several callbacks to the first episode either deliberately or to save time.

This episode begins with an exterior shot of a house inhabited by Ren and Stimpy. A voiceover, John K., tells the audience that this is a story they just made up. Inside, Stimpy (Billy West) is watching TV and the sound effects sound exactly like the ones coming from the TV of the very first episode. He’s motionless except for his eyes dancing around as they take-in some cartoons. Then we get a shot of Stimpy’s butt and it’s done as a still image so it’s rather lovingly painted. Stimpy has a nice, well-rounded, set of buttocks in this episode to likely make them appear inviting, which is important to the plot (trust me). We then hear a noise, a gurgling kind of noise, and Stimpy looks at his butt with some confusion. The still image of the butt returns only now the image is shaking as a rumbling is taking place which leads to a very satisfying fart sound. It has a lot of bass and as far as fake farts go it’s quite lovely! It’s followed by the sound of a balloon letting out air as Stimpy looks satisfied and a puff of greenish-brown smoke emerges and then disappears. Some ominous “Dun! Dun! Duuuuun!” music plays as we get another shot of the the butt, this time with some skid marks added to the floor. Stimpy notices an odor in the air and is soon running in place calling for Ren.

There’s a pretty clear juxtaposition being portrayed between Ren and Stimpy here.

In another part of the house, Ren (John K.) is seated in a lounge chair in a bathrobe and fez hat reading from a book. The juxtaposition of the naked, cartoon-watching, farter and this very dignified Ren is obvious. Stimpy excitedly tells him in a quiet voice that something happened while he was watching TV. Ren can’t even begin to act like he cares, but he asks Stimpy what happened. Stimpy proceeds to tell him that something came out of his butt, it made a sound, and it smelled funny. Ren repeats everything Stimpy told him as if he’s gathering an understanding of the situation, then deadpans “You’re an idiot.”

Stimpy is distressed that Ren doesn’t believe him, but then decides to just make another one! He moves into the center of the room and starts trying to push something out of his butt. There’s some groaning and obvious straining as Ren even moves into the danger zone to see what happens, but Stimpy’s butt just ends up deflating. Ren kicks at the remains of Stimpy’s cheeks, then tells him he has an overactive imagination and to leave him out of his stinky fantasies! It’s an interesting approach to the situation as when Stimpy originally approaches Ren we think he’s calling him an idiot for not knowing what a fart is, but now it seems clear that Ren too has never farted. I should point out for you continuity nerds, Stimpy did fart in a previous episode when they were in the bathtub together during “Big Baby Scam,” but this is a show that really has no continuity.

The absurdity of boogers being freaked out by Stimpy talking to farts is not lost on me.

As Ren leaves Stimpy to his stinky fantasies, Stimpy claims to himself that Stinky is real as he has apparently named his fart now. He then perks up as he declares he’ll find him! Stimpy then walks around the house calling out for Stinky in an operatic voice. He giggles with embarrassment seemingly acknowledging that we’re watching him act a bit silly – it’s cute. He checks in a few places before getting the idea to consult his Magic Nose Goblins he leaves under the bench for the piano. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, Magic Nose Goblins are Stimpy’s boogers. Before this episode, I don’t think they were ever personified, but here Stimpy is able to ask them if they’ve seen Stinky. When they press Stimpy for info on who Stinky is, he describes the fart as he did to Ren. One of the “goblins” figures out what Stimpy is looking for and whispers to the others “He talks to farts,” in a manner that expresses he views this behavior as extremely odd. The other boogers then just tell Stimpy they haven’t seen Stinky as they seem eager to get rid of him now. He leaves, but in doing so sits up and slams his face into the underside of the bench seemingly killing his booger buddies by mistake.

It’s not often we can say this, but here Ren does mean well.

Unable to find Stinky, Stimpy slips into a depression. He’s just seated in a darkened room as Ren tries to cheer him up. He pulls out a TV Guide-like magazine and reads off some of the programs Stimpy usually likes only for Stimpy to reply sullenly with an “I don’t care.” This setup is very similar to how the Commander Hoek and Cadet Stimpy cartoons begin, only Stimpy doesn’t get excited about that show or Muddy Mudskipper. Stimpy and Ren’s eyes then well with tears as their mouths quiver with sadness. Ren emotes frustration, and even anger, to the camera, but approaches Stimpy in calm, measured, tones about snapping out of this funk. We find out he’s been moping for 3 years now, which is certainly a long time to miss a fart.

The poor guy just wants his fart back, how can you not relate?!

Ren then dangles a new catnip mouse for Stimpy who makes an “Ehhh,” sound of annoyance that’s amusing to me because he sounds like future Billy West character Zap Brannigan. Ren tries cheering him up by jumping into his litter box and encourages him to drop a big, stinky, one into it. Hearing the word “stinky” causes Stimpy’s eyes to fill with tears again as he says “Stinky” in a longing tone. He then wails and starts sobbing forcing Ren to march over angrily. “So that’s it, you’re still crying about your imaginary butt stinkiness!” Stimpy insists in sad tones that Stinky is real and Ren tries, once more, to be supportive. He tells him he needs to get over this fantasy and says he’ll help him and that they can do it together, but Stimpy just replies once more with “I don’t care.” That’s the last straw for Ren, who has been uncharacteristically supportive and understanding throughout the scene. He stamps his feet and shouts at Stimpy. He tries to muster up one of his usual go-to insults for the cat, but he’s basically choked with anger and can just get out “stupid” over and over. Declaring “Who needs you!” he storms off leaving Stimpy alone and sad.

It’s nighttime. Stimpy is laying wide awake in bed staring at the ceiling while Ren is on the other side asleep, his back towards Stimpy, with a smile on his face (this brief shot of Ren is cut from the DVD release, presumably because the DVD uses the Spike TV tapes which probably cut it for time). We move to a close-up of Stimpy’s eyes which once again fill with tears. He lets out a sigh and rolls over giving us a nice shot of his round buttocks covered in a purple blanket. The camera pans over to the window where someone is watching. It’s Stinky! He’s a brownish puff of gas with a face and arms. He’s looking through the window with longing and the camera zooms in on Stimpy’s sparkling butt cheeks. Opera-style chanting fills the soundtrack and Stinky looks so very sad. He lowers his head and drifts away as the snow begins to fall.

Ren’s trying everything to get Stimpy “in the mood.”

We cut to Stimpy in the doorway of the house calling out for Stinky. He has a scarf wrapped around his head and his face and hands are blue from the cold. Ren comes out to urge him to come inside. He says that Stimpy has been out there for months and tells him to come help him with the tree, our first hint at Christmas. Ren suggests he can string the dingleberry garland (gross), but Stimpy gives his “ehh” response again and Ren switches tactics by pointing out the mistletoe over their heads. He leans into Stimpy with a flirty, expectant, expression which might be the pair’s most gay portrayal up to this point in the series. Stimpy doesn’t react at first, and then his eyes widen with surprise. Did Ren maybe touch a sensitive area? Stimpy then explodes at Ren, “Gosh darnit, Ren! Is that all you can think of?!” He lectures Ren further saying that Stinky is lost out in the cold and finishes with a “He needs me.” And Stimpy leaves Ren, who cries for Stimpy to come back, but is ignored. Falling to his knees, he utters a prayer for Stimpy telling a higher power he can hold off on the pectoral muscle implants he presumably prays for usually, just bring Stimpy home!

It certainly would be a festive place for a fart to live at Christmas.

We’re then taken to The Naked City. Stimpy is roaming the streets calling out for Stinky in the dark and cold as the snow continues to pile up. We get a shot of Stimpy’s feet sporting crude shoes as he walks through the snow. A Santa on a street corner cries out “Ho ho ho,” as he rings a bell looking for donations. The cadence of his call changes abruptly like he stepped on something, or maybe someone placed a cold hand where he wasn’t expecting. We then see that Stimpy is behind him checking the fat man’s buttocks for Stinky, but finding nothing, he walks off.

Stimpy’s feet are shown again only now his shoes have been worn revealing purplish feet, one toe has a nail sticking out of it. Stimpy has posted signs reading “Have You Smelled Me?” with an image of Stinky on it, which is odd since he never really saw him. We cut back to his feet, now blocks of ice, as he continues his search. He tries filing a missing persons report at a police station, but the cop just throws him out. He smashes into a brick wall, but the scent of something stinky wakes him (this sequence is missing from the Paramount+ version). We see him again clawing his way down the sidewalk towards the smell, but it’s just a manure salesman (Mr. Horse) and Stimpy drops to the ground. A car parks on his head for good measure, and then lo and behold, Stinky shows up! He takes a seat on Stimpy’s ass and wishes he never left home, but Stimpy doesn’t hear or smell him since he, you know, has a truck parked on his head.

Stinky then moves on and squeezes in between two guys seated on the ground sleeping back-to-back. One is just in a coat and underwear and they’re clearly meant to be un-housed individuals. One of them notices the stench of Stinky first, then the other who cries out for someone to light a match. They both stand up and start waving a lit match and poor Stinky is terrified. He lets out a tiny scream and is forced to flee to a sewer as the two men give chase.

There’s a lot of sad crying in this episode.

Back at the house, Ren is singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” through tears as he digs out Stimpy’s present from under the tree. He then goes to give it to Stimpy and we see his face, but it turns out it’s just a picture of Stimpy (the DVD version cuts out the tease and jumps straight to the gift next to the picture frame). A ring of the doorbell gets Ren’s attention and on the other side he finds Stimpy, only he’s completely encased in ice. They go into their reunited routine from the very first episode, only Stimpy can’t respond to Ren’s cry of “Pal” because he’s frozen.

Ren brings Stimpy into the living room and sets him up by the fire. The ice is gone and Stimpy is shivering in a blanket with his feet in a bucket of hot water. Ren has decorated for Christmas and he’s done a rather admirable job as he looks on Stimpy with glee in his eyes. He tells Stimpy to relax and kisses his forehead as Stimpy’s tongue pops out of the blanket. A ring of the doorbell causes Ren to leave and, at first, it looks like no one’s there. Then a familiar odor wafts into Ren’s nostrils. At first he’s repulsed, but then smiles as he reaches down off camera for something.

Ren returns to the living room to tell Stimpy he has a visitor. Stimpy responds with his now customary “I don’t care,” forcing Ren to thrust his finger under his nose. As he sniffs Ren’s finger, a look of recognition crosses his eyes. The brown cloud then appears and Stimpy is on his feet crying out in joy “Stinky!” Stinky returns the cry with a “Dad!” and the two embrace to some uplifting music the show is returning to from the first episode, only the embrace is punctuated with a fart sound.

Stimpy, through happy sobs, declares that now he and Stinky can be together forever. Stinky’s face hardens and he pulls away from his father’s embrace to tell him, “No, dad, we can’t.” He explains that he’s a man now, and a man has needs, but when he asks Stimpy if he understands the cat just angrily shakes his head “No.” Stinky then gets an idea and tells him to wait here. He goes to the door and opens it and tells Stimpy he wants him to meet his fiancé: Cora.

The bride to be is a rotting, mostly decomposed, fish. Stimpy takes one look at her though and declares her beautiful as the fart and garbage embrace, I guess. Ren and Stimpy embrace too and cry out “Memories!” We cut to a wedding, where Stimpy is marrying Stinky to his fish bride. For the first time, he uses the word fart when addressing Stinky so at some point he learned what he is. The two kiss, then head inside Ren’s nose for their honeymoon hanging a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door that suddenly appeared on Ren’s nostril. The camera pans out and Ren looks pretty unhappy about this arrangement, as Stimpy tosses cat litter at his face in place of rice and tells the camera that he just loves happy endings!

And that’s the end! Nick wanted a heartwarming tale and it got one, albeit a subversive one that only could come from The Ren & Stimpy Show. Stimpy searches for his missing son so the two can be reunited for Christmas. It sounds like a nice and pretty standard holiday premise when you ignore that his son is a literal fart. It’s a bizarre and crazy premise that really puts Stimpy’s stupidity on full display. I suppose, in a sense, it’s funny to think about how we create and pass gas that vanishes quickly and for an idiot like Stimpy he might not comprehend that. Mostly, it feels like a challenge from the show to see if the audience can be moved to feel empathy for an actual fart and the one who dealt it.

A fart is having sex with the corpse of a fish in Ren’s nose right now. That’s a lot to process.

As is customary for the show, there’s tons of visual gags and gross images. There’s numerous shots of nice, round, butts that do look inviting given the cold climate throughout. The show almost made me want to climb in between those two gentlemen in the alley as Stinky did, but not quite. Ren and Stimpy’s relationship is also really interesting here. Ren is shown to be far more understanding and permissive of Stimpy’s depression when normally he’d just lash out with anger. He eventually gets there to a point, but it’s actually depicted rather well as it’s very easy to grow frustrated when trying to talk someone out of a funk. We all try our best not to act like Ren did in the end, but it can be trying. And then we have the obvious romance angle. The show flirts with that here and there before and after this episode, but the depiction of the pair under the mistletoe is definitely the most obvious call out to the two being a romantic couple that we’ve ever seen. Of course, the sequel show would make that plainly obvious to mostly disastrous results. Don’t confuse me for saying Ren and Stimpy being out of the closet is disastrous, that show just happens to be not funny and isn’t worth watching. The fact that it isn’t cut from the episode is rather brave on the part of Nickelodeon considering this debuted in 1992. Not on Nickelodeon, but that’s even pretty brave for MTV. And it would eventually jump to the kid’s network.

Watching Stimpy suffer is not really a whole lot fun, but then he’s also suffering because he misses his fart. It’s hard to know how one should feel, but I think that’s the point.

Ultimately, this episode leans so far into telling it straight that it’s not as funny as it perhaps could be. There are funny moments, for sure. Stimpy describing a fart without knowing what one is works as probably the best scene in the whole episode. The dismissive nature of his booger friends and some of the closeups definitely warrant a laugh. After that though, once Stimpy slips into depression, it’s fairly short on laughs and is really committed to telling this sad story that ultimately has a happy ending. Only I don’t think it succeeds in actually getting the viewer to care about Stinky. I think I identify more with Ren’s frustrations than Stimpy’s depression, which is probably not what the episode wants. Though I do think that aspect of it exists because the staff must have known there would be viewers like me and at least we have something to latch onto via Ren. Because of that, I never know how to feel when this one ends. Am I happy for Stimpy? For Stinky? I guess. I’m relieved it’s over because I don’t enjoy seeing Stimpy suffer like this, but the payoff isn’t there. I think if this one wasn’t as long as it is then it would work better because at some point it just feels sadistic with how it treats Stimpy. Stimpy is a character easy to laugh at when the pain inflicted upon him is physical, but not emotional.

There’s really not a ton of Christmas in this episode, but I think there’s enough.

“Son of Stimpy” is not the only Christmas episode the show created as there is also “A Scooter for Yaskmas.” That one is actually very similar in tone to this one as we basically just see Stimpy suffer, though in that one he creates some of that suffering by desiring a physical object. Both have their moments, but also neither one is a Christmas special I feel required to return to every year. I think others feel differently as “Son of Stimpy” seems to be well-received by the fanbase, so what do I know? If you want to embark on a journey of father and son reuniting for Christmas then this one is available to stream on Paramount+ and was also released on DVD many moons ago. That set is very easy to acquire and contains some classic episodes so even if your response to this episode is tepid like mine that DVD is still a worthwhile purchase. Unfortunately, both versions are edited to some degree. The one on Paramount+ omits the sequence where Stimpy enters the police precinct and gets thrown out, while the DVD version cuts out a shot of Ren sleeping in the bed and his giving a gift to a picture of Stimpy. For the DVD, I think both edits were just made for time as the source video is from Spike TV and their broadcast. With Paramount+, I think their version is the one Nickelodeon aired which apparently didn’t like featuring a cop assaulting Stimpy. Given the two choices, the DVD version is superior, but it continues to be frustrating how hard it is to find truly uncut episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show.

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

Dec. 13 – Bob’s Burgers – “The Bleakening: Part 2”

Well fellow cartoon Christmas enthusiasts, we’re in a new and interesting place today. We’re coming in for the second part of a two-part story we started looking at yesterday. In the first part of “The Bleakening,” the Christmas special from Bob’s Burgers which originally aired in 2017, the children of Bob and Linda Belcher were…

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by Joe December 13, 2021May 3, 2023

Dec. 13 – The 25 Greatest Christmas TV Specials

Five years ago The Christmas Spot did its first advent calendar countdown to Christmas and the theme was “The 25 Greatest Christmas TV Specials.” With that list, my approach wasn’t entirely forthright. I really had a list of 20 specials that I deemed worthy of such an honor and I devoted the back five to…

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by Joe December 13, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 13 – How to Grinch

Christmas has a number of characters that instantly come to mind at the mere mention of the holiday. The big man, good old S. Claus, is likely number one. Whether you know him as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, or something else, Santa Claus has dominated the holiday for decades now. Other characters commonly associated with…

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by Joe December 13, 2019December 12, 2019

Leave a comment | tags: billy west, christmas specials, mtv, nickelodeon, nicktoons, paramount+, ren, son of stimpy, stimpy, stimpy's first fart, stinky, the ren & stimpy show | posted in christmas, Television

December 12, 2022

Dec. 12 – A Very Venture Christmas

By Joe

This one has been a long time coming. One of my all-time favorite television shows is The Venture Bros., but it’s a show I really haven’t spent much time discussing on this blog. I guess because I view it as contemporary, even though the pilot premiered almost 20 years ago now. For most of this blog’s life it has been considered ongoing, but the eighth season of the show ended up being a COVID casualty, or whatever Warner Media wants to blame it on, so it has come to an unceremonious end. As of this writing, a finale is said to be in the works that will someday air on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block, but with how things have been going with Discovery and Warner that finale seems to be very much in doubt. Hopefully, I won’t have to update this to say it’s been cancelled, though it would be nice to have to update it to say it has a release date.

The Venture Bros. began life as a Johnny Quest spoof. Doc Venture, his bodyguard Brock, and his twin sons Hank and Dean travel the world in their high-tech jet and go on adventures. Only with the Ventures, Doc is basically a huge failure who is often just after a quick buck. He gets by on selling his dead father’s legitimate inventions and sometimes to the wrong people. The central theme of the show is failure as Doc Venture isn’t a real doctor of anything who basically fell backwards into the role his dad played (he was a boy adventurer and basically his world’s version of Johnny Quest, though there’s also a character named Action Johnny, it gets confusing) when he died suddenly before the events of the show and he’s basically just treading water. Because of his name and reputation, he has a bodyguard in Samson issued by the government to keep an eye on things. The show’s lore would expand exponentially as it went along and the Johnny Quest spoof was essentially dropped as a result.

This is the rare Christmas special that has two title cards. I couldn’t decide which I liked more.

The show’s first season ended its broadcast back in October of 2004, but waiting for Christmas of that year was a special: A Very Venture Christmas. Cartoon Network had (has?) a notoriously tight checkbook when it comes to its original content and especially so with Adult Swim. They were able to get by with very cheap, but also very entertaining, shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021 in the early days and that basically had a ripple effect on everything that follows. The Venture Bros., being a more traditionally animated show, was also scrutinized by the network due to its costs relative to those other shows even though its animation budget was nothing compared with Saturday morning cartoons or even primetime ones like The Simpsons. It would get better, but that first season especially didn’t look that much more impressive than the rest of the original content airing on Adult Swim.

This one begins with an almost perfect recreation of the old CBS Special Presentation animation.

Because of that, the budget for the special was small and it was so small that it remains the only episode that’s 11 minutes, basically half the length of a standard episode. This made it more like a standard Adult Swim original and there’s another reason for that. Originally, series co-creator Jackson Publick (real name Christopher McCulloch) conceived of the special as being part of a block of Christmas originals to air in 2004. Making this one shorter than usual made sense since it could slot in with the other shows to form an hour or a half hour’s worth of content. He thought he had the network and the other shows onboard, but it apparently all fell apart and the only episode of TV to come of the whole thing is the one we’re about to talk about. It was even supposed to be shorter, but Adult Swim wouldn’t be able to find time for a 7 minute thing and by filling a quarter of an hour it at least worked well enough for them. Partly because of that, Publick doesn’t seem to think much of this episode because it ended up being rushed and the unique running time only adds to that feeling. Other series co-creator, Doc Hammer, is even less complimentary of it saying “I hate that fucking Christmas special.”

Oh no, not another Christmas Carol parody…

This one begins with a spoof on the old CBS Special Presentation graphic. According to Hammer, he got it so close to the original that they had to make some changes because it looked too much like it. This homage has certainly been done a lot since, but this is one of the first I can recall seeing (I think South Park beat them to it). After that, we’re taken to a cemetery in an obvious parody of A Christmas Carol. Doc Venture (James Urbaniak) is being shown his own grave by the Grim Reaper-like Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and he’s obviously in some distress. When he asks the ghost to confirm it is indeed his grave, despite the tombstone being clearly marked, he throws back his hood to reveal himself to be Brock Samson (Patrick Warburton), Venture’s bodyguard, and responds to him sarcastically since the grave is obvious.

Nah! This isn’t a straight parody of anything, but it is front-loaded with a bunch of quick hits to more famous Christmas specials.

Venture wails and begs on his knees until he wakes up grasping an orange husband pillow in his own bed. He is delighted to find he has woken up and declares he will live in the past, present, and the future. As he says that, we get an X-Ray shot identical to the one from How the Grinch Stole Christmas that shows his heart growing in size until it breaks through the frame. He goes into the Scrooge routine of jumping around and declaring his glee before running out onto a balcony to call out to a boy. The boy is his son, Hank (Jackson Publick), who is clearly dressed to resemble Charlie Brown and is even carrying a sad, little, tree. Venture asks the kid what day is it and Hank responds, “Duh. It’s Christmas Day!” which just further delights this Scrooge-Venture.

Why if it isn’t old Hank Brown and his pathetic little tree!

Suddenly, Venture’s nose glows red and his pajamas disappear as he starts to float. He then soars over the Venture compound like Rudolph wishing a “Merry Christmas!” to all he passes over like George Bailey at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. He passes by Dr. Orpheus (Stephen Rattazzi), a necromancer who rents an apartment on the Venture compound, who returns the greeting by calling him Mr. Venture. I love that he refuses to acknowledge Venture’s phony doctorate. He also wishes a merry Christmas to the family robot, H.E.L.P.eR., which is dressed as Tiny Tim. After he passes the camera pans over to son Dean dressed as a clown who wonders why his dad didn’t wish him a merry Christmas. The camera zooms out further as Dean (Michael Sinterniklaas) declares “No one wants a Dean-in-the-box!” and we see he is dressed as Charlie from the Rudolph special.

You’re right, son, no one wants a Dean-in-the-box.

The image then dissolves into static and we see Dr. Venture waking up yet again. It would seem he fell asleep on his TV remote causing the channel to just keep changing. At it does, we hear lines from famous Christmas specials like the ones we just saw depicted in the dream. Some of the lines are modified slightly, while others are left completely unchanged. Most sound like they’re voiced by Publick and I do really like his “Thirty-nine and a half foot pole!” chant. Venture then sits up and rubs his head and says “Oh thank God, I thought I turned into a complete [censored],” It’s bleeped out even on the DVD release, but I think he just said “asshole,” but I’m not certain. We then smash-cut to a festive rendition of the traditional show opening. There’s snow falling and jingle bells playing and there’s wreaths and a new red-green color scheme and other festive stuff inserted. It’s very corny and silly, but what can I say, this stuff works on me!

This is extra funny because the Sears Wish Book really would hang around for years. It was as big as a phone book and must-read for kids year in and year out.

When the credits end we find Doc heading down the stairs to the kitchen with a cup of coffee in-hand. It’s apparently no good as he winces when he takes a sip. Brock is on the phone with a store of some kind and he can be heard asking if they have the Joker Mobile in-stock. The voice on the other end of the phone tells him they haven’t had that in-stock for years and he hangs the phone up with disappointment. Doc smiles and asks if he’s still shopping for the boys and Brock confirms he’s all set with Hank, but Dean is proving to be a challenge. When Doc suggests it’s because he’s too feminine, Brock just says he’s hard to shop for, which is sweet of Brock. Doc points out that Dean has been not-so-slyly leaving some Sears catalog laying around for a month and Brock encourages him to check the date on the cover as he holds it up. It’s a Sears Wish Book from 1976, which explains the Joker Mobile thing, and Doc just grumbles that the Green Machine he ordered probably isn’t showing up too as he walks out.

Old man Venture sure enjoys some novelty Christmas pornography.

Dean enters the kitchen to see if Brock is done with the phone. As Brock exits, Dean sees the catalog and asks if anyone misplaced it in a cheeky fashion. His question is ignored, but he doesn’t seem too disappointed by it as he starts dialing a number on the phone. It’s for some Christmas story hotline. As Dean settles in for a Christmas story from Holland, Hank can be seen snooping in a closet. Brock catches him and tells him his present isn’t in there, but Hank tries to dismiss the accusation by saying he was just looking for the Christmas videos. He then pulls out a stack and reads off some of the titles: Miracle on 69 Street, Jingle Balls, and my personal favorite, Frothy the Blowman. We get a quick look at the box art for some of them and it’s rather bawdy. For some reason, Frothy looks like the Pringles guy with a top hat. Brock interrupts him and takes the obviously X-Rated novelty films and tells Hank he needs his help hanging up the lights and hands him a staple gun. Hank twirls it like a revolver and holsters it somehow on his belt as Brock returns the tapes to the closet. As he does, Hank asks him “What were those elves doing to that lady?” and Brock just replies with “They’re called dwarves, Hank.”

As Hank goes to head outside he says, “Oh! Baby Jesus is out of the manger!” Brock reacts by checking the fly on his pants, then realizes that Hank was actually talking about the Baby Jesus porcelain doll which is just laying beside a manger scene on-top of a shelf. Hank goes to put the baby in the cradle, but Brock stops him and tells him the baby doesn’t get put in there until midnight. It’s apparently a Venture tradition that Hank forgot about, or just never knew. They head outside and the baby Jesus rolls over to reveal some wiring. The camera cuts to the manger and then to a bunch of C-4 under it!

You must have known we’d get a Monarch sighting in this one.

We immediately hear the voice of the arch nemesis of clan Venture – The Monarch! Monarch (Publick) orders Tiny Joseph, which is revealed to be the Joseph statuette in the display, to get out of there! He mops some sweat from his brow and returns the real Joseph statue to its place as he bails. Monarch is relieved they didn’t lose an agent on this mission, though he does concede that his specialty is rather limited.

In the background, Dr. Girlfriend (Doc Hammer) can be seen trimming a tree with a pair of henchmen. She’s dressed in a festive, girly, Santa suit, and questions Monarch about what he’s up to. Monarch tells her it was supposed to be a surprise, but she’s irritated that his surprise for her is killing his arch enemy on Christmas. Monarch tries to assuage her by saying he has stocking stuffers too, but it’s not working. Dr. Girlfriend, ever the understanding partner, asks him what the plan is since it’s obvious he’s dying to tell her. Monarch then walks over to a model of the Venture compound and explains how at the stroke of midnight during Venture’s annual Christmas party, the baby Jesus will be placed in the manger which is wired with C-4. At that moment it will explode decking the halls with bowels of Venture! He’s really into it, but Dr. Girlfriend just tosses her hat on the floor in anger and says “That model was supposed to be a surprise!” which forces the Monarch to respond in a meek voice, “I peeked.”

They included almost everyone from Season One as a background character for this party.

Back at the compound, it’s night time and the party is in full swing. In the background are basically all of the guest characters from the first season with the exception of Jonas Jr, who was revealed in the season finale. This thing takes place sometime before that. The Impossible family is there, including Sally who looks pregnant, Sasquatch, the old Team Venture, and even one of the lucha libre guys from the first episode. H.E.L.P.eR. is serving drinks in a festive apron and reindeer antlers and some of the guests have different attire, including Triana Orpheus (Lisa Hammer) who is in a crimson dress with holly in her hair. Lurking behind her are Pete White (Publick) and Billy Quizboy (Hammer) as the two eye Triana. It’s rather gross since both of them are adults, and Triana is a minor. Pete is extra gross since he’s wearing a mistletoe headband. As he tells Billy he’s going to talk to her, Billy just tells him he has no chance because he’s 1. Totally gay, 2. She’s hot and he’s an albino, and 3. He’s totally gay. He’s not really gay, but he has a feminine cadence to his voice which makes him the target of gay jokes. This was made in 2004.

Pete and Billy then venture over to the couch and sit on either side of Triana. Pete tries to impress her by saying he was one of the first DJs at his college radio station to play The Bauhaus which causes Triana to say “Wow, you must be, like, 60?” clearly not impressed. Pete ignores the sass and tries to make use of the mistletoe on his headband but it immediately goes up in flames. Dr. Orpheus is the reason for that, and Pete makes a hasty retreat as Triana tells her dad she can take care of herself. He responds in a calm manner with understanding, but drops the façade quickly and declares dramatically to the rest of the party goers that “My pumpkin’s maidenhood is not a prize to be,” further embarrassing the poor kid.

Probably shouldn’t just leave that laying around, Dr. O.

Orpheus leaves his daughter to sulk on the couch and encounters Venture coming down the stairs. Venture remarks that he’s surprised to see a necromancer like Orpheus attending a Christmas party. Orpheus responds that Christmas is about as real as Kwanzaa or the Wookie’s Life Day, but that he finds it charming. Me too, Byron, me too. In the kitchen, we see Dean on the phone yet again listening to another story as Hank enters, sporting a white and green sweater that I think depicts a reindeer, to warn Dean that the “Gay albino is hitting on your not girlfriend.” Dean can’t be bothered as he’s maxed out their dad’s credit card and still doesn’t have a good story. I think the implication is they’re being counted on to tell a Christmas story at this party? Either way, the problem appears to have a solution sitting on a nearby table: Dr. O’s Necronomicon!

The boys open the foreboding book and immediately a black cloud emerges. They think nothing of it and start flipping through it and Dean finds an entry that intrigues him: Krampus! He starts reading it aloud and it’s written in another language, which looks like German and would make sense given a joke to follow. As he reads it, we cut back to the party and a bored looking Orpheus is stuck listening to Venture talk about a book he’s writing. Some creepy chanting has been added to the background music as the rest of the sounds of the party fade out. Orpheus’s face then changes to one of worry and he springs into action. A first person shot of something running towards the compound is shown before we cut back to the kitchen where Dean declares this book makes no sense. A lock appears over his mouth as the door slams shut and Orpheus is revealed to be the source of this magic, but he cries that they’re too late!

The front door gets blasted in and the Krampus enters! He’s mostly faithfully depicted as a brown-furred demon with a long tongue and a basket of children on his back. This version has very pronounced nipples and we get a sequence of quick cuts of people reacting to the entrance, including Monarch who is watching a video feed. He demands to know who this guy is, but pauses to admire the costume. As Krampus stalks the party, everyone just looks on. Doc asks Orpheus what the thing is and he informs him it’s Krampus. He describes him as a demonic spirit that once rode alongside Saint Nicholas dishing out punishment to bad children. Doc is confused since he though Santa was fake, but Dr. O tells him he was real up until 1963 when a plane took him out. He adds that Krampus hasn’t been seen since the Pope banished him to Purgatory during Vatican II.

Everyone seems rather calm about the whole demon in the room thing.

Hank and Dean, who still has the magic lock over his mouth, emerge to proclaim their innocence in this whole mess when Dr. O tells their father that it was they who released him. As Hank blames Dean, we see Krampus licking the face of Triana. Hasn’t the poor girl suffered enough tonight? Doc asks Dr. O what kind of kinky spirit this thing is and he responds “Well, it is Germanic in origin.” Doc then asks Orpheus if he can “magic” it away and his response is “No more than you can ‘science’ it away,” He then explains it will merely punish those it deems wicked and be on its way.

Doc insists there’s no one wicked in this house, which is just the cue for Krampus to grab him! He starts flaying him with his reeds with a look of delight on his face as Doc hangs upside down in the grasp of Krampus. The rest of the crowd gasps as Krampus slams Doc’s head into the floor then drops him on all fours and starts dry-humping him from behind. Doc has no idea what to do aside to call for Brock who soon enters dressed as Santa Claus. He informs Krampus that he’s been naughty and promptly swings his sack of gifts at the demon. He knocks him from Doc and begins pounding on him. Krampus gives as good as he gets and the two are locked in fisticuffs when the clock strikes midnight.

He didn’t even get a chance to put his beard on.

Suddenly, Krampus stops and Brock backs off. Dr. Orpheus informs him that it’s now Christmas and the Krampus is done for the night. Krampus very calmly walks towards the door, but pauses when he sees the baby Jesus figurine still sitting on the shelf. He picks it up and we cut to Monarch who was covering his eyes in terror, but immediately perks up when he see Krampus pick up the porcelain baby. He places it in the manger, and we cut to an external shot of the compound exploding.

Doc Venture, once again, awakes from a dream. Brock is telling him to wake up and we see his head is wrapped in bandages and they’re aboard their supersonic jet, the X-1. He’s relieved that everything is all right, but Brock informs him that they’ve crashed in hostile territory, but the boys are excited because it’s the town of Bethlehem. Doc also presently has no pants on and H.E.L.P.eR. has a thermometer inserted into his anus because it’s funny to wake up with something in your bum. The boys declare this the best Christmas ever because they got to see where Jesus was born and Hank tells their dad that there was magical god-fire shooting out of it. Brock then tells Doc he thinks they hit a gas line, then explains their situation further to be that if the Israelis get there first, they should be fine, but if it’s the PLO then they’re in trouble. Doc doesn’t seem dismayed as he reminds Brock their plane runs on plutonium and declares that the PLO will love them! Dean gets in a “And that’s what Christmas is all about,” before we smash-cut to another title card and the credits roll as this one is over and it’s the rare episode to not feature a post credits scene.

Suddenly, getting assaulted by Krampus doesn’t seem so bad.

And that is how the Ventures celebrated one Christmas. Or, how they didn’t? I guess it was all a dream, though Brock mentions he’s giving Hank his old bass guitar for Christmas and Hank will be shown with that bass in future episodes so I guess some of it came true. It is weird to rely on the dream trope for more than one gag in an episode, especially an 11 minute one, but given that this thing came together so quickly I guess it can be forgiven. Though maybe they could have just written Monarch’s bomb to be a dud to avoid having to play the dream card again? Interestingly enough, the bit at the end with the gang in Bethlehem is actually how the special was originally conceived and it’s one of the few things that survived the change from a 7 minute thing to an 11 minute one.

There’s a solid amount of laughs in this brief special and definitely some quality visual gags.

As a Christmas special, and one that lampoons others, I think this one is fine. I don’t really get why Doc Hammer hates it so much, but he has a very specific sense of taste so I guess I can see him just not being at all onboard with a Christmas special. Especially one he had very little input on. There are certainly moments I don’t like, such as the adult characters hitting on a minor. I suppose it’s not that bad to see such a thing in here because part of the show is that many of these characters aren’t of strong, moral, character, but I feel like Pete deserved more punishment than what he got. Plus, Billy was basically an accomplice and he gets nothing. A lot of the stuff with Krampus and the pornography joke earlier is a bit lewd, or crass. It definitely dates this one as it feels very much like something that aired on Adult Swim in 2004. A lot of the jokes here aren’t something they would have done in later seasons. The gay jokes are the most cringe-inducing, but they’re not as bad as some jokes from that era are.

The animation for this one is pretty much on-par with the rest of the first season. It’s perhaps a bit simpler with some of the character movements, but the effort in presenting a lot of them in different outfits is certainly something to commend. Some of the character animation also saves the more bawdy scenes, like just how happy Krampus looks as he’s violating Dr. Venture. The demon is just so joyful in his work, it’s infectious! The little we see out of The Monarch works too and I enjoy that early series dynamic he has with Dr. Girlfriend.

Part of me wishes they didn’t blow up the compound so that the continuity was more clear, but I suppose it doesn’t matter much in the end.

This special from The Venture Bros. is perfectly fine for what it is. It would have been great to get something longer with a bit more effort put into it, but they did what they could with it. There’s enough humorous lines and visuals and at this point in the season I think the character voices were pretty well established too which helps carry it. The Christmas parody stuff this thing is front-loaded with is also fun and a bit clever as it would have been easy to assume they were just going with a full-blown parody for their special, since many shows have gone that route. If you’re into The Venture Bros., I think there’s enough here to make an effort to watch this one. If you’re not, well you’ll probably be lost since the show is very reliant on the viewer being familiar with it. And if you do want to watch it, the special was included on the Season One DVD release and is also streaming on HBO Max. There’s also a chance Adult Swim runs it at some point this month so you have options.

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

Dec. 12 – Bob’s Burgers – “The Bleakening”

All right, we’ve been at this for a few years now so you probably don’t need much of a primer on Bob’s Burgers, right? The animated sitcom which is shockingly in its 12th season (shocking because it still feels new to me) has become a reliable spot for Christmas fun each and every year. The…

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by Joe December 12, 2021May 3, 2023

Dec. 12 – King of the Hill – “The Unbearable Blindness of Laying”

After yesterday’s horrid feature, I feel that today calls for a Christmas special that’s actually good. And in order to satisfy that desire, I’m heading for Arlen, Texas for our first look at a special from the animated sitcom, King of the Hill. Back when King of the Hill premiered on the Fox Network in…

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by Joe December 12, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 12 – Teen Titans Go! – “Halloween vs. Christmas”

It’s a battle for the hearts of children around the world! What is the superior holiday: Halloween or Christmas? Today’s entrant is founded on the premise that Halloween is the only holiday to rival Christmas as far as what children look forward to most. This feels more or less on point as a kid…

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by Joe December 12, 2019October 23, 2019

Leave a comment | tags: adult swim, cartoon network, christmas, christmas specials, doc hammer, jackson publick, krampus, the venture bros. | posted in christmas, Television

December 11, 2022

Dec. 11 – The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree

By Joe

When I was a kid growing up in the 80s The Berenstain Bears was a popular series of books that usually imparted a simple, clear, message. I seem to recall a fire safety book being a go-to in school for fire safety week and I know I got a copy of one about not eating junk food from one of those Scholastic catalogs they just gave out in school. Isn’t that kind of shitty? Schools would just send kids home with catalogs for books and similar products that they could bring back to school with a check. A few weeks later, the class would come back from lunch or recess and there would be books and things on some desks, but not others. Basically, each class got to figure out which kids were the poor kids through these things and there was probably a bit of peer pressure on parents to let their kids get in on the fun. I did okay in that sometimes I was allowed to get a book, and sometimes I wasn’t. And when I did it was pretty great, but when I didn’t it left me feeling pretty down. Even though a book is something I’d look at for a day or two and then forget about it. Oh, and they still send those things home with kids today.

Tangent aside, The Berenstain Bears were a favorite of mine as a kid and I think my sister as well. We mostly interacted with them via the library which also had tapes of the cartoon series available to rent. I don’t remember ever watching the show on live television in the 80s, but I do remember renting it and really liking the main song. I had no idea that in the previous decade the franchise first made the move to television in a very similar fashion to Charlie Brown which came about via the animated holiday special. The very first of which debuted in 1979 and was called The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree.

When you want to unveil a new IP in tandem with a holiday it’s never a bad move to go with Christmas. Christmas more than any other holiday just demands we all stop and take notice and television networks love to have Christmas specials on-hand. It’s why a blog like this can exist and have enough material for years on end! The creators of the franchise, Stan and Jan Berenstain, were the ones to seek out a deal and were initially turned away, but they eventually found a partner in producer Joseph Cates. They basically agreed to do the special in the late winter of 1979 and had enough time to write, draw, and animate this thing in time for a December premiere. The Berenstains themselves drew an estimated 20,000 sketches for it that were utilized by the animators and they also wrote the thing, including the song lyrics. It wasn’t based on an existing book at the time, but one would be created the following year to capitalize on the success of the special. More holiday specials would follow before the series was turned into a proper cartoon series for 1985.

I am surprised that I never was able to rent this from the library. I have to assume they didn’t have a copy or else my sister and I surely would have picked a Christmas episode. It’s possible my mom shot us down if it wasn’t that time of year, but either way, I never saw this thing before watching it for this entry. I don’t recall it ever being promoted on television and my memory is that the show aired pretty early in the morning and once it concluded its run in 1987 it was basically done. If it showed up on cable later on I never found it. It feels like a series that would have felt right at home on PBS instead of CBS Saturday Morning, and had it first premiered there it probably would have been re-run for a decade or more. A new series did eventually premiere there, but that was in 2003 when I long had outgrown The Berenstain Bears.

The grammatically correct title of this one implies we’re going on a quest for a tree. I remember next to nothing about the actual characters in this series, so this should be interesting. The special opens with an original composition by Elliot Lawrence called “Christmas Day is Here (It’s Almost Here)” which is a pretty confusing title. Is Christmas Day here or almost here? Why not just call it “Christmas Day is Almost Here”? Was there a conflicting copywrite? Anyway, the animation shows Papa Bear (Ron McLarty, who will also play the narrator to come) walking casually through town with a fishing rod over his shoulder and a giant fish under an arm. He has neglected to secure the hook on the rod and it gets into some mischief without him knowing. He first accidentally plucks the beard off of a Santa Bear which makes the kid on his lap laugh instead of cry. It then winds up on the face of another character mid-conversation with someone. The hook then nearly swipes a wreath from Grizzly Gus, but he catches it and glares at Papa Bear as the hook finds his hat and removes it.

This clock might be my favorite character in the whole special.

We’re then taken to the home of the titular family. As the next series will tell us, they live in a split-level tree: Mama, Papa, Sister, and Brother. Apparently, this family finds little value in names. There’s a wreath hanging in a window, but otherwise, the house isn’t very “Christmassy.” That’s because the Berenstains are one of those weird families that waits until Christmas Eve to decorate. The clock strikes two and it’s a pretty cute cuckoo clock as the bird pops out of the bear’s mouth and then gets pulled back causing the bear to lick its lips like it just snacked on the cuckoo bird. The narrator tells us we’re 10 hours away from Christmas and the camera pulls back to reveal Mama (Pat Lysinger) hanging some decorations while Brother (Jonathan Lewis) and Sister (Gabriela Glatzer) sit on a mountain of wrapped gifts. Papa Bear enters and the narrator tells us the fish he caught is a magnificent Christmas salmon! He doffs his cap and says “Huh Huh, I’m home!” and I did not remember him sounding like a dim-witted yokel. He then slips and falls and the salmon goes sliding through the gifts. The kids land on it as it skates into the kitchen where Mama is waiting to open the refrigerator door for it to gently slide into. We then get a shot of the fish from outside the fridge and it’s frowning, but Mama and Papa reorientate the mouth so it appears to be smiling and the whole family smiles around the happy, Christmas, corpse!

Papa is then shown digging through a trunk as he prepares for what the narrator calls the most fun of all: the tree! Papa pulls out a tree stand and places it in the center of a room as the narrator romanticizes the subject. He’s infatuated with the Christmas tree being full and fat, and it’s a sentiment this special comes back to repeatedly and it just strikes me as an odd way to talk about a Christmas tree. I’ve certainly used the word full before, but never fat. As the family looks at the tree stand they envision what this fat tree will look like via pine needles overtaking their father and that’s where we get our title card for the special.

This bear has an unnatural attraction to Christmas trees.

When that is done we go back to Papa posing like Captain Morgan on the tree stand as he details his tree lust. He runs to the closet to get out the “hooks” and Mama looks very concerned as he tries to open the door. Brother assists and eventually the door opens to reveal a mountain of junk piled high. At first, it just sits there and Mama bear gives a sigh of relief, which is the cue for everything to pour out. We get to witness this via Mama as it’s way easier to animate a wince than a closet full of contents pouring out onto two bears. We then get a look at a lot of the stuff as the narrator details it. He uses a rhyme and I don’t really like it. Anyway, the best decoration is some gaudy eighteen-pointed star the whole family is real proud of. Papa seems to think this silly star will make all of the other bears want to see their tree, but maybe that’s how it goes every year so who am I to judge? He nearly drops it though as it bounces from Brother to Sister and comes to rest on Mama’s finger. She just looks at the camera (a lot of characters do) with a tired expression.

The bears hold this ugly thing in high regard for some reason.

Papa continues his fat tree fantasy on the stoop as he calls for his cubs. The narrator adds a “…said Papa Bear,” after his command which is just the most useless form of narration. We can see and hear he spoke, thank you very much. Mama Bear (“Wise Mama Bear” according to the narrator) instructs the children to dress warmly as she fears there’s a hint of snow in the air. Papa dismisses her claims because he’s the dumb man in this scenario for he can’t sense any pain in his left, big, toe. The three set out and grab an axe, and despite Mama Bear’s suggestion, they pass up a tree at Grizzly Gus’s in favor of finding their own, but not before Papa Bear accidentally insults Gus and the quality of his trees, though nothing comes of it.

Papa Bear is just another dumb husband character who refuses to take direction from his wife.

The three bears head into the woods, despite Mama Bear’s direction to just buy a tree. The narrator lets us know that, under normal circumstances, Brother and Sister would listen to their mother, but not their dad. Any bad things that happen from here on out are definitely the fault of Papa Bear. The narrator blames this on his tree lust, and Papa Bear reinforces this by declaring he will find the right tree even if it takes a week! Sister reminds him that Christmas is mere hours away so a week they do not have, not that he pays her any mind. This leads into another song, “We Need a Tree For Christmas.” Papa sounds a bit funny singing, and they just detail all of the stuff they’re looking forward to which always comes back to that they need to get a tree first. The narrator chimes in towards the end to remind us that Christmas isn’t all about trees and things, but giving, and blah blah blah.

The bears soon come upon a lovely, fat, tree. They drink it in while the narrator sounds like he’s salivating at the sight. Papa Bear declares it the perfect tree, but as he readies his axe, Sister notices something. A mailbox placed at the base indicates this tree belongs to a skunk. We then see it’s also the home of squirrels, chipmunks, and crows. Papa Bear obviously isn’t malicious, so he doesn’t cut it, but the crows in the tree aren’t so easy to forgive. The bears are forced to run as they’re chased by a literal murder. We then pivot back to the tree as the narrator reinforces, rather needlessly, that this tree means more to its inhabitants. The skunk is shown opening its mail which contains a Christmas card from its mom and dad. All of these animals seem to be as smart and sentient as our bears, but they see no point in clothes. Fair enough.

The bears march further and further into the woods in search of the perfect tree. Papa Bear vows to find the perfect tree and the animation details his proclamations. He’ll cross rivers, conquer the fog, sail over Niagara Falls on a log – yes, he does make it a point to rhyme. He reiterates his vow to find one if it takes a week as he is just blinded by his compulsion. I’m finding it hard to like this imbecile. He even ends his series of vows with a “Just as sure as my name is…uhh…” as he has to ask his son to remind him what his name is. This guys is dumber than Homer Simpson, and possibly more negligent.

Not only is Papa Bear incapable of focusing on more than one task, he’s pretty delusional as well and fancies himself some sort of Christmas tree hero who will have to battle all kinds of evil to get what he wants.

Papa Bear trips over a stump which stops him momentarily. It grounds him literally, and then his kids are there to ground him figuratively as they remind him it’s getting late and they need to find a tree soon. The old bear still shows no concern for their well-being even as the snow begins to fall. The kids follow him up a mountain as the three resume their tree-hunting song while the snow falls harder and heavier. They sing about the stuff they’re looking forward to which includes Sister fantasizing about sardines in a cherry sauce, but when Papa Bear mentions chocolate-covered snails that’s the point at which the kids are disgusted. I don’t know, cherry-flavored sardines actually sounds worse to me than chocolate-covered snails. I mean, I don’t want to eat either, but if I had to choose I might go with the snail.

Mama Bear probably runs when Papa Bear gets this look in his eyes.

Papa Bear tells us that a tree with all of the trimmings is what Christmas is all about. He gets “tree eyes” once again as he spies the new perfect tree. Positioned on a ledge, the lone pine entrances both he and his cubs. They’re ready to chop it down, when an eagle emerges from the top of the tree. Then a hawk, and an owl, and you get the idea. This one is inhabited as well so they can’t cut it down. Worse, these birds are even less forgiving than the crows. The eagle especially dive bombs the crew and snatches the axe. It soars into the sky and even poses like the image on the back of a quarter complete with the appropriate Latin verse, before it dives at the bears with the axe! That’s a pretty frightening sight, but the eagle is a bit unconventional in that it spins the axe like Thor and his hammer and whips it at the bears where it harmlessly strikes a stump.

When eagles start dive-bombing you with axes you know you screwed up.

Papa Bear tries to save face by claiming that tree was no good, it was too green, as he pulls the axe out of the stump. Now the snow is really falling hard, and it’s dark. Papa Bear is still enthusiastic, but the kids seem like they’re faltering as he leads them up another mountain only now in waist-deep snow. The kids are literally falling backwards because the hill is so steep while Papa Bear continues to fantasize about a thick tree. His eyes then catch another tree and it looks almost exactly the same as the previous one. It’s again another tree on a cliffside, but I don’t think it’s the exact same image. Regardless, Papa Bear approaches the tree intent on cutting it, but wouldn’t you know – it’s home to some birds. This time, the birds are literally inside the trunk of the tree and there’s a window and lighting inside making it more like the tree the Berenstains live in. They’re a family that’s basically the bird version of the Berenstains right down to the choice of clothing. They’re decorating a twig for a tree and, at first, are frightened by the giant bear eye in their window, but they respond with a “Merry Christmas.”

Papa Bear is forced to just smile and wave. He’s finally ready to give up on this dream of cutting down the perfect tree for he’s reminded of what Christmas is all about. The kids are a bit dismayed, but he tells them they’ll just get a tree from Gus. The kids seem apoplectic at the thought for some reason, but Papa ignores them and finally uses that axe for something good when he chops a stump into a trio of skis. Papa, Brother, and Sister put on their makeshift skis, and the craftsmanship is actually quite nice for a bear with just an axe, and head down the mountain. The score from the opening song accompanies the bears down the mountain as they avoid death here and there. They go off a cliff which sends the three rolling the rest of the way. They all acquire a bunch of snow to form three balls, then a snowman with Sister’s face sticking out. It looks comical enough, but the ending of the sequence is awkward as it just sort of floats towards the screen looking like South Park animation.

The snowman smashes into the sign for Gus’s tree farm and the snow falls away from the bears within. They’re immediately saddened to see that Gus is gone and so are his trees. He sold every one of them which may be the most unrealistic part of this special featuring anthropomorphic bears on a hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. Dejected, the three hang their heads and head for home cold and tree-less. Once they get there though they witness a glorious sight!

Their home, which in case you forgot is an actual tree, has been decorated with all of their many decorations. And the decorators? Why, it’s all of the animals they very nearly inconvenienced along the way. I don’t know how they got all of the decorations out of the house, did the murder of crows fly down the chimney and grab them? Did someone knock on the door to get Mama’s attention? I suppose it doesn’t matter as the treehouse is all aglow and looks pretty spectacular. The eagle even puts the eighteen-pointed star in the center of the…roof? Canopy? Whatever.

Turns out, they had the perfect tree the whole time!

Mama Bear joins her family outside to gawk at the marvelous tree. She seems surprised which, again, just makes me wonder how this all happened, but I’m trying to dismiss that. Papa Bear points out the star on top, but the narrator tells us they’re not looking at the plastic one, but the spectacular Christmas Star flashing in the sky high above. And as Papa had predicted earlier, all of the other bears turned out to see their tree. Then Mama decides it’s time to sing again as we move into the final song, “The Christmas Star.” It’s just a generic song about Christmas being for everyone and we get lots of shots of animals putting their arms around each other. Sister even pops in to say Christmas is for people too which just raises further questions. Do humans exist in this world? Her suggestions seems to confuse Papa, but what doesn’t? Mama puts the bow on the song by saying “Merry Christmas to us all, fellow creatures one and all.” The camera zooms out to show the crowd around the tree and the star above.

I do enjoy a good post-Christmas carnage sort of shot.

That last shot felt like the one to go out on, but we’re not done! We then head inside the house and it appears to be daylight now. The camera pans across a bunch of Christmas stuff inside and empty packaging – the wreckage of Christmas post gift exchange. The kids aren’t playing with their new toys though as we find the family in the kitchen getting ready to eat that Christmas salmon. As Papa readies his knife, Sister points out the lesson from last night about thinking about others and wonders why that doesn’t extend to the poor, dead, salmon. Papa and Mama are surprised and a bit stumped by this question, but Papa Bear just adds “…in the case of the salmon, we’ll make an exception.” Yeah kid, we’re eating this fish! We’re then shown another external shot of the tree at night as the credits roll.

Christmas is great when you’re not at the bottom of the food chain.

The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree isn’t quite what I expected. I had absolutely no recollection of Papa Bear being such a boob. Was he in the books? Or in the show that followed? I don’t know, but it was hard to get into for some reason. I found myself annoyed by him, and maybe the rhyming pattern didn’t help matters, even though I don’t place any fault with him wanting to cut down his own tree. I do the same each year because they last longer, but I also go to a farm to cut mine down. I don’t go searching in the woods. One would think the bears of this world would be accustomed to all of the nice trees being inhabited by other animals and would thus be discouraged from undertaking such a task, but again, Papa Bear is an idiot so maybe that’s obvious to all but him?

The other characters really don’t make much of an impact. This does remind me of some early episodes of The Simpsons where Homer is in the lead and the rest of the family has very little to offer. At least in their debut Christmas episode we see Bart pranking a mall Santa (his dad) which gives us a glimpse at the type of scamp he is. This special really does nothing for the kids, while the mother is allowed to convey some of her personality via her facial expressions. Which brings me to the animation which is pretty solid. No, this is unlikely to truly impress, but the main characters emote well and there’s a few flourishes here and there like Papa excitedly moving his toes in giddy anticipation. They do fall back on repeated gags, like Papa’s tree eyes, that takes away from the fun of the visual through too much repetition. It also tries to do something a bit more “out there” with the ski sequence, but it doesn’t pull it off.

Papa Bear is a Grade A boob. He cares about trees and salmon, possibly in that order. Is he the original moronic cartoon dad?!

The audio portion is also a mixed bag. I found the characters to be well-cast at least. Papa Bear took a minute for me to get used to as I wasn’t expecting this “Golly Gee” kind of character out of him. He’s basically a bumpkin, and in hindsight, I suppose that makes sense given his attire. Brother and Sister are fine and what little Mama says also works. Only a few of the animals actually say something with the rest of the cast being mute. The narrator did feel superfluous to me, but given they were adapting a children’s book property for animation I can see why they went in that direction. It just strikes me as a crutch though and one that’s not needed if the visuals work well (and they do). The music is mostly jaunty, though a little repetitive. None of the lyrical portions of the songs did much for me, but they don’t offend. I’ll always award some bonus points to a special that doesn’t recycle public domain music, especially if the end result isn’t something annoying.

The other aspect of this special I wasn’t so sure about going into it was the age range. I associate The Berenstain Bears with my preschool days so I thought I might get a preschool vibe from this. I’m happy to say that I did not. Not that we’re courting a teenaged or adult audience here, but it’s pretty comfortably G rated, if you will. It tried to be funny and convey a generic Christmas message, and it’s only so-so as a result. G-rated for content, C-rated for quality. If you grew up with this stuff, it might be worth a look for the nostalgia or if you have little ones that are currently into The Berenstain Bears. Though in that case, probably try and steer clear of the new stuff as the current version of the family has basically been taken in an ultra-conservative direction by the offspring of Stan and Jan. A message of Christmas for everyone is probably not something you would get out of the property today. The special streams for free on YouTube and has been released multiple times on DVD and VHS for you physical media types. If you’re an adult with little or no connection to this franchise, you’ll probably be content to continue ignoring it.

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

Dec. 11 – One Ham’s Family (1943)

Tex Avery is one of the most influential animators in cartoon history. Beginning his career at Universal, he would make the jump to Warner Bros. when he famously convinced producer Leon Schlesinger he was an animation director when he actually had little or no experience at such. While working under Schlesinger, Avery was influential in…

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by Joe December 11, 2021May 3, 2023

Dec. 11 – We Wish You a Turtle Christmas

Several months ago, I reviewed a product called The Musical Mutagen Tour Action Figure Set. It was a set of toys based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stage show, Coming Out of Their Shells, from 1990. Back then, the Turtles were so unbelievably hot that they could sell out a terrible stage show in…

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by Joe December 11, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 11 – A Flintstone Family Christmas

The Flintstones got its start back in 1960 and for many years it was the standard for prime time animation. It was really the only prime time animated show for decades and has now been firmly supplanted by The Simpsons in almost every conceivable fashion. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, being new to sitcoms, treated…

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by Joe December 11, 2019December 9, 2019

1 Comment | tags: christmas, christmas specials, elliot lawrence, jan berenstain, stan berenstain, the berenstain bears | posted in christmas, Television

December 10, 2022

Dec. 10 – A Chipmunk Christmas

By Joe

Alvin and the Chipmunks is one of the oldest, family-owned, pieces of intellectual property left in the world. And it might not be for much longer as the franchise is reportedly up-for-sale and has been since last year, but as-of this writing nothing has been agreed upon. The Chipmunks date back to the 1958 novelty song “Witch Doctor” written and recorded by Ross Bagdasarian. Technically not the first Chipmunks song, but it did feature the same high-pitched, squeaky voiced characters the franchise would become known for. The true, real, debut of the trio came in the song “The Chipmunk Song” later in 1958 which is also titled “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late).” That song is when the chipmunks were given names and Bagdasarian also assumed the persona of David Seville, who would come to be known as the group’s manager and adoptive father.

Following the success of that song came a media empire. The Chipmunks recorded additional novelty songs and would be featured in comics, television, and even movies. The Alvin Show, which premiered in 1961, basically established, or confirmed, that Alvin was the alpha chipmunk of the group and the one the franchise would center around. And thanks to that show as well as the 80’s revival is why a whole generation of people (like myself) actually think of the franchise as Alvin and the Chipmunks as opposed to just The Chipmunks.

In 1972, Bagdasarian passed away suddenly from a heart attack at the age of 52. His son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr., eventually took over recording duties for the group, but their star had waned by then. Thanks in part to reruns of The Alvin Show, the group never completely faded away and come the end of the decade NBC was ready to do something new with Bagdasarian which is how we got A Chipmunk Christmas. For the trio’s return to television, Bagdasarian went back to their roots and produced a special that incorporated the classic song where it all started. The special isn’t an adaptation of the song in the same sense that Frosty the Snowman or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is, but it does feature the “recording” of it and it’s certainly an easy thing to leverage. Given how the Christmas special took off as a thing in the 60s, it’s actually surprising that we didn’t see this special until 1981 given the popularity of the song.

The chipmunks retain their look from The Alvin Show, but with a little Chuck Jones mixed in.

A Chipmunk Christmas is a joint venture between Bagdasarian Productions and Chuck Jones Enterprises with direction by Phil Monroe. The newly married Bagdasarian and wife Janice Karman would serve as producers and voice actors for the show with Jones handling direction and design work. Marvel Productions was also onboard as producers with NBC set to broadcast for Christmas 1981. A Chipmunk Christmas, as well as the album Chipmunk Punk released the previous year, was a re-introduction of the franchise to a whole, new, audience. In 1983, Alvin and The Chipmunks would debut as an animated series which would air on Saturday morning and eventually in syndication with the franchise’s first film arriving in 1987. It was a big decade for the franchise and it would continue into the 90s before waning a bit, but a lot of people my age know this franchise because of A Chipmunk Christmas and the media it spawned.

A Chipmunk Christmas basically carries forward the designs of the characters established in The Alvin Show. The chipmunks are presented as anthropomorphized creatures that are basically the size of a normal, human, child of the same age. It’s not explained how these chipmunks came to be. There’s no ooze, radiation, or toxic waste involved, they just simply are. Given that show was produced in the 60s for television, the designs were rather simple with Alvin looking almost like a red triangle with a head. For this special, and in the hands of Chuck Jones, the chipmunks were given much softer features. Their cheeks are more defined, they have freckles, and big eyes. Their clothing looks like actual clothing and they were able to animate better than they ever had. They still have the same general aesthetic as the old show; Simon is the tallest, Theodore the chubbiest, and Alvin wears a hat and has a big “A” on his shirt, but they just look much nicer. They would never look exactly like this again as the 1983 series had its own aesthetic which is what was carried forward for the next two decades, but for my money the chipmunks never looked as good as they do here.

In this story, we have ourselves a sick, little, boy suffering from a bad case of Iwannaharmonicitus.

The special begins with a lovely look at what I believe is supposed to be New York City, or a city center of a nearby suburb, all decorated for Christmas while an instrumental rendition of “Deck the Halls” chimes in the background. The background designs for this special are just gorgeous. They’re so textured and intricate, especially the interiors. The camera pans to an apartment building and inside we find a doctor (Frank Welker) and a woman (June Foray) having a discussion. It would seem the woman, Mrs. Waterford, has a very ill child on her hands. Tommy is shown laying in bed asleep. On the wall is a picture of Alvin so we know the Chipmunks are stars in this world. The doctor indicates that he’s done all he can, but they just don’t have a solution for what ails Tommy. His mother says he’s lost interest in his music, which is apparently something that normally interests him, and he has almost no reaction to his sister’s nightly readings. Speaking of, Tommy’s sister Angela (Janice Karman) sits down to read to him to no reaction from Tommy. Sounds like he has a severe case of plot flu.

Skateboarding down a banister – welcome to the 1980s chipmunks!

The soundtrack switches to “Here Comes Santa Claus” as the camera pans across the city and comes to rest on a large house somewhere outside the city. It’s the home of our favorite rodents, Alvin (Bagdasarian), Simon (also Bagdasarian), and Theodore (Karman in her first time voicing the chipmunk). We find the three getting excited for Christmas, and given the darkness, it would appear to be very early in the morning. The three want to go Christmas shopping, but first must wake up their father, David (Bagdasarian), who seems uninterested in rising at this hour and really doesn’t appreciate being woken up by his kids skateboarding through the house.

The chipmunks bounce on David’s bed which gets him to bounce in the air, his face still heavy with sleep. As he bounces, the three sing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” and each time David bounces one of the chipmunks follows with an article of clothing. Eventually, David rises from the bed and walks over to a full-length mirror to take-in this new look. He has a pillow on his head, socks on his hands, and a coat on for pants. An irritated look overtakes his face as he recites the boys’ names, “Theodore. Simon. ALVIN,” rising with intensity for each until he practically yells Alvin. It’s essentially his catchphrase.

David then reminds them that he knows how many days there are until Christmas as he stomps around. The three boys are shown just laying in David’s bed with their eyes closed the whole tirade feeling quite a bit routine. When they grow tired of David’s ranting, Alvin whips out his harmonica and plays a note which is the signal for the other two to start singing. It’s an original composition, but I don’t know what it’s called or who wrote it as it isn’t featured on the soundtrack. Chris Caswell is credited with the music for this special, but that might not extend to anything with lyrics. As the chipmunks sing David continues his ranting, but eventually he takes note of the song and comes to rest in his lounge chair. In the distance, we can see the sun is now rising as David sinks into the chair and remarks that the song sounds pretty. The song ends with a line about gifts under the tree and Alvin adds a solo embellishment of, “…and I hope the rest are for me!” Fade to title card.

Alvin’s anger about having to work does raise some good questions about how this whole arrangement works.

After the title card, we cut to the boys sharing a skateboard and David strolling behind them as they head into town. Alvin is angry with Dave for making them work on their Christmas vacation, but David insists it’s just a short recording session. Alvin rightly retorts with “It’s work!” Remember kids, no matter how much you love your job in the future, work is still work. Is this exploitive on Dave’s part? Hard to say. They are, after all, chipmunks which normally would live outside in trees so having a nice, warm, house and all they need is certainly a good gig. On the other hand, as we’ll see later, they live in a pretty large house and yet all three share one bedroom. What the hell, Dave? Yeah, I think he might suck. Anyway, during the course of the conversation Alvin is reminded he left his precious harmonica at home, so he turns his legs into an airplane propeller and flies home, grabs it, and flies back. It’s this weird running animation that we’ll return to more than once.

Alvin feels the need to introduce his harmonica to the store display model.

As a solution to their problem, Alvin proposes that while David gets the studio ready that he and his brother do some window shopping, which Dave agrees to. As they speed away he reminds them, “Don’t be late!” The boys skate into town singing their own version of “Jingle Bells” that’s at least a bit charming, if not exactly an improvement over the standard version. We pan to a mall and dissolve on an image of a display for the Golden Echo Harmonica. Have you ever seen a gaudy store display for a harmonica before? I certainly have not. Alvin stops to look at it and whips out his own version of the harmonica, so it would seem this won’t be a story about Alvin desiring one of these. As he “shows” his harmonica to its brother, Alvin hears a voice calling out about it. He ducks, for some reason, behind the display as we see the voice belongs to Angela Waterford. She’s shopping with her mother and points out the harmonica and says it’s the thing Tommy wants more than anything. She begs her mom to buy it for him, but she reminds the child they can’t afford it. The girl wails that “Tommy will just die without it!” Her mother tells her not to talk like that and then says it will take all that they have to make sure that Tommy makes it through Christmas.

We then cut to the pair walking on the city streets and it’s already getting dark by the looks of it. Angela is asking her mother what she meant about that comment regarding Tommy making it through Christmas, but her mom is non-responsive. Alvin is lurking in the background as he’s apparently stalking the pair. As we zoom in on his sullen expression, the background dissolves to the recording studio. The chipmunks are performing their signature song, but Alvin is too sad to sing. Dave stops the recording to tell Alvin he’s a little flat, who proposes they take a break. When David sarcastically responds, “Take a break,” Alvin takes this as an agreement and runs out. As he does, his feet spin like a propeller once again and that whistling run animation from earlier returns.

Alvin races over to the home of the Waterfords, the weird run animation is utilized the whole way which makes him look like he’s floating over the streets as opposed to running on them. He arrives and Mrs. Waterford wakes Tommy to tell him he has a visitor. When Alvin is introduced, Tommy sits up and says, “Oh, hi Alvin!” like they’re buddies and not like this is an impromptu visit from a celebrity. Alvin somewhat clumsily explains to Tommy that he’s here as a delivery boy and says someone entered his name into a contest and he won. His prize? A Golden Echo Harmonica! Tommy is overjoyed to receive such a gift and his mother gives her daughter this side-eyed look with a sly smile. I don’t think this is the conclusion I’m supposed to draw, but it almost looks like she’s saying to her kid, “Hah, see? Our plan to get the chipmunk to gift him the harmonica worked, now we don’t have to buy it!”

A present for Tommy. Smells like chipmunk spit.

With his delivery completed, Alvin informs Tommy that he has to run and he resumes his odd, whirling, run animation. We cut back to the studio and a voice can be heard informing David that his time is just about up. David reluctantly decides to proceed with the recording and indicates they’ll dub Alvin later, but as the boys start to sing Alvin comes running in and nails it. David throws his hand up in the air with exasperation, but then settles into a smile as the boys perform. The song is allowed to linger for a bit, not ending until the boys actually since the line, “Please Christmas don’t be late.”

At the Seville house, it would appear to be the next day. Dave is then shown answering the phone and remarks to the man on the other end that “It’s not too late to talk business,” so I have no idea when this is supposed to take place. It’s not even dark out. The boys are decorating the tree and Simon and Theodore can’t believe Alvin gave away his harmonica. When they ask him if he told Dave, Alvin indicates he has not as he thinks it would break his heart since he gave Alvin the harmonica. He says he has a plan to use his Christmas money to buy a new one before Dave finds out, but of course that’s not going to work. Dave enters the room right after to tell the boys they’ll be performing at Carnegie Hall on Christmas Eve! And best of all, they want Alvin to perform a harmonica solo! I know I always expect a harmonica solo when I head to an event.

I’m surprised this rinky dink setup is so successful with the neighborhood kids. Also, I hate how that moustache is drawn on Alvin.

Now suddenly burdened with a need for money and before Christmas, Alvin starts scheming. The sound of the neighbor’s dogs barking gives him an idea and he whispers it to his brothers. Soon we see Simon and Theodore enthusiastically carrying a chair outside. Theodore and Alvin are then shown in the attic pulling some clothes out of a trunk and it becomes obvious it’s a Santa suit. We then cut to a hastily painted sign that reads: Have your picture taken with Santa Claus and his reindeer – only 25 cents. The dogs are all lined up in a row and playing the role of the reindeer, which none are fit for, but the boys at least put antlers on them. Blitzen looks rather cheeky about something, maybe he farted? Alvin is playing the role of Santa, and Theodore is his elf, while Simon works the camera. When a kid comes over, Theodore uses a rope and pully to lift Alvin up out of the way for the kid to have a seat in the chair and he’s then lowered onto the kid’s lap, which seems backwards. It’s at that point Simon takes the picture. It looks like there’s a design, or animation, error with Santa Alvin as his moustache is drawn coming out of his mouth, but will be fixed in a later shot.

Somehow it’s Dave that always takes the brunt of it.

David is reading a newspaper in his chair when he hears the dogs barking. He goes outside to investigate and immediately looks irritated. He asks Simon what’s going on, who says they’re helping Alvin make money. He probably could have softened that explanation some, and I thought he was the smart one. Dave then calls for Alvin, who has to remind him that he’s to be addressed as Santa. David tells him he’d like a word and now the moustache on Alvin has been moved to under his nose. Alvin doesn’t have time to explain things though and moves over to his seat which is now occupied by a girl, Cindy Lou, who does bare a small resemblance to Cindy Lou Who and I have to believe that was intentional on the part of Chuck Jones. Cindy Lou is not alone though as she brought her cat. When Alvin realizes this, so do the dogs, and they chase the cat. There’s an animation error where one dog just disappears from the shot. Carnage ensues, leaving David covered in snow which Alvin casually flicks from his nose. The moustache continues to move all over the place on Alvin throughout.

I’m with the boys, I don’t want to hear this poem.

That night, David leans upon the mantle and tells the boys it’s time they all be reminded about how lucky they have it. He asks if they remember a poem he wrote, “The Spirit of Christmas,” and the boys moan about having to endure it once again. As David recites it, the boys finish certain lines and it’s pretty bland as it’s all about being generous at Christmas. Dave works up to a big finish and says the line, “So let’s all give a big cheer for…” and the boys respond in unison with “Money!” They immediately clutch at their own mouths to indicate that they didn’t intend to say that and it causes David to probe the boys for more information following their stunt earlier that day. When Dave asks why they suddenly need money, Theodore is the one to say that Alvin needs it so he can buy a present – for himself. David is disgusted at the idea that Alvin is thinking about himself at Christmas and sends the boys to bed. He takes a seat in his chair once more and Alvin approaches cautiously from behind. He asks Dave if he’s mad at him and gets the response every kid hates, “No, I’m just very disappointed.”

All these years later, I’m still surprised Clyde Crashcup made it into this.

We’re then shown the chipmunks asleep in their beds. Alvin’s is decorated with Christmas lights, and given this was in the era before LED lights, this strikes me as super dangerous. Alvin is tossing and turning as we hear him thinking aloud about his problem. We then enter the special’s oddest moment, Alvin’s dream in which he meets a character from The Alvin Show: Clyde Craschup (Charles Berendt). Alvin is shown entering a lab where both he and the hapless inventor confuse each other for a loan officer. Craschcup is a man who enjoys puns and when Alvin tells him he needs a loan, he remarks “Well, of course you’re alone!”

Crashcup leads Alvin inside. Clyde explains that he’s busy working on the spirit of Christmas and leads Alvin to a door labeled Santi and his Reindeer. He explains Santi as a man with a beard and a hat, but when he opens the door to reveal his creation, we see it’s Abraham Lincoln in a Santa hat riding in a pumpkin. The date is also February 12th and the reindeer are pink elephants. One such elephant apparently dislikes being portrayed as a reindeer and grabs Crashcup with its trunk and flings him into a wall. The now likely concussed inventor sits up and declares his invention a success.

Alvin then tries to explain to the inventor that he hasn’t lost the spirit of Christmas, he just needs money to buy a harmonica. Crashcup seems irritated, then a bit confused as he ponders what money is. Alvin tries to explain it, but Crashcup is rather dense. He think it sounds wonderful though and declares that he’ll just have to invent it adding that it will go rather well with his other invention: the I.O.U. He whips out a canvas and easel and gets to work. He paints an image of an inverted magician’s hat and out jumps a green bunny – “munny,” get it? When Alvin objects, the “munny” makes an annoyed face and jumps back in the hat, flips it over, and with its feet poking out of the bottom runs off. Alvin then says that he needs “Money!” and he repeats the word over and over as the dream apparently ends.

Dave is then shown coming up the stairs remarking to himself that maybe he was a bit too hard on Alvin. He enters the room and finds the boy crying for money, throws up his hands, and walks out. The next morning, we begin with an exterior shot and then find the boys inside. Theodore and Simon are lending Alvin all of the money they have, which isn’t much considering Theodore spent most of his on cookies. Alvin graciously accepts and heads off to the store, but Simon remarks to Theodore that Alvin doesn’t have nearly enough cash to buy that harmonica. Dave then enters the room and asks the boys if they’re ready to head to Carnegie Hall and immediately becomes irritated when he finds out Alvin isn’t here. Before he can ask further questions, he’s interrupted by a phone call. It’s Mrs. Waterford, and she was just calling to tell Alvin that the harmonica worked wonders for Tommy! Dave is delighted and gestures for the boys to come closer. He then tells them it’s time they tell him the whole story.

The tactic of “If I stare at something long enough looking real sad maybe someone will buy it for me,” has only ever worked this one time.

We then find Alvin by the display for the Golden Echo Harmonica. Just as Simon predicted, he doesn’t have enough money to buy it. The special is also pretty smart to never let us know how much this thing costs which helps to insulate it from inflation. He’s without his hat for some reason, but his moping is soon interrupted by an old woman (June Foray). She approaches in need of help and has identified Alvin as someone who can help her. Only, she has an unusual request in that she would like to buy Alvin a Christmas present. Why? We don’t know, she just refers to herself as a lonely old woman far from home. Alvin is basically speechless as she purchases the harmonica and immediately gifts it to Alvin. He unwraps it and the thing practically glows in his hands. He thanks her, but she refuses his thanks and instead asks him to play her something. Alvin is happy to oblige as he plays a slow rendition of “Silent Night” which attracts a small crowd.

I’ll give the harmonica credit, it sure is shiny.

As Alvin plays, the camera zooms out and we see Dave and the boys watching from a balcony. The camera pans up to the sky to focus on the North Star as a choir is introduced to sing a few lines of the song. When it’s over, Dave scoops up Alvin and apologizes for how he reacted to Alvin earlier. Alvin is completely unphased as he just wants to find the old woman who gave him the harmonica. She’s gone though, and Theodore soon reminds Dave that they need to go if they want to make it to Carnegie Hall on time. David then tells Alvin they have a surprise for him when they get there and we cut to a horse-drawn carriage apparently taking the chipmunks to their destination as the trio sing “Sleigh Ride.”

At Carnegie Hall, Alvin is shown finishing his rendition of “Silent Night” on his harmonica before their sold out crowd. He exits the stage to applause and bumps into a kid backstage – Tommy! Alvin is shocked to see Tommy (R.J. Williams), who just responds by complimenting Alvin on his solo. Dave then tells Alvin this is the surprise he was telling him about and we see Tommy’s mom and sister are there as well. He’s all better, and best of all he brought his harmonica. Alvin pulls him onstage in the spirit of celebration!

And the concert went off without a hitch, in case anyone was worried about that.

Alvin introduces Tommy to the audience as the curtain lifts to reveal a model of Santa in a sleigh with Theodore and Simon positioned behind it. Alvin takes his place beside his brothers as Tommy plays “Deck the Halls.” The chipmunks sing their own version, like they did with “Jingle Bells” earlier, only this one is a bit more lame as it begins with “Deck the world with smiling faces.” Dave is shown with his arms around Tommy’s mom and sister, then the scene cuts back to the performance, then back to Dave who is now standing with his arms at his sides. He then reaches out and wraps them around the Waterfords and it makes me think the shots were ordered wrong as it doesn’t make much sense. Alvin then concludes the verse with a line directed at the Santa display, “And don’t forget your gifts for me!” Dave covers his face with his hand indicating this was an ad-lib on Alvin’s part and scowls in Alvin’s direction, but Mrs. Waterford seems amused by it.

We then cut to a familiar face soaring high in the sky above Carnegie Hall – Santa Claus! He’s looking down and can apparently hear the performance. We pan over the city and it’s just a still image. It looks nice, but awkward, because the cars on the streets aren’t moving. It cuts to a silhouette shot of Santa and his reindeer as they fly through the city and eventually into a less inhabited area. These shots are the easiest Santa shots since you only need to animate 4 reindeer when it’s from the side. He never passes in front of a moon though.

This is how I picture Santa after a hard night’s work. Hell, this is me every Christmas Eve!

We’re taken to the North Pole and a tired Santa is shown stretching as he enters a cozy, little, home. There’s a roaring fire and a big sandwich by a lounge chair waiting for him. He greets his wife who we can’t quite see as she’s seated in a chair doing some knitting and is presented from behind, but her voice sure sounds familiar. Santa (Welker) then collapses into his chair and tells his wife she should get out of the house some Christmas and see how the world celebrates. We pan over to her and can see her now. It’s the old woman from the store and she dismisses Santa’s suggestion and remarks that making children happy is his “thing.” Santa doesn’t even hear her as he’s already snoring away in his chair. Mrs. Claus then looks to the camera and makes a “shush” gesture. She blows us a kiss as the special ends. A sweet ending for a sweet special.

A Chipmunk Christmas is a Christmas special that’s very easy to poke holes in and have a little fun with. Tommy is apparently a devious child who made himself sick so he could get a harmonica for Christmas that his apparently single mother couldn’t afford and it worked. They got a harmonica out of Alvin who then made the unwise decision not to tell his own father about and instead set out on what should have been an impossible task only for a little divine intervention to take place and set things right. Obviously, that’s not how we’re supposed to interpret things, just as we shouldn’t interpret that mental manipulation Mrs. Waterford engaged in to get that harmonica from Alvin, but so much is left unexplained that there’s room for the viewer to fill in the gaps with whatever they please. And since Santa exists in this world, why couldn’t he just bring Tommy the harmonica he wanted so badly? Plus I still maintain that glance Mrs. Waterford gives her daughter is bizarre and out of place.

What is this glance?! I think Alvin’s been played.

If I allow myself to drop the cynicism and think back on this special as I did when I was young, then it works much better. Tommy is just sick, with what we don’t know, and it’s the Christmas Spirit that saves him. Or residual chipmunk saliva in the harmonica. Alvin has to keep it a secret so we can have some Alvin-type hijinks and it all works out in the end. We get a nice dose of the chipmunks, plenty of singing, and Mrs. Claus gets to be the hero for a change. I think it’s her inclusion that puts this one over-the-top for me as it’s a clever way to deus ex machina Alvin out of his predicament without taking back the harmonica or just having a rather simple reveal that ends with David buying him a new one. Because that’s probably what would have normally happened. Logic even suggests that Alvin just find the new one under the tree, and that’s likely where most headspaces go with this one until we find out Alvin needs the harmonica for a performance on Christmas Eve! Whoops, Santa can’t help you there, little buddy!

The plot, which just highlights the spirit of giving at this time of year and does it through a normally selfish character, works well enough and the reveal is a fun one. We get a lot of songs throughout this one, but it is a bit light on Simon and Theodore. I suppose that’s nothing new for the duo as Alvin absorbs a lot of the spotlight frequently, but it would have been nice to see them more involved somehow. Instead, they’re just needed to cover for Alvin and serve as extra hands. Maybe we could have cut out the dream sequence, which feels out of place, in favor of another scheme involving those two. Perhaps Simon could have taken on a bigger role in said scheme or something. I just know I would much prefer more of the chipmunks in favor of a Clyde Crashcup cameo.

It was a pretty smart move to incorporate “The Chipmunk Song” into their first Christmas special. Kills a few minutes too.

That’s really the special’s only weak spot and it’s not exactly a big one. The dream has some decent jokes in it, so it’s not as if I groan when it gets to that mark. Mostly, I’m just charmed by the chipmunks. They look cute, they’re mostly well-voiced (Simon is a bit robotic at times), and have never looked better. There are some animation gaffes here and there, but not enough for me to render this one problematic from a visual perspective. The characters animate well (aside from when Alvin is running) and I love the backgrounds. The other character designs are fairly basic, but still look fine. I like the Chuck Jones Santa who has more of a “dad bod” than an obese one. It would have been nice to see a full reindeer design, but that whole sequence works well as-is so I can’t say I miss it.

A sweet story with some lovely visuals, it’s a shame this one isn’t still shown annually on network TV.

If you want to check out A Chipmunk Christmas this year, your best bet is to just track down the DVD release Christmas with the Chipmunks. It’s pretty inexpensive and contains some holiday themed episodes of the 1980s series. The only downer is that those episodes omit the theme song, which must be a rights thing. Currently, this special isn’t streaming as part of a service anywhere as everything Chipmunks-related seems to be in limbo given the franchise is up for sale. There are sometimes rights issues as well since the Bagdasarians are always partnering with someone to make these things. Again, I say just grab the DVD. As one of the best specials of all time, it’s well worth the purchase.

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

Dec. 10 – It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!

For December 10, we are returning to the theme of this year which is to revisit the best of the best. When I originally ranked my favorite Christmas specials, I had the recently released It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! ranked at #19. The years have been kind to this throwback Christmas special as last year I…

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by Joe December 10, 2021May 3, 2023

Dec. 10 – The Town Santa Forgot

Come the 1990s, the cartoon juggernaut known as Hanna-Barbera was fading. It’s said the company once had control of approximately 80% of the children’s programming on television and even come 1990 it was still around 20%. The studio’s last big hit had been The Smurfs which set all kinds of Saturday morning records despite few…

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by Joe December 10, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 10 – Merry Christmas, Super Dave!

There are a lot of cartoons that have come and gone in my lifetime, many I forgot even existed until something jars my memory. Earlier this year we lost comedian Bob Einstein. Einstein is probably best known for his role on Curb Your Enthusiasm, but twenty years ago he was best known for his…

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by Joe December 10, 2019September 27, 2019

1 Comment | tags: alvin and the chipmunks, christmas, christmas don't be late, christmas specials, chuck jones, janice karman, phil monroe, ross bagdasarian, ross bagdasarian jr, the chipmunk song, the chipmunks | posted in christmas, Television

December 9, 2022

Dec. 9 – The Smurfs Christmas Special

By Joe

If the 70s were defined by Scooby Doo when it came to Hanna-Barbera, then the 80s belonged to The Smurfs. The little blue creations of Pierre Culliford, better known by his pen name Peyo, had an animated series that basically spanned the entirety of the 80s totaling an insane 258 episodes. And once the 80s ended, it wasn’t like The Smurfs suddenly disappeared. The show would air in syndication for much of the 90s before the franchise finally seemed ready to retire, but like all things from the 80s, it came back.

Relatively early in the show’s run was The Smurfs Christmas Special. The grammatically confusing title at least did not confuse would-be viewers: it was The Smurfs and it’s Christmas. The special aired in 1982 and would see re-runs for years to come, maybe not primetime network re-runs, but they can’t all be Charlie Brown. We actually looked at a later Smurfs Christmas special a few years ago and it was…Smurfy? The Smurfs was one of those shows I watched because it was on. I saw so many episodes of this thing, but I can’t recall any real plot details. I just remember the archetypes and some of the characters and voices, but that’s mostly it. Most of the episodes probably just involved Gargamel trying to capture the Smurfs so I can see how it would just all blend together into the brain of an adolescent. It was never my favorite show though and I don’t recall owning much merch. I think I might have had a little Papa Smurf plush and there was always a little Smurfette spoon at my grandma’s house for some reason.

It looks like a big tree, until you remind yourself the houses are mushrooms.

Let’s check this one out, shall we? I know I’ve seen this before, but like the regular series, the various Smurfs holiday specials sort of blend together in my brain so this might feel almost new to me. Since we are talking Smurfs and Christmas though, I feel like I have to mention that Smurfs creator Peyo actually died on Christmas Eve in 1992. Ok, now that we’re all sad it’s Christmas time and the Smurfs are getting ready! There’s snow on the mushroom houses, we get a little title, and the usual Smurfs theme has some bells added to it to give it a jingle quality. The Smurfs are decorating a massive tree and we get some cuts of Gargamel’s snow-covered house and a horse-drawn sleigh is seen going across the land. We’ll see this again as this is just fluff for the credits.

This one is all about Harmony and his quest to write the perfect Christmas solo. Actually, no it’s not he’s barely in it.

When we get into it, Harmony (Hamilton Camp) Smurf is practicing a trumpet solo and he’s eager to share it with the others, but no one is interested. Smurfette (Lucille Bliss) seems to react in pain when Harmony tries playing for her while Grouchy (Michael Bell) is, well, grouchy and basically tells him to piss off. A whole group of Smurfs then pass by as they’re bringing a giant pot of pudding or something to the town square. I don’t know why it needs to be prepared there, but I suppose that cauldron isn’t fitting in any of those tiny houses. None of them have any interest in what Harmony is up to while Brainy (Danny Goldman) tries to lecture him on the importance of pudding preparation. These Smurfs have some odd priorities.

Someone should probably get him out of there.

A dejected Harmony tries to find a friendly ear in Lazy who’s sleeping on the ground, in the snow. He plays his trumpet, rather poorly, and it causes some snow to fall off of a nearby house and bury every part of Lazy except his nose. He continues with his nap. Harmony then comes across Jokey (June Foray) who is loading up a sleigh with presents. If you know Jokey, then you know those presents are all explosives. He’s giddy about Christmas since he has a gift for everyone in the village. Harmony informs him that he’s written a solo for Christmas and asks Jokey if he wants to hear it? Jokey tries to refuse, but Harmony plays on. As Jokey tries to stop him the sound of the solo causes the gift in his hands to blow up leaving him all charred and blackened. Declaring it not funny, he basically tells Harmony to beat it.

Hah, looks like the joke’s on you, Jokey!

Greedy Smurf (Camp) is then shown stirring the massive cauldron of pudding. He promises it will be his best pudding yet which just prompts Brainy to start talking about how much he contributed. Greedy and the other Smurfs apparently do not like hearing Brainy take all of the credit, as he soon goes soaring through the air and lands in the snow beside Harmony, who is still working on that solo. You just know that solo is going to come back before the episode’s end and perform some Christmas miracle or something.

The Smurfs have apparently unlocked the secret of turning acorns into a light source.

We then cut to the Smurfs decorating the tree, it’s the same animation from the intro only we see a bit more. Papa Smurf (Don Messick) finally makes an appearance just to tell us that this might be their best holiday celebration yet. Aren’t we lucky to be witnessing this one?! The best one ever! You just can’t have a Christmas special in the 80s without someone speculating it will be the best one yet, which will then follow with it seeming like the worst one yet, before it then becomes the best one ever again. These things write themselves.

Unlike Harmony, these characters are actually important to the plot. Well, two of them are.

The scene shifts to the sleigh from the intro and we now get to see who is in it. It’s some old guy and two kids, one boy and one girl, and he’s giving them a lesson on Santa Claus. The old man (uncredited) is the grandfather of the two children, Gwenevere (Alexandra Stoddert) and William (David Mendenhall), and they’re heading home for Christmas. The kids are pretty excited about this Santa Claus guy, and who wouldn’t be? The scene then shifts to the home of the evil Gargamel (Paul Winchell). He hates Christmas and lets us know in no uncertain terms. He’s seated at a table with books all around him, and he slams one of them shut. Unfortunately, his cat Azrael (Messick) was taking a snooze on the table and the book slams shut on her tail. She yells and jumps into the rafters causing a bunch of books to scatter all over Gargamel. He’s pretty angry with the cat, because all villains blame their animal companions for their own mistakes, but soon he brightens up. In his lap is a book that apparently details a spell for making things miserable. He’s positively giddy now as he’s found a weapon that will ruin the Smurfs’ Christmas – muahahahahaha!

The chef isn’t even allowed to sample the pudding? Harsh.

There’s a quick cut back to the old man and his grandkids merrily sleighing through the snow, but some creepy guy and a pack of wolves are watching. It then jumps back to Smurf Village where Papa Smurf is reprimanding Greedy for tasting the pudding. He literally took a finger to this massive pot that these Smurfs have no chance of consuming in its entirety. And if they do, well then they’re probably getting diabetes for Christmas. Brainy Smurf tries to add to Papa Smurf’s scolding which causes the old Smurf to roll his eyes initially. He then interrupts Brainy repeatedly until the annoying one finally shuts up. This allows Papa Smurf to then explain to Greedy, but mostly to us, that the pudding isn’t complete until they add the last walnut. Greedy responds in question by asking if it’s the last, ripe, delicious, walnut and Papa Smurf soon realizes that Greedy ate it. A single tear falls from Greedy’s eye, so at least he seems remorseful, but his name is Greedy for a reason. He apologizes to Papa Smurf who just says it’s all right and that he’ll get another walnut from Squirrel. Yeah, seems like this is not a big deal at all. I’m glad we got to spend time here.

Gargamel! Get your ass off of the ceiling!

The old man and the kids are once again shown singing “Jingle Bells” while the stranger with evil intentions looks on. I’m guessing something is finally about to happen. And it does! A wolf attacks, though the scene is edited clumsily. We just see it charge, the horse rear up, and hear the sound of wood crunching. The scary guy watches with approval. We then jump back to see what Gargamel is doing. He’s preparing his spell that will ruin Christmas, but he’s actually a pretty terrible alchemist and the concoction he’s working on explodes leaving him clinging to a chandelier, which soon falls. He then sobs, because he can’t ruin someone else’s Christmas. Poor guy.

On the outskirts of Smurf Village, Papa Smurf is borrowing another nut from Squirrel who is, as you probably guessed, just some random squirrel. The nut is dropped from the tree and hits Papa Smurf in the head. Funny. We then get to see the wreckage of the sleigh from earlier. The horse is just running free while the overturned sleigh has a hand sticking out from under it which is actually rather upsetting. The children are then shown approaching what they hope is a friendly home, but it’s Gargamel’s so that’s a big “No.” Gargamel answers the door and the young girl explains the situation as “Our sleigh overturned and our grandfather won’t open his eyes.” Sure sounds like he’s dead. Gargamel asks if they have any money and when they say “No,” he slams the door in their face. I remembered Gargamel as an asshole, but I didn’t know it went this far.

The scene shifts to a castle and it’s here we find out these kids are sort of royalty. Some guy in charge says his niece and nephew should have arrived hours ago and regrets letting them journey to him with their grandfather. He orders some soldier guy to organize a search party right away. We then are taken to the Smurfs who are singing their annoying “La La” song as they presumably march back to the village from Squirrel’s tree. We then get some quick cuts. First it’s to see Gwenevere’s doll in the snow, which she had just been carrying to Gargamel’s, but I guess got sick of doing so. Then to both kids as they lament their current state and reinforce the notion that they just need to find someone who will help them. Then it’s back to the doll and a wolf is sniffing it. That’s probably not good for the kids.

This guys is definitely evil, but just how evil?

Back at Gargamel’s, the old fool is trying to come up with a new potion, or spell, or whatever that will ruin the Smurfs’ Christmas, but doesn’t appear to be having much luck. Then his door suddenly swings open and it’s the creepy guy in the purple cape. He’s credited as Stranger (Rene Auberjonois) and immediately informs Gargamel that he can help him with his Smurf problem. In exchange, he just wants those kids. Gargamel, surprisingly, asks why he wants those kids and the Stranger goes on to say it’s for revenge. He has a bone to pick with their uncle who apparently thwarts his evilness with good deeds or something. He can’t abduct the children himself and explains that the only way for “goodness” to come his way is through treachery. I feel like there’s a far more interesting story here than what the Smurfs do at Christmas. Is this guy Satan? And if so, what’s that make the uncle of those kids?

At any rate, Gargamel is game as he wants the Smurfs and this guy has some scroll that will not only lead him to their village, but also provide instructions for what to do when he gets there. I personally think knocking over their tree and stomping on their tiny homes needs no instructions, but whatever. Gargamel sets out to find the kids, but instead he runs into their uncle. He’s with two others and informs Gargamel that they’re looking for the kids. It’s through his explanation we also learn that the grandfather survived and is apparently fine. Gargamel lies and says he hasn’t seen them, but when the uncle mentions he’s offering a reward of 10 gold coins for their safe return, the old alchemist gets a little gleam in his eye. When they wander off Gargamel explains to Azrael how they can get the Smurfs and the gold. That stranger did mention treachery, so this should follow suit, no?

Gargamel resumes his search while we’re shown what the kids are up to. They’re huddled together by a tree and the colors in the sky would seem to indicate it’s sundown. Gwenevere assures her brother they’ll be okay, but the sound of howling wolves would suggest otherwise. The two start singing “Silent Night” together and it’s overheard by Papa Smurf and the others. Brainy goes into an explanation of what they’re hearing while everyone just ditches him. These Smurfs are smarter than I thought. We then cut back to the kids and they’re surrounded by wolves. Seemingly every time we cut away and then back, another wolf is added and no one had to animate anything, which is quite the trick. Papa Smurf then barges in and sticks his finger right in a wolf’s face. The Smurfs is a show with very little actual, physical, conflict and I’m reminded of that as Papa Smurf tells the wolves to go away and they obey. The kids mistake him for Santa Claus, I guess their grandfather never mentioned his height, and quickly explain their situation to Papa Smurf. He orders the male Smurfs with him to go check on the grandfather while Smurfette is sent back to the village to get more help. When they depart, the kids ask him if he’s Santa Claus and he kind of laughs sheepishly, but doesn’t seem eager to correct them.

Hefty (Frank Welker), Clumsy (Bill Callaway), and Brainy come upon the wrecked sleigh, but no one is there. Brainy notes that there’s a lot of foot traffic around the wreckage, while Clumsy is the one to find a note. He asks what it says, and Brainy goes into some bogus explanation about how it doesn’t matter what it says, but what it means, which just pisses off Hefty who tells him to just read it. Brainy does as he’s told and we find out it’s a note from Uncle Edgar instructing William and Gwenevere to remain with the sleigh and he will come for them. Hefty and Clumsy then take off for Smurf Village while Brainy pontificates on this meaning of them discovering this message not intended for them until he realizes he’s been left alone. A standard “Wait for me!” is uttered and Brainy runs out of frame.

Even with help from these kids I’m still not convinced they’re putting much of a dent in that pudding.

Gargamel is shown cresting a small hill with Azrael as he outlines to the cat how he’ll find the children, get the scroll, double-cross the stranger, and get the gold. He calls it a plan crafted in Heaven! The children are then shown seated by the massive cauldron of pudding in Smurf Village. The kids are eating pudding and discussing how they can’t wait to tell their grandfather they met Santa and his helpers. Meanwhile, Greedy is just disappointed to see someone other than him eating pudding. He is swiftly reprimanded by Smurfette and the whole village has apparently gathered with gifts in hand. Papa Smurf then presents the children with a gift since they’re far from home on Christmas. To do so, he stands on the platform that Greedy had been using to tend to the pudding. It seems very formal. The children are thankful, and whatever the girl received she declares is beautiful. William got a tiny trumpet he toots on. I’m not sure what use Smurf-sized gifts will be for these kids in the long run, but I guess it’s the thought that counts.

The trio of Hefty, Clumsy, and Brainy then return and tell Papa Smurf about the note. The kids are delighted to hear that their grandfather is all right, but in true kid fashion, ask if they can open all of their presents first before returning to the sleigh. Papa Smurf is fine with this arrangement, while Grouchy Smurf is not. Papa Smurf then decides to conduct some music for the kids while they open their gifts. A bunch of generic looking Smurfs then sing “Goodness Makes the Badness Go Away.” It’s a terrible little song that will obviously have some importance later. More importantly, it soaks up about 30 seconds.

These kids aren’t trying hard enough – he’s an old guy in rags! He’s probably malnourished – fight back!

With the song done, the Smurfs lead the children back to the wreckage of the sleigh. They tow a small sleigh of their own loaded with gifts so this is turning out to be a nice little haul for them. Papa Smurf orders the others to build a fire since darkness is falling at this point, but soon Gargamel strikes! The Smurfs run around like useless, frightened, idiots while Gargamel just marches off with one kid under each arm. Some Smurfs apparently muster up the courage to fling some snowballs at him, but snowballs aren’t exactly effective at deterring bad guys and Smurf-sized snowballs even less so. Brainy asks Papa Smurf what they can do and he replies there’s only one thing they can do: follow them!

It’s always satisfying seeing a deal come together.

Gargamel takes the kids back to his house and they ask him what he plans on doing with them. Gargamel has no interest in revealing those plans, and soon the Stranger arrives! Gargamel turns the children over to him, as promised, while the Smurfs look on and watch the man hand over the scroll announcing it as the means to destroy Smurf Village. Gargamel is positively giddy and tells the kids the nice man probably has a Christmas present for them, even though they’re now tied up and being lead by a rope. As they leave he even calls out a “Merry Christmas!” to them before running off to Smurf Village. Vanity Smurf (Alan Oppenheimer) worries about the village, but Papa Smurf tells him they can’t afford to worry about that while the children are in danger. This is going exactly as expected.

Gargamel then arrives at an empty Smurf Village all decorated for Christmas. He’s initially dismayed when no Smurfs are there for him to torment, but he cheers up knowing he has a spell to destroy them. He opens the scroll and reads it and it’s pretty awful as the spell ends with “…let no one survive this year!” All the homes basically rot and the Christmas tree drops all of its needles and the whole place is basically in ruins. Gargamel laughs and just walks away for he still has 10 pieces of gold to collect.

I must confess I did not see that coming.

Gargamel quickly finds the search party and informs them that a stranger took the kids. He comes up with a story about nearly losing his life to the man and tells them where he can be found. Edgar thanks him for the intel and as they run off Gargamel asks about his reward. Edgar tells him he’ll have it when they find the children which Gargamel starts to fret over. He is soon surprised when the Stranger appears with the children right behind him. Angry over Gargamel’s betrayal, he tells him that he’ll be coming with him as well. Gargamel tries to back away, but the Stranger uses some magic to turn the husk of a nearby tree into a pile of bad looking snakes. Gargamel basically begs for his life and the Stranger makes the snakes go away and orders him to come along.

Meanwhile, the Smurfs have been tracking the Stranger and note that the footprints have added another human. They recognize Gargamel and Azrael’s tracks among them and we get this stupid routine of a Smurf saying “Poor William,” “Poor Gwenevere,” with Papa Smurf adding “And perhaps, poor Gargamel,” so the rest can then respond in unison “Poor Gargamel?!”

The Stranger and the kids are shown and the kids are seated at the ground. They claim they can’t walk any further and the Stranger is surprisingly fine with this. Gargamel tries to slink off, but the Stranger won’t let him. He informs them that they’re all going “home” with him and when Gargamel takes off running he conjures up a ring of fire to keep them together. He then goes into some spell while Gargamel and the kids beg him to stop. The Smurfs are watching from the hillside unsure of what to do. When Smurfette asks Papa Smurf what they can do to combat this evil power, he informs them there’s a greater power: love! I can’t believe they actually went there. Or maybe I can? Anyway, remember the song from before that literally spells out “Goodness makes the badness go away,” as its lyrics? Yeah, that’s our solution. The Smurfs sing it, soon the kids start singing it, and as a final insult Gargamel is forced to sing it as well. How he knew the words is not explained.

Sing, my Smurfs! Sing like you’ve never sung before!

The Smurfs and friends (and foe) literally shout at the devil and it makes him go away. With him gone so too is the fire, and old Uncle Edgar arrives at just the right time to find the kids. Gargamel foolishly still tries to claim a reward, but the kids let their uncle know that he is not a man deserving of a reward. Edgar looks ready to pound some alchemist, but Gwenevere stops him and reminds everyone that it’s Christmas and even a scoundrel like Gargamel deserves forgiveness. Gargamel, for once, smartly takes advantage of the situation and runs off looking very much like Professor Hinkle from Frosty the Snowman as he passes over a series of hills complaining to his cat the whole way. The kids then tell their uncle all about meeting Santa Claus, who laughs it off. As the sleigh takes off, the kids wave to the Smurfs and wish them a “Merry Christmas.”

Those kids they helped get to go to a nice warm castle for Christmas.

The Smurfs then return to find their village in ruins. Papa Smurf gives them a rundown of how shitty their situation is as they all huddle in blankets under a tree and imparts the classic Christmas lesson of “We still have each other.” The rest seem to agree and even Grouchy isn’t mad about the situation. Harmony (remember him?) then asks if everyone wants to hear his solo now? They do, and wouldn’t ya know, Harmony’s solo magically restores the village! Clumsy tries asking Papa Smurf for an explanation, but even the bearded one can’t explain this. The Smurfs are then shown holding hands around the tree as the camera pans up the tree. You think it’s going to rest on the star at the top, but it keeps on going until we see a twinkling star off in space. See? Jesus did it.

And that’s the end of The Smurfs Christmas Special. For a special that features a team-up between Gargamel and Satan forcing the Smurfs into action to save some kids, it was rather boring and by the numbers. That is quite the concept and they even managed to keep Santa out of it. Was it the real Santa that made the miracle occur at the end? I suppose your guess is as good as mine. It’s Christmas magic, which needs no explanation. The Smurfs basically do Smurf stuff and help some kids, while Gargamel gets nothing in the end. He gets to have a momentary victory, which might have landed differently for regular viewers, but there was no way the Smurfs would end up having a bad Christmas.

Things start off swell, then some stuff happens, Christmas is ruined, and then it’s not. Pretty standard stuff, well, except for the presence of the devil.

I suppose this one could have been interesting if the solution to everything wasn’t just “Christmas magic.” To combat the devil, Papa Smurf just knows you have to sing at him. Wonderful. It’s just too simple and convenient, but the production values for this thing look no better than a standard episode so I guess it didn’t have the budget for a big action set piece. No, I wouldn’t expect the Smurfs to take on Lucifer, but the other humans could have battled by proxy, I suppose. And hey, maybe they whip up some cool traps or something? Anything would have been better than this. Even the grandfather being left for dead is just brushed aside with a “He’s fine.” The plot does not earn any of the resolutions presented.

All right, you’ve had your fun, now get out of here you little, blue, freaks!

Did that matter to kids in 1982? I honestly cannot say. I always found this one to be rather boring even as a child. It was nominated for an Emmy, but lost to Ziggy. What little memory I have of future Christmas specials from The Smurfs are that they’re better than this, but I need to revisit more of them to be certain. Good thing I’m always in need of Christmas specials! If you want to watch this against my recommendation it’s on YouTube as part of the official Smurfs channel. It is a pan and scan thing though so it looks pretty awful. If you dig deeper, you can find one in its native resolution that is slightly more enjoyable. Or you can purchase it on DVD, but I don’t have any of the DVDs so I can’t say how it’s presented there.

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

Dec. 9 – “Robot Chicken’s Santa’s Dead (Spoiler Alert) Holiday Murder Thing Special”

Yesterday, I sung the praises of American Dad! for its ability to give me fresh, Christmas, content seemingly on an annual basis. I should also apply the same to Robot Chicken, for even though it goes about making people laugh in a completely different manner from a more traditional animated show, it does have a…

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by Joe December 9, 2021May 3, 2023

Dec. 9 – Space Goofs – “Holiday Heave Ho”

Come the late 90s I was definitely losing track of what was airing on Fox Kids. X-Men came to an end, as did Spider-Man and The Tick. They were replaced with Silver Surfer and a new Spider-Man cartoon that was pretty awful. There was also that live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show called The Next…

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by Joe December 9, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 9 – The Real Ghostbusters – “Xmas Marks the Spot”

The 1980s sometimes feel like they belonged to the Ghostbusters. That’s because, for me, the Ghostbusters were always around. The film came out when I was but a wee baby, but by the time I had a real interest in television The Real Ghostbusters (not to be confused with the Filmation series) was airing…

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by Joe December 9, 2019December 8, 2019

1 Comment | tags: christmas, christmas specials, hanna-barbera, peyo, the smurfs, the smurfs christmas special | posted in christmas, Television

December 8, 2022

Dec. 8 – The Soulmates in The Gift of Light

By Joe

This one aired sometime in 1991 and probably only in Canada.

It was around Labor Day of this year that Will Sloan (@WillSloanEsq) took to Twitter to uncover the origins of an image that had confounded his girlfriend and him for the past five years. It was actually a return plea as he had posted the same image 3 years prior. The image in question was a grainy, animated, elf character. It’s origins were only that it appeared in a photograph on a television set of an acquaintance of his girlfriend. It was basically an image of just a random moment in the lives of those involved with the image. Three children embracing, a giant console TV in the background, a Super Nintendo on the floor beside it dated it to be the early 90s. The only other clue was the setting of Ontario.

Like virtually all who came across the picture, I had no idea where it was from. It looked to be of its era and the character did look to be a Christmas elf of some kind. It was not recognizable as being a Christmas episode from a more famous show and I had to snicker to myself at every suggestion of The Littles. I suspected it was a one-off special, possibly one only shown in Canada, or even perhaps a commercial that featured original animation. The fact that it had been out there on the internet for multiple years without a satisfactory conclusion was the most incredible part of it all. How did the collective hive mind of the internet not know where this came from?

My gf and her friends have spent years trying to figure out what cartoon (glimpsed in the background of a family photo) is from. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of people have seen this image but nobody knows what it is from. If you recognize this man, please tell me. pic.twitter.com/nZibSf1QQH
— Will Sloan (@WillSloanEsq) September 2, 2022

Apparently, a new plea for help is all it took. Sloan reposted the image on September 2nd and come the weekend the mystery had been solved. It’s all detailed in this piece he wrote for the New Yorker because this thing had become so popular so fast that even the New Yorker needed to address it. Our faith in the internet was restored, and the general public was able to be re-introduced to a forgotten Christmas classic: The Soulmates in “The Gift of Light.”

Or not. I don’t get too many chances to be topical with The Christmas Spot, so I had to check this thing out and do a post on it for this year. It’s also known as The Christmas Gift of Light and was indeed a one-off Canadian production that few remember. It is not, unfortunately, a forgotten classic. It is a rightly forgotten piece of animation that many folks undoubtedly worked very hard to produce, but despite the special’s central theme of remaining positive can allow one to do almost anything, their collective efforts produced this. The special is directed by Chris Schouten who is credited as working on more famous productions like Anastasia and Heavy Metal, but is someone who IMDB has very little info on. The writer and credited creator of this special, Gabrielle St. George, has a similarly slim profile. The special itself does not have much in the way of credits, as in, people are listed, but the roles are unspecified. Some of the voice talent is recognizable for folks who consumed a lot of animation during the same era, but to the average person they are not. Since they’re not attributed to individual characters, I’ll just list them here in the same order as the actual credits: Al Waxman, Sheila McCarthy, Gema Zamprogna, Wayne Robson, John Stocker, Ray Landry, Robert Cait, Kurt Reis. The theme song, “Soulmates,” is sung by Shawne Jackson with the animation done by Schouten Animation and Jade Animation Productions. The production company is listed as Soulmates Productions indicating to me that it’s likely those involved hoped to launch a franchise from this, but that obviously did not happen.

Just a friendly reminder before we start this thing.

This being The Christmas Spot, we have to do this, so let’s do it. Right up front I will say I am watching this on YouTube since the only other way to do so is to track down an old VHS copy. The video quality is fine, but the audio sounds poorly mixed. Is it the transfer or is it just how this thing sounds? I don’t know. The actual special is essentially about the power of positivity. It didn’t even need to include Christmas, but by doing so it probably helped to make it more marketable so they could get as many eyes on this thing as possible. That strategy obviously didn’t pan out, but the reasoning seems sound. We basically saw the same thing with another failed IP last year with Christmas in Tattertown. That one did at least see rebroadcast on a major cable network for several years before fading into obscurity.

This one begins with a reminder of its source right off the bat as there’s a disclaimer about adjusting the tracking on your VCR for the best quality picture. This was apparently distributed by Questar Home Video which isn’t a brand I recall, and I had a bunch of various VHS tapes as a kid. The color combo looks familiar though so maybe this was a Canadian offshoot of another brand? We then fade to a dark and snowy evening as a narrator comes in to tell us it’s the night before the night before Christmas. Yes, you read that right, so it’s December 23rd and they just found the most awkward way to say it. That type of repetition is going to be repeated in a bit so maybe they thought that could be a running thing.

These are the bad guys of this special in case the moustache and cigar didn’t give it away.

Two sketchy looking characters are sneaking around the town. One looks like some Dick Dastardly type merged with Jack Frost and with him is just some little fellow who looks like he’s had a rough life. He has a cigar hanging out of his mouth surrounded by a five o’clock shadow and just looks like an all around bad seed while the big guy is decked out in a fur-trimmed coat and a black cowboy hat. He’s armed with a staff that’s apparently magical and he’s blasting something from it that looks like lightning, but isn’t destructive on its own. He takes aim at the star atop the town’s Christmas tree and it just puts it out. Meanwhile, the little guy is eye-balling a snowman with evil in his eyes (leave Frosty alone) until the big guy grabs him by the collar and refers to him as Thomas. The real striking part of the scene is every time the big guy uses the wand we get this loud guitar sting. It sounds like they paid a hair metal guitarist to just react to what he sees on the screen and he only had one reaction. I keep going back and forth on if I love it or if I’m annoyed by it.

They’re very amused by their minor pranks. Homer Simpson caused more mischief on that college campus than these two.

Big guy, who I’ll just tell you now is named McBragg since I’m already tired of calling him big guy, uses his wand to make energy hands that pluck a stray cat off of some garbage and put it up in a tree – that bastard! The cat cries over and over and we stay with that cat way too long. A kid takes notice, and what’s he doing out so late, and McBragg uses the same trick to pull his hat over his eyes. This guy’s a menace! The kid falls over into a snow bank and McBragg and Thomas have a laugh and run off into the night boasting about spreading negative energy or something. The music is so loud that it’s hard to hear.

The car is cool and all, but I question the use of a convertible in the snow.

We then move to a brick house and a white dog walks out of the front door to stand on the top of the stairs. He looks like a poor man’s Pongo, but without spots, and he has some kind of harness on. We then see a girl of indeterminate age inside humming “Jingle Bells” as she puts on a red coat and hat. She then walks over to a nearby table and we see her hand feeling the table’s surface in search of her scarf. It’s a nice touch for if you didn’t realize the dog was wearing a guide dog harness, this extra little animation would definitely alert you to the situation. So far this thing actually looks fine and is of better quality than I anticipated.

Where is this blind kid going at night? And is she deaf too? She probably should have heard the car coming.

Outside, McBragg and Thomas are still creeping about and they take aim at the dog. The weird, energy, hands zap the dog in the eyes and I’m not really sure what the implication is here, but they start flashing yellow. They’re then shown seated in a black convertible, very appropriate for a snowstorm, that sits on sleigh runners. It lifts off of the ground like a harrier jet and the skis retract leaving just a black, flying, car that looks like a cross between the 1960’s Batmobile and one of those cars driven by the Neutrinos from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The girl then comes outside, but the dog has its head down, and she just walks down the stairs. I guess she thinks the dog is waiting for her at street level? Either way, a car coming down the road has to lock-up the brakes to avoid hitting her before the dog is able to get to her side. Like nothing happened, the two just walk off, but the dog is bothered by what just occurred. He talks aloud to himself and ponders if he’s getting too old to be a guide dog. I can’t tell if this is one of those situations where people can’t understand animals or not since no one reacts to the dog talking.

Look! It’s everyone’s favorite icon of Christmas: Depressed Santa.

We then move to another snowy climate: The North Pole. A defeated looking Santa is seated in a very futuristic setting flipping through a newspaper that features headlines like “Hostage Taking” and “War Breaks Out.” He sets the paper aside and starts musing about how the Nice List gets shorter and shorter each year. He questions why he does what he does and it sure seems like old Saint Nick is ready to give up on Christmas. He turns on his giant television (this setting looks like a dim version of The Jetsons) and watches some guy run by a bell-ringing Santa and shove him over so another guy can come along and steal the money he’s collected for charity. Santa then moans about no one believing in him anymore and adds that he doesn’t even believe in himself. He then demonstrates that his recliner can drive and steers the thing off camera. We cut to an exterior shot of his work shop to see him blasting off in a sleigh, sans reindeer. This is one high tech Santa.

Now we have our stakes, and our main characters. These two need to “liberate” Christmas!

The narrator returns to tell us we’re now on the other side of the other side of the universe. See? I told you that confusing wordplay would return. There’s some little guy just chilling out in the vacuum of space on what looks like a knee board. His name is Orion and he has a sister? Friend? Lover? Whatever she is, she shows up and is named Orillia. These two are the Soulmates the title of this special refers to and some moon with a face comes along to tell us they’re needed on Earth. He shows a video, or something, of Comet the reindeer calling out for help because Santa has gone missing and it’s almost Christmas. It’s at this point the Soulmates song comes on. It’s upbeat, the vocalist is nice, but it’s also corny and distracting. This special has a pretty thin plot and music is going to be relied upon to pad this thing.

Orillia and Orion are Soulmates. What that means for them, I don’t know.

As the song plays, these two bounce around as balls of light with their moon boss as they make for Earth. The universe is apparently pretty small as it doesn’t take them long to cross it. Once outside Earth, the song cuts out and moon guy gives the two a pep talk. This is their first mission and they don’t seem daunted at all. They just need to spread positivity and their magic will take care of it. They seem to get the message as they’re about as positive as can be, even though they bump heads before flying down to the surface.

Nothing to see here, folks. Just a humble, ordinary, cigar-chomping, elf.

Back at the North Pole, Comet is instructing the other reindeer on what to do. Each one is assigned his own “sector” and they soon disperse. I will say, each reindeer appears to have a unique design and there are indeed eight of them. I’m not sure why Comet is the de-facto leader of reindeer, maybe someone just felt like it was his time? Can’t let Prancer hog the spotlight. As the reindeer fly off, an elf encourages them to “break a leg” and Comet is horrified by the suggestion. I’d call him a dope, but he is a reindeer and maybe I shouldn’t expect him to be familiar with such a common expression? He reprimands the elf who said it, Thomas, and it is the same Thomas we saw sneaking around with McBragg only now he’s dressed like an elf. He’s still got that cigar in his mouth and seems to realize it’s not very becoming of him and swallows it – gross! Comet expresses some uneasiness about this newly hired elf to a larger elf named Pops. Pops is the guy from the picture and the whole reason why we’re even talking about this thing. Pops assures him he came highly recommended before Comet takes off to search his assigned sector.

Because of one incident, the dog apparently thinks it can’t serve as a guide dog for this girl. Rather than stay onboard and train a successor, he’s just going to bail. I guess he really is a bad dog.

We then cut to a book written in brail. It’s obviously the blind girl from before and she’s reading A Visit from Saint Nicholas as she says the final line of the poem out loud. The funny thing is she’s clearly in the middle of the book as drawn despite being at the end of the story. Maybe it’s a compilation? She sets the book aside and we see the dog is laying on her bed with her. She gives the dog a hug and tells him she loves him and says something about him being a great friend. Again, the music is so loud it’s hard to hear what she’s saying. She lays down to sleep and another song comes on as the dog looks at her. He’s sad and hops off of the bed and sticks his head under it to pull out a little blue bag. The shape of it reminds me of those toy doctor bags. He then heads downstairs and grabs a picture of he and the girl off of a shelf and heads outside. He’s apparently a talented enough dog to be able to open the front door, but he’s an asshole and leaves it open as he walks off. We then hear the voice of the narrator, who is the moon guy, bemoan the presence of negative energy in the air and suggests the Soulmates have their work cut out for them.

Too bad Comet didn’t accidentally swallow them then this thing would be over.

It’s dawn and Orion and Orillia are flying through the clouds on their surfboard things. They encounter Comet and are pumped at their good fortune, while Comet is thoroughly confused by their presence. At first he thinks they’re bugs, but they correct him by telling him they’re Soulmates here to liberate Christmas! That’s a weird way of phrasing it. Comet is feeling profoundly negative about the situation and the Soulmates encourage him to be positive. They basically say that’s all he has to do to find Santa. Suddenly, McBragg comes flying by and nearly hits the trio. Comet complains about the air traffic control in the area (I doubt he logged a flight plan) while Orion notices that Orillia is missing. They soon abandon concern for the girl because they spy Santa’s wacky looking rocket sleigh in a tree below.

“Hmm, I guess we could share this bench…”

At surface level, Santa is walking through the park and so is the dog from earlier. They both come to rest on the same bench and try to lay claim to it. Santa, being the sensible one, suggests they share it which seems quite fair since it’s plenty big enough for the two of them. Santa can clearly understand the dog, who introduces himself as Truman, and I don’t know if that’s because he’s Santa and he’s magic or if all dogs can talk in this universe. If it’s because he’s Santa you would think Truman would be amazed a human can understand him. At any rate, Truman says he looks familiar and asks if he knows him from before. Santa plays dumb, but when he introduces himself he uses the name Santa Claus. I was expecting an alias of some kind. Truman is one dumb pup though and doesn’t think anything of it. Apparently no one believes in Santa just as he said. Truman then offers to share his newspaper with Santa who wants nothing to do with the front page saying the headlines are too depressing.

Comet actually calls Santa a bum – what a jerk!

Comet and Orion watch from above as Truman and Claus take naps on the bench using the newspaper like a blanket. I am profoundly confused by what Santa is doing here. I get him being depressed and all, but where was he going? He left the warm confines of his work shop to sleep on a bench in an unnamed city? Okay, solid plan, Claus. Comet refers to him as an “old bum on a bench,” real nice, Comet, before flying down to inspect him. He’s surprised to see it is Santa and tells the old man he needs to head north. Santa confesses it’s hopeless, Christmas is over, and Truman looks disturbed to hear this.

Thomas’s full name is actually D. Thomas, and the D stands for Doubting. His parents really set him up for success.

In the North Pole, Thomas has rallied the other elves and is explaining how Santa is gone, but they must continue with a new leader. Pops is practically mortified at the suggestion of replacing Santa, and that image that started it all appears to originate from this scene. Thomas gets in his face to tell him he’s wrong, but the two are interrupted by some jolly laughter. Pops thinks Santa has returned, but we pan to the fireplace to see a sack of toys appear and it’s handled by the magic arms of McBragg. He follows and Thomas introduces the replacement for Santa. He thanks Thomas for handling things up north, and Thomas now feels secure enough in his position to resume smoking. McBragg then produces something from his sack – a Soulmate in a cage. He apparently snatched Orillia right out of the sky when he buzzed them earlier. What he intends to do with her we don’t know, but she’s apparently been running her mouth since he knows what she is and what her intentions are.

And considering Doubting Thomas is set to be the hot, new, toy this Christmas I guess his parents really did know what they were doing!

There’s a cut for a commercial break and when we come back McBragg is hanging the cage with Orillia in it while she insists they’re going to find Santa and save Christmas. Thomas doubts her claim, but she insists that with her Soulmate powers they won’t fail. McBragg sticks his finger in her mouth to silence her, then informs the elves they’re to take orders from Thomas. He then shows them what they’re going to make: a Doubting Thomas doll! The doll looks exactly like Thomas and there’s no attempt to actually make it look like a toy, it’s just a tiny Thomas. McBragg says it’s going to make children doubt themselves, and when Pops explains that’s not what Christmas is all about, McBragg corrects him to say it is now. He then threatens Pops by saying he’ll use the doll on him if he doesn’t fall in line then orders the elves back to work. Thomas starts to sing “Heigh-ho,” but doesn’t get far enough apparently to trigger a copyright claim as he hands out instructions to the elves as Orillia looks on with concern.

Truman just keeps making the same joke, but no one laughs. The writers were cruel to this dog.

In the park, Truman and Santa are playing Checkers on the same bench while Comet whines about Christmas being ruined. He asks Orion for help who cheerfully tells him not to worry because he has “awesome Soulmates powers!” That sure sounds convenient. He then reveals his head is some sort of magic telephone that can call his soulmate Orillia. Truman thinks it’s hilarious that his head is a phone (Head…phone…get it?!) and makes a comment about it twice, but no one laughs. Dumb dog.

They’re really taking advantage of a blind person here.

At the work shop, the elves are building the Thomas dolls as Orillia gets a “call” from Orion. They exchange information, but the mounting negativity around Orillia causes the signal to get blocked. Orillia doesn’t let this get her down though, she has to be positive! She calls on her power, referred to as “Magic Imagining.” She believes she can help, so she basically wills that ability into existence. It’s all very convenient. A bolt of light leaves her body and soars through the air and finds Ella. Who is Ella? The blind girl from before. She was in the middle of typing a letter to Santa, but her mother calls up to tell her it’s time to rest. It’s the middle of the day, and the poor girl just climbs into bed. She looks far too old for a nap and I’m forced to assume her mom is just messing with her since she can’t tell the sun is still out, which is just plain cruel of her. The ball of light finds the letter though and pulls it out of the typewriter and whisks it away out the window.

That is one sophisticated doll. I think I want one?

At the work shop, McBragg is feeling mighty positive for a guy promoting negativity. He then demonstrates how the doll works by yanking on a pull string and pointing it in Orillia’s direction. It basically hypnotizes her and the negative effects of the doll actually break the Soulmate. In the park, Orion stars slapping his own head as a phone operator voice can be heard saying “The soul you are trying to reach is currently under a spell.” Pretty cute there. Orion declares the situation “Bogus,” and implores the others to help him do some Magic Imagining. Comet is down and Orion tells him to “See it, believe it, and it will come true.” There’s also something about putting his thought into a pink bubble which shockingly doesn’t confuse the reindeer. A saxophone then comes in as we get another loud song as the two float above the park. Another blast of light emerges and it goes all the way up into space to the moon guy. He absorbs it and gets all giddy and then sends it back to Earth. I guess this guy needs to amplify the power or something? I don’t know.

The positive energy heads to the North Pole where Thomas is having fun with this new, negative, Orillia. She actually looks ready to kick his ass and even punches him in the nose so he’s probably lucky the magic energy comes flying in and strikes the both of them. Now imbued with the power of positive energy, the two can focus on what’s needed to save Christmas. And Thomas stopped smoking and his chin stubble disappeared, because everyone knows facial hair is caused by negativity. Orion can apparently sense this and he’s pumped and attempts to rally the troops, but Santa still isn’t feeling it. He tells them to go away, but before Comet and Orion fly off Orion reminds Santa that anyone can do Magic Imagining as long as they truly believe! Hear that, kids? When bad things happen it’s because you didn’t believe hard enough!

This might be the dumbest part of this whole, dumb, special.

McBragg is then shown yelling at the elves as he emerges from the factory. Thomas comes strolling along and asks him what’s in his hand. Apparently, getting full of positive energy made him forget about stuff because he doesn’t recognize the Doubting Thomas doll in McBragg’s hand. McBragg is confused, and he’s even more confused when Thomas complains about the doll’s “scowly” face. Orillia then enters the picture and McBragg is not pleased to see her out of her cage. When he inquires why she isn’t under his spell any longer she boasts about her Soulmates magic! It’s all pointless, and rather stupid, because he just threatens to use the doll again and the two put their hands up as he marches them inside. What were they doing? Just sticking it to McBragg that they beat his spell? Again, very pointless.

Good thing we have a talking dog that can read or else Christmas would be doomed.

Back at the park, Ella’s letter comes floating on by. Truman and Santa come into possession of it, but Santa can’t read it without his glasses which he lost. Truman reads it for him and it’s a letter to Santa asking for him to bring their friend back. The letter is unfinished and Truman has no idea it’s about him, but just this one letter is enough to reinvigorate Santa! He tells Truman they can use some reverse letter looker upper thing at his work shop to find out who wrote it and the two set off. Truman is skeptical that Santa can find his way back to the North Pole in time without his glasses, but Santa reminds him he’s a guide dog and he can guide him. Truman is still full of self doubt and Santa wishes Orion was there to use his Magic Imagining. I swear they had a quota in mind they were trying to hit with that phrase. Santa then remembers anyone can use it, but they have to believe! I guess that’s all it’s going to take to repair his sleigh and get it out of the tree?

The elves are shown being held up by McBragg and his Thomas doll. Pops comes running in with a box and informs McBragg his evil toys are ready. McBragg instructs him to harness up the reindeer, but when Pops reminds him there are no reindeer he just laughs and orders him to harness up some elves! The elves seem horrified by this suggestion so apparently this is a death sentence. Orillia gets in his face to say she won’t let him as Orion and Comet arrive. McBragg hits his head (again) on the low ceiling and informs the Soulmates that they’re “A real pain in the a…”

And the dolls are now vessels of positivity! Christmas is saved!

Before McBragg can finish his line, Santa enters the workshop! He’s back in his Santa gear and dishing out a hearty laugh. McBragg turns to “fire” the Thomas doll at him, but when he pulls the string back Santa’s magic converts the doll into a being of positivity. The scowl fades and it says “Believe in yourself and you can do anything!” McBragg looks at the doll with a befuddled expression and when he questions how that happened Santa laughs and says “It’s Soulmate power!” Pops then tells everyone that all of the evil dolls have been converted and the elves let out a hearty cheer.

That is one sturdy chimney. It doesn’t even budge! My compliments to the builder.

McBragg decides to make his exit. The Soulmates fly after him, but it’s not like they’re going to actually do anything. McBragg repeatedly bumps his head as he leaves then slips and falls down some stairs. For good measure, he even crashes his flying car into Santa’s chimney. All indirect violence. And he sure gives up easily. The elves and Santa emerge from the workshop apparently pleased to see all of this.

Looks like we’re in for a merry Christmas now! I wonder if they only have these dolls to give out?

We then cut to Santa and Truman flying in his sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. Truman tells Santa that he hopes he gives Ella what she wants for Christmas and Santa assures him that he intends to. He then asks Truman if he remembers the letter and it finally dawns on him that it was from Ella. The Soulmates then chime in with some positive reinforcement for Truman: if he can guide Santa to the North Pole then he can guide Ella through life. I hate to be a downer, but I doubt Truman will live long enough to pull that off. Maybe he can guide her through middle school?

The sleigh lands on Ella’s roof and she awakens to the sound. Santa wishes Truman a merry Christmas and thanks him for his help. We then see Truman jump into Ella’s bed and lick the girl who returns the affection with a hug. Outside the house, we see the two in the window (Ella turned on a light for some reason) and they appear to be looking up. Above the house, the sleigh takes off and soars past a full moon. The moon rotates and it’s moon guy! He gets the last line as he states that “It’s positively a merry Christmas.” We then cut to an image of the Soulmates from earlier just so that our lasting image is of the main characters as “Everybody Needs a Soulmate” returns for the credits.

Well, that was pretty bad. Actually, bad might be too strong a word. It was a thing. For a show with the word “Soulmate” in the title, it was pretty soulless. The premise of a guy perverting Christmas with negativity isn’t terrible on the surface, but the counter being two beings that just will positivity into existence sucks. Negativity for the sake of negativity is bland and awful and the same is true of positivity for the sake of positivity. I get so irritated when people complain about a lack of positivity in a conversation, on social media, or wherever. You can’t make bad things, or feelings, just go away with sheer positivity. It doesn’t work like that. It’s about as useful as telling someone who is depressed to just stop being depressed.

They at least knew enough when making this one that you have to include a shot of Santa flying past a full moon. The moon is always full on Christmas.

Perhaps that is why nothing came of the Soulmates. That was their premise, their function, to just be positive and positivity would follow. That’s their magic and it’s a terrible message to give anyone, especially children, because it goes right back to my depression analogy. And this episode takes a depressed character in Santa and magics away his depression. How convenient? Terrible storytelling and a poor message. I’m sure everyone’s heart was in the right place who worked on this, they just needed to workshop the idea more and complicate the process the characters go through, but there’s only so much you can do in 24 minutes. Because of the approach, Orion and Orillia really have no personality. There’s nothing about them to like, and if anything, they teeter on being annoying. These definitely weren’t characters designed for the 90s. They were dead in the water. Maybe they could have worked in a preschool show, but not here.

As a Christmas special, there’s not much this special does for me. As I mentioned at the start, this thing takes place at Christmas and utilizes Santa, but it didn’t need to. The characters and situations feel very plug and play. Santa could have been anyone, McBragg could have inserted negativity into the water supply, or radio waves, or really anything a lot of people come into contact with. It’s easy to see how this format could work for a series because it’s easy to write, just as it’s easy to see how it wouldn’t work as entertainment. Still, it does do some things right by including eight reindeer and giving us the classic Santa in front of the moon thing. Some of the scenery in the North Pole is interesting, if a bit limited. On the whole, there aren’t a lot of backgrounds in use which is where one can see how the budget may have been limited, but the animation is fine. It’s no better or worse than most early 90’s television specials. Again, it’s a thing that exists.

“The Gift of Light” will be remembered for the circumstances that brought it to our attention. That’s its legacy. Few will remember the special itself because it’s so forgettable. There’s a reason why it took years to finally track it down. If you’re curious and wish to see this one yourself, I already linked to the YouTube source I watched it from. It’s also available on VHS, but I have no idea how easy that will be to track down. It’s really not worth the effort, but that’s up to you to decide. I am curious if Will Sloan and his girlfriend are watching it this holiday season though.

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

Dec. 8 – American Dad! – “For Whom the Sleigh Bell Tolls”

It was just last year that we finally broke the seal on American Dad!. It surprised me how long I was able to avoid American Dad! year in and year out since it has a wealth of Christmas episodes at its disposal. Last year, the featured Christmas episode was the very first one the show…

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by Joe December 8, 2021May 3, 2023

Dec. 8 – TV Funhouse – “Christmas Day”

When someone hears the title TV Funhouse they probably first go to Saturday Night Live and The Ambiguously Gay Duo, a cartoon Batman and Robin parody that hypothesizes the relationship between the two heroes is more than just friendship. What many aren’t aware of is that the comedic short starring Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert…

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by Joe December 8, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 8 – Mighty Morphin Power Rangers – “I’m Dreaming of a White Ranger”

Late in the summer of 1993 the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (MMPR) were unleashed upon the world. The build-up had been going on all summer with the Fox Kids Network running promos and print ads steadily to build-up momentum, and like a good little consumer, I was there for the premiere. The show became…

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by Joe December 8, 2019December 8, 2019

1 Comment | tags: chris schouten, christmas, christmas specials, gabrielle st. george, santa claus, the gift of light, the soulmates, will sloan | posted in christmas, Television

December 7, 2022

Dec. 7 – Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970)

By Joe

In 1964, Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass unleashed a Christmas Classic upon the world in the form of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The special basically put the company on the map and put it on the path to holiday domination for decades to come. Despite that, few of the specials that followed Rudolph truly hit the same highs and it’s likely due to a case of diminishing returns. Still, that didn’t stop the company from trying to replicate its original success with Christmas and today’s subject feels very much like a retread of Rudolph only with a different protagonist.

As popular as the character Rudolph is these days, he’s still in the shadow of the main man himself: Santa Claus. Maybe it was a bit odd to target Rudolph first with a Christmas special, but in 1964 the character wasn’t as explored as Santa. From that perspective, it makes sense to come back with Santa as the main character for a subsequent special which is likely how we ended up with Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. Just like Rudolph, this special takes a popular song and uses it as the basis for a television special. It’s also going to bring in a celebrity narrator like Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman to basically push the story along and that’s a tactic the company loved returning to in the years to follow. Unlike Frosty, this one uses the “Animagic” stop-motion process so it looks more like Rudolph. That look is basically synonymous with the company now making specials like Frosty the exception, but in 1970 it wasn’t quite established that the Christmas specials from Rankin/Bass would all be animated with stop-motion techniques.

These two are responsible for a lot of Christmas memories. We lost Arthur Rankin in 2014 at the ripe old age of 89 while Bass recently passed away in October at the age of 87. R.I.P.

As a kid, I grew up with Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town as part of my cherished Christmas Tape. Despite that, it’s one of the handful of specials from that tape that I don’t count among the greatest ever produced. Santa Claus had the unfortunate placement of coming after Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas and right before Rudolph. Grinch has long been my favorite, but when I was a kid it was pretty much neck and neck with Rudolph. Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town is basically the comedown special on my old tape, but since it’s an hour long, that comedown had a tendency to overstay its welcome. My sister and I often just endured this one to get to Rudolph. It’s basically the same length and the structure is similar as we’re hearing a story we basically know, but having a lot of it filled in. There are songs to break up the narrative, but I think with this one they’re just not as good. And even though there’s a clear cut villain to root against in the form of the Burgermeister, he’s almost too ridiculous and the film also doesn’t really deliver a comeuppance for him. We’ll have time for it all, but basically I’ve been putting an entry like this one off for years because it’s not a favorite and it’s an hour long. I’ve got some work ahead of me.

Because I am celebrating my own personal Christmas Tape this year, all of the images in this post are ripped from that 35 year old tape. Above is what was used as the TV bumper in 1987.

We’ll probably be making several comparisons to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and here’s another. This one begins with a fake news reel. Narrated by Paul Frees (who is going to do a lot of heavy lifting in this one), it’s presented in black and white and uses what I assume is just stock footage of kids. He says in a rather stern voice that children are reminded not to cry and not to pout as he’s basically just introducing the theme of the song, “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” As a kid, this always felt a bit ominous and thus unsettling. It’s a bit of a weird note to start on, but maybe the idea was to present Santa as a bit of an authority figure when it comes to Christmas and what follows will soften his image?

Here is the most enduring part of this special, the often parodied Special Deliver Kluger.

As the news reel comes to an end we’re taken to a winter setting where an interesting looking mail truck is driving over the snow. It looks like a conventional mail truck, except with tank treads. I always thought it was pretty cool. It’s marked Special Delivery, and our humble driver goes by the name Special Delivery Kluger. Fred Astaire provides the voice, and the lanky, long-chinned, fellow is a bit of a caricature of Astaire in the same way that there was a little bit of Burl Ives in the look of Sam Snowman and certainly a lot of Jimmy Durante in the narrator of Frosty the Snowman. His neat looking truck breaks down and he gets out of it to seemingly notice us, the viewer. We soon find out that old SD here is heading to the North Pole because he has some letters to deliver. He’s talking to us and breaking the fourth wall, but also, the disembodied voices of children can be heard asking questions about Santa Claus, most of which strike me as unimportant (“Why does he have a beard?”), but they are the questions kids ask. And these questions are coming from the letters that SD here is supposed to be delivering, not opening and reading. Seriously bud, that’s a federal offense! Well folks, we’re in for a treat because SD here is going to answer all of those questions and sing us the song for good measure.

Our setting is the always gray Somber Town.

Special Delivery begins the song we all know which takes us into the opening credits. As it goes through, the melody changes and we basically get a sampling of the songs that will follow while Kluger dances around and mishandles the mail which serve as title cards. You would think this guy is in a hurry to get these deliveries out of the way, but I guess not. It’s story time! We’re going to a place called Somber Town which is at the base of the Whispering Mountains. It’s very dreary looking and we’re taken to the home of the Burgermeister (Paul Frees). I guess he’s sort of a mayor or something? His full name is Burgermeister Meisterburger and he’s busy eating. He’s eating some massive hunk of meat with a bib – how cute?

This asshole is known as the Burgermeister.

The head of the guard or something, Grimsley (Frees), enters with something to show his boss. It’s a baby and there’s a note requesting they take care of it from his mother. The only identifying information on the child is a tag that says Claus. The Burgermeister wants nothing to do with a “brat” like this and tells Grimsley to take it away. He does as he’s told and apparently to get to an orphanage you have to pass through some pretty rough terrain. It’s also dark, and it’s snowing, and he’s dragging the baby behind him in a cradle/sled. The wind picks up in intensity and the rope snaps. As Grimsley calls out for Baby Claus to come back (a lot of good that will do), we see it literally lifted by the wind and taken into the forest. No more baby.

There’s a baby under that pile of sticks.

The forest is apparently home to a being known as the Winter Warlock. He’s someone not to be trifled with, so when some animals come upon the baby (the cradle somewhat comically smashed into a tree and the baby just tumbled out) and hear the warlock approaching, they quickly hide him under branches and leaves. The warlock just strolls on by and all we see are his robes. Once that danger has passed, the animals know what to do as they take the baby the rest of the way over the Whispering Mountains to Rainbow River Valley where a family of toymakers reside: the Kringles.

These Kringles are confirmed as elves and the animals just leave the baby on their doorstep and get the hell out of there. The door is answered by an elf named Dingle. He looks like a smaller version of Santa, though not particularly elf like, though he does speak in a voice that’s pitched up. He calls for his four other brothers: Ringle, Tingle, Wingle, and Zingle. They’re all voiced by, you guessed it, Paul Frees. They’re all pretty happy to find a baby and immediately take ownership by declaring “Our baby is the best baby of them all.” One of them rather comically just says “I like babies.” He’s the original “I like turtles,” kid.

Meet the Kringles, the only elves I know that don’t have pointed ears.

The elves take the baby in to see their matriarch, Tanta Kringle (Joan Gardner), who seems to be in agreement that the baby is now theirs. She declares they will call him Kris, and raise him as a Kringle. And then we get a time-jump and see Kris as a boy while our story-teller informs us that the elves taught him everything he needed to know, and stuff he didn’t, like how to make toys. Apparently, the Kringles make toys, but have no children to sell them to so they just pile up. They’re too afraid to take them over the mountain and past the Winter Warlock. Apparently, there are no other towns worth exploring except for Somber Town. Kris then vows that he’ll deliver toys to Somber Town when he’s big enough, and Tanta reminisces how that will be the day that will restore the Kringle name. She then goes into the first song of the special, “The First Toymaker to the King.” It’s fine, but it pays off in a little bit for another reason. The thing I like about the song most though is they present a lot of it like a storybook so we get some illustrated versions of the Kringle characters. It almost makes me wish the whole special looked like that.

The song concludes with some disembodied children pointing out that’s how Santa learned to make toys. Yeah, no kidding. This is a running thing throughout the special where Special Delivery says something, and some children comment on it, usually just to reenforce what SD just said. When the song is done, SD goes on to say that Kris also learned a lot from the animals nearby, and most importantly, it was a seal that taught him how to laugh. As he goes “Ho ho ho,” we get another time jump and find an adult Kris (now voiced by Mickey Rooney) who declares to Tanta he’s a man now! Did they just finish doing something?! At any rate, he can take those toys over the mountain and the elves are pretty excited by the thought.

Later that night, Kris is packing for his journey when Tanta comes barging in. She’s got a present for him: a red suit. He’s overjoyed to receive a real Kringle suit which looks just like the traditional Santa outfit. We jump to morning and Kris is shown saying goodbye to everyone and sets off up the mountain. It only takes a moment before a penguin comes slamming into him. He questions the penguin on what he’s doing out there and deduces he’s looking for the South Pole, which is pretty damn far from where they are. Kris invites the penguin along, and decides to call him Topper who seems to like the name though we don’t know for sure because he’s a penguin and can’t talk. As they resume their march, a booming voice fills the air. It’s the Winter Warlock (Keenan Wynn) who basically tells them to beat it and never come back or they’ll be sorry. Kris encourages Topper to follow and the two race off.

This guy’s job is to take toys away from children. His mother must be so proud.

It’s the next day, and the Burgermeister is heading outside when he stumbles down some steps. The culprit? A toy was carelessly left out. He had to get his foot wrapped and he’s back in his estate where he vows to outlaw all toys! I’m doing this part from memory because my source for this special, The Christmas Tape, is missing a chunk of the special because someone failed to resume recording after the commercial break. It picks up when Burgermeister is singing his version of “The First Toymaker to the King,” which is now enforcing a message of “There will be no more toymakers to the king!” It’s a horrible message, but the song is kind of cute as it uses the same storybook technique as Tanta’s version, only now the ballerina’s are being arrested and the toy soldiers melted down. When the song is over, we see a soldier collecting toys throughout the town and chucking them into a wagon pulled by a fairly evil looking horse. Vicious!

It’s this toyless world that Kris stumbles into. He’s got his sack of toys over one shoulder and goofy red suit which everyone stares at. The people of Somber Town are depicted almost exclusively in black and white. Even their flesh seems to lack much color. One old woman even admonishes Kris for his clothes and he seems both hurt and confused by this. When he says he’s there to just give away some toys everyone freaks out and runs into their house leaving Kris even more confused.

Kris continues on his way and comes across two kids washing their socks in a fountain. They explain to Kris that’s basically how children are judged in this town: by how clean their stockings are. He tells them they don’t have to look so sour and when they ask why he just says “I don’t like sour faces.” He then recites some of the song, the whole you better not pout or cry part, and when they keep asking why he says, “Because I came to town!” He then reveals what he brought and the kids perk up. They’re a bit apprehensive, but when they mention the Burgermeister Kris says he’ll just give him a big, red, yo-yo. The kids then dig in, but are soon interrupted by their school teacher Miss Jessica (Robie Lester) who dismisses toys as frivolous. She tries to further malign them, but Kris just sticks a china doll in her face and she immediately melts. Apparently she always wanted one and when she hugs it she even squirts out a tear.

We then go into our next song, “Be Prepared to Pay,” which states that kids must sit on Kris’ lap and give him a kiss to get a toy. Umm, suddenly it makes sense why people seem to eye this character suspiciously. When that’s done with, we see the Burgermeister being wheeled through the streets in a wheelchair. This is the same guy who was singing and dancing not that long ago on his bum foot, but now needs a wheelchair. What a fraud! He remarks to himself how nice it is to see the children all playing with their toys, which is to setup a “Guffah!” kind of joke where he realizes the kids are doing exactly what he doesn’t want them to do. He then demands that all of the kids are under arrest for playing with toys!

Kris comes running in to take the blame. He explains that he gave them the toys and it’s he who should be arrested. The Burgermeister appears to be taken aback by the Kringle’s clothes, as so many others were earlier, but agrees that he needs to be arrested. Kris stops him in his tracks though when he presents that yo-yo he mentioned earlier to him. Now it’s the Burgermeister’s turn to be disarmed by a toy as he clutches it and tells Kris he loves yo-yos. He goes back to his childhood and talks about all of the tricks he knew while he, sort of, demonstrates that by playing with it. He’s having a pretty good time, but if you thought he would be turned as quickly as Miss Jessica you’re sorely mistaken, as Grimsley reminds him that he’s breaking his own law. This seems to snap the Burgermeister out of his toy-induced trance and he tosses the yo-yo and demands that Kringle be arrested!

Kris isn’t going to just surrender though as he takes off knocking the soldiers down in the process. The Burgermeister then comments on his fleeing abilities remarking he climbs like a squirrel, leaps like a deer, and is as slippery as a seal. These are all animals you can apparently compare Santa Claus to. Kris demonstrates all of these qualities by scaling the wall surrounding the town and escaping. The soldiers give chase, but once Kris and Topper head into the woods they decide to back off. They claim they’ll never find him, but I think they’re just scared of the warlock as they rightly should be for Kris and Topper don’t get very far until they’re grabbed by trees. Yes, trees, and the Warlock shows himself! He’s basically all white, even his face, and he has a long robe, pointy hat, and big, white, beard. He gestures to Kringle and informs him that he has disturbed him for the last time and that he’ll never get away!

Come on, you weird old hermit, walk through the door that just appeared.

Kris figures he can talk his way out of this, so he requests that the Winter Warlock release him for a moment so he can give him a toy. The Warlock is pretty surprised by this, but immediately cheers up. He orders Willy Willow and Peter Pine, the trees, to release the Kringle so he can receive his toy. Kris presents him with a toy train, which the warlock refers to as a choo-choo. He starts to cry, and when Kris asks what’s happening he explains that his icy heart is melting. Once it does, his face goes from white to a natural flesh color and his mouth is no longer full of sharp teeth. He then wonders how he can go on and describes himself as a wicked creature at heart. It would seem this is Kris’ opportunity to stab him or something, but instead he laughs and insists that the warlock, who now wishes to go by Winter, can change. He reasons that turning from bad to good is as easy as taking your first step, which leads into the next song “Put One Foot in Front of the Other.” It’s an okay tune, but the animation that goes with it is weird as it seems to imply that Winter doesn’t really know how to walk. He looks rather awkward, and must have been difficult to animate a robe in stop-motion, but by the end he’s walking and feeling pretty damn good about himself.

That won’t be the only ball he shows her.

When the song is done we find Winter and Kris seated by a tree in the snow. It can’t be very comfortable, but I don’t think this Winter fellow actually has a proper house though Special Delivery claimed he had an ice palace. He has a proposition for Kris in that they can help each other. In exchange for more toys, he can show Kris some of his magic. He demonstrates this by making a large snowball and tells Kris to gaze into his magic, crystal, snowball. Someone is looking for him – Miss Jessica. It would seem she’s wandered into the woods to find him, and when Winter tells him to go to her he basically just falls from the sky beside her. Was that more magic? Either way, she informs him the kids are looking for more toys and Kris agrees to provide said toys so long as they’re good. When she asks how he’ll know, he shows her the snowball trick that Winter just demonstrated. This is apparently how he spies on children and he and Miss Jessica basically recite some more of the song through their dialogue which feels rather forced. Kris explains that he can’t just walk in and hand them out like last time, so he tells Miss Jessica to inform the kids to leave their doors unlocked and that he’ll deliver them under cover of darkness. And for being so nice, he even gets a kiss from Miss Jessica – golly!

Back at casa de Kringle, Kris is preparing for his toy delivery. Winter is there too as he apparently doesn’t want to hang out on a cold mountain anymore now that his heart is unfrozen. Kris is making his list, and checking it twice, but seems to determine that all of the kids are nice. I’m not sure if he takes this all that seriously, kids. He heads into Somber Town and basically just enters every unlocked house and leaves toys behind. The next morning, Burgermeister is royally pissed off to see the kids outside playing with their toys and makes a new law on the spot: all doors and windows must be locked at night!

Tanta is gonna be pissed when she sees that suit.

Kris returns the next night, but can’t get into the houses since they’re all locked. It’s pointed out he really needs to deliver a toy for a sick kid and is determined not to let her down. Topper is the one who points out the chimney, though it takes Kris a minute to figure out what he’s getting at. Kris thinks it’s a great idea and absolutely loves going down the chimneys. He visits all of the houses, but the next morning we find the toys all confiscated by the Burgermeister. Are the kids still playing with them outside? Seems pretty dumb. He mentions he knows they were left by the hearth of each house so he orders that every building will be inspected at dawn for toys. Talk about government overreach. After he makes his declaration, he accidentally sits on a tin solider and stabs himself in the ass. Good for him.

All right, we’ve explained elves, toys, chimneys, and now stockings. I guess next is reindeer?

Kris keeps getting letters for toys delivered by animals, but he doesn’t know how to deliver them. He soon figures out that the stockings are a solution and sends a letter to Miss Jessica via the animals. We cut to the next morning and the Burgermeister, now with a bandaged ass, is inspecting a house. He’s pleased to find nothing but drying stockings by the fireplace and takes his leave. The father of the house breaths a sigh of relief, while the kids run for the stockings to uncover their toys. The Burgermeister really is an idiot since empty, drying, socks look a lot different than socks filled with toys. The kids though are arguably dumber because they, once again, take to the streets with their toys and the Burgermeister remains furious (somewhere along the way he apparently decided against arresting children). He then tells Grimsley he’s going to do what he should have done from the start: set a trap for the Kringle!

Miss Jessica overhears this declaration and tries to warn Kris, but once she gets to the Kringle home it’s nighttime and Kris is gone. She asks Winter for help via his magic, but he explains he’s all out of magic and seems pretty down about it. Then Grimsley shows up with a small assortment of men to arrest the Kringles. It would seem rendering Winter nice backfired as there’s no way they would have braved the mountain beforehand. We then see Kris getting bagged by the Burgermeister who arrests him on the spot. To make a spectacle of the whole thing, he burns all of the toys in the town square as the children look on with tears in their eyes.

That is definitely not the way to do a reflection in stop motion.

The next day, Jessica approaches the Burgermeister and pleads with him to free Kris and the Kringles. He laughs her off and it’s not explained why they didn’t round her up with the other Kringles since she’s an obvious accessory to their toy delivery scheme. As the Burgermeister takes his leave, Jessica claims her eyes are now open for the first time. I thought they were before? Whatever, she goes into the worst and shortest song of the special, “My World is Beginning Today,” which features the amusing shot of Jessica looking at a reflection of herself in the fountain, but it’s clearly a paper print-out of her puppet and not an actual reflection. She lets her hair down for the song though and looks lovely.

When the song is over, Miss Jessica is seen lurking outside the town’s prison. She finds the cell containing Winter and once again calls to him about using his magic to get them out. He’s pretty despondent about the loss of his magic and shows her the collection of useless stuff the jailer apparently let him keep: a short-circuited wand, dried up magic potion, stubs from old candles, and some magic feed corn. Jessica asks about the corn and he says it’s only use is to make reindeer fly. Jessica thinks that’s their answer and she takes the corn and rounds up some reindeer. This is apparently a pretty easy feat. Like most Christmas specials, the reindeer look like white-tailed deer and not actual reindeer, but she feeds them the corn and suddenly they can fly! The kids listening to Special Delivery’s story very much like this part, and one kid even says “don’t forget…” when the reindeer are introduced and we get a glimpse of Rudolph, but Special Delivery insists that’s another story.

A different sort of moon shot than we’re used to.

The reindeer are just what they need for an escape though. Well, we’re never told how they actually broke out of their cells, but I guess that was deemed unessential. They all fly off and Winter is especially happy to see he had a little magic left after all. It’s easily the most triumphant moment of the special as we get an instrumental version of the title song in the background as the whole crew flies in front of a crescent moon. I guess it can’t be a full moon until he’s finished his transformation into Santa.

I guess we need an explanation for the beard too.

With the Kringles free, the Burgermeister vows to hunt them down. The crew returns to their home, but it’s been burned to the ground. Kris determines it’s no longer safe and that they need to run further north, so they do. There’s wanted posters (dead or alive, which seems extreme) put up for them, so Kris does the smart thing and grows a beard (probably should ditch the identifiable threads). It’s at this point that Tanta raises the idea of changing his name and shows him the Claus tag he was found with. Some kid chimes in “I knew it! I knew it! That’s where he got his name!” the kid’s a real rocket scientist. They don’t explain the Santa part. Jessica and Kris are then shown getting married under the first Christmas tree. Winter lights it up with a last bit of magic.

So…are the animals planning on sticking around to watch them consummate this thing?

The crew is then shown heading further north until they hit the North Pole where Kris giddily announces it’s here they’ll build a new home to make toys. How they did so is not explained, but they do it. The animals deliver the letters and time just keeps marching forward. Kris and Jessica get rather “comfortable” with married life though he wonders how he can keep up with the orders. We’re then told that the Burgermeisters have fallen out of power and that Kris is no longer perceived as an outlaw. He’s old now, and realizes he can’t just keep delivering toys all of the time so he decides to do it on just one night a year and he settles on the holiest night of the year: Christmas Eve.

The North Pole is apparently a far more comfortable place to live than I’ve been lead to believe.

Santa Claus is then shown exiting his home to hop in his sleigh. Winter is there and apparently his magic is just fine now as he promises a nice, white, Christmas. Santa is pleased and he gets in his sleigh and takes off. Special Delivery comes back to tell us that’s the end of the story. He also takes a moment to mention how there’s still people who don’t like Santa and Christmas and we cut to a Scrooge-like character and some other adults that dislike the holiday. SD wishes everyone could be more like Santa, but there’s no time for moralizing here. He quickly remembers he has a ton of letters to deliver, and he also owes us a rather important song. Special Delivery then, delivers, on the promise of the special’s title and sings us the full version of “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” as he makes his way north. The song ends with him pulling up on Santa’s workshop and the old dude comes outside to wave at the camera while the children shout “Merry Christmas!”

And that’s how Santa Claus came to be. Or one way, there’s a bunch of others at this point, but when I was a kid this was definitely the one that framed my idea of Santa the most. I don’t think I necessarily thought the guy who brought me presents was also once harassed by some guy with “burger” in his name, but I definitely rolled with the magic feed corn makes reindeer fly and thought of him as adopted by elves. The magic snowball also resonated with me, but I also grew up being told that the birds spied on me for Santa. Both seem equally plausible at this point. Well, it would be hard for Santa to actually watch every kid in the world with his snowball. Maybe they should have added something at the end with Winter and his magic to try to explain how he could pull off bringing toys to the whole world. We only see him do it for one town, after all.

This one will always live in the shadow of the more famous one about the reindeer with a blinking nose.

I guess that’s a story for another day. As for this one, it’s all right. It maybe longer than many specials out there, but it moves fast. If anything, it’s the songs that drag it down and help make it feel long when I think they’re supposed to have the opposite effect. And it’s not that they’re bad, they’re just not nearly as good as the songs in Rudolph. None of these songs are worth listening to outside of this special except for Fred Astaire’s rendition of the title track. And even then, I’d rather hear another version if it was up to me, but his is fine and it’s utilized well. It’s also a bit of a bummer that we never see the Burgermeister get his comeuppance. He does get hurt throughout the special, and he’s basically the cause of it, but maybe we should have actually seen the people overthrow him or something. Instead, we just see one kid tossing his portrait in the trash.

The animation is obviously a tremendous source of charm for this as well. The special definitely attempts some ambitious shots, but few of them really land. Some things are just funny when they probably shouldn’t be, like the baby at the beginning just floating around and smashing into a tree. That Santa must have one hard head! Winter is very awkwardly animated to the point where I almost feel anxious when watching him because he moves so slow. The reindeer flying in front of the moon are also pretty goofy looking, but the closeup shots of them flying look nice. And a credit to the animators for getting that sleigh off the ground with eight reindeer at the end. That could not have been easy.

The legacy of Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town is that it’s the spiritual sequel to a special that’s more beloved in Rudolph. Because it is old and tells an important story to the Christmas holiday, it’s hung around and likely will for a long time. It’s also the start of Mickey Rooney’s long run as Santa for the Rankin/Bass company and it’s basically the role I associate him with the most at this point, but I also didn’t grow up watching The Little Rascals. As a once a year viewing, this one is all right. I think I just saw it too much as a kid so at this stage of my life I literally never desire to watch it. I’ll watch it usually once out of habit and out of stubbornness as I refuse to skip specials on my Christmas Tape. Once I get through that initial viewing though, this one becomes the point I often check-out. I guess that’s its legacy in my house.

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

Dec. 7 – Bedtime for Sniffles

Not every Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies star had to be inherently funny. Sure, most of them were and that’s often what many cartoon enthusiasts will point to the Warner catalog of cartoons as having over Disney, but it wasn’t some hard and fast rule. That’s why when a guy by the name of Chuck…

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by Joe December 7, 2021May 3, 2023

Dec. 7 – SuperTed Meets Father Christmas

When it comes to British imports and the subject of bears is brought up, most probably immediately think of Paddington or Winnie the Pooh. Few probably recall SuperTed, the Welsh teddy bear brought to life by a spotted alien and given super powers by Mother Nature. SuperTed is similar to Mighty Mouse in that he…

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by Joe December 7, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 7 – Bob’s Burgers – “Father of the Bob”

Bob’s Burgers has somewhat quietly become the best animated show on the Fox Network. Better than the modern version of The Simpsons, and better than Family Guy. It might be the ugliest of the three, but it more than makes up for that with its characters and plots. Bob’s Burgers looks like just another…

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by Joe December 7, 2019July 8, 2019

2 Comments | tags: christmas specials, fred astaire, mickey rooney, paul frees, rankin/bass, santa claus | posted in christmas, Television

December 6, 2022

Dec. 6 – Silly Symphony – “Santa’s Workshop” (1932)

By Joe

Original release date December 10, 1932.

Back in 1929 Walt Disney launched the Silly Symphonies series of cartoon shorts. Unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts that were growing popular at the time, Silly Symphonies did not center on just one character or even a group of characters, but rather were fairly self-contained. Some shorts that became popular, like The Three Little Pigs, would receive sequels, but mostly the series was designed to be a testing ground for the animators working for Disney in the 1930s. Techniques with sound and color were first tested in Silly Symphonies as was the famed multiplane camera.

Despite the name, there often wasn’t a ton of “silly” to be found in a given Silly Symphony. Not that it stopped them from being popular or critically acclaimed for a large amount of Disney’s Academy Award wins came from the series. And had the series not been a success we probably wouldn’t have Looney Tunes, which is basically a synonym for Silly Symphony. Warner Bros. Studios would be better at incorporating the “looney” into their Looney Tunes and today those shorts are more fondly recalled and often more celebrated while many associate the Silly Symphonies with noodle-armed characters that just smile and dance around. Not that there aren’t some that are genuinely funny or even scary, and Donald Duck famously debuted in a Silly Symphony short, but the vast majority tend to be more whimsical than anything.

The subject of today’s Christmas post is one of those more gentle and whimsical shorts. Santa’s Workshop was released in December of 1932 and depicts what the famed workshop might look like on Christmas Eve. Understandably, there’s a lot of work to be done and Santa has to rely on his elves to get the bulk of it completed in time for his big flight. The short was directed by Wilfred Jackson and was just the fourth Silly Symphony to utilize Technicolor while also serving as a testing ground for a new audio synchronization technique crafted by RCA. A couple of years ago, we actually looked at the short’s sequel The Night Before Christmas. At the time, I was trying my best not to duplicate specials and shorts already covered by the unaffiliated website, A Cartoon Christmas, but that blog has since gone dormant and most of the old posts are no long accessible so I no longer feel such an obligation.

These must be the guys who empty the mailboxes at Macy’s.

The short begins with an original song by Frank Churchill. I couldn’t find a credit for the song’s name, but the words are “In the North North Pole in a distant land lives Santa Claus with a merry band of jolly elves who sing and dance making toys for girls and boys.” It’s sung with a choir and it just brings us into the picture which begins with an exterior shot of Santa’s Workshop and an elf can be seen hauling a sack of mail in its direction. In the background are more elves with more sacks as there’s apparently a lot of late arrivals this year.

Always important to get that establishing shot or line letting the viewer know how close to Christmas we are.

We then see a group of four elves working on Santa’s sleigh. One is scrubbing, one dusting, one touching up the paint and the fourth is shining the runners. They pause in their work to continue singing to the same melody telling us they’re “Merry, merry, men of the midnight sun,” which makes them sound a lot more intriguing than they really are. The painter elf punctuates their little song in a baritone that tomorrow is Christmas Day, implying they have some urgency in their work despite having time to stop and sing.

The guy on the right definitely has the worst job of the four.

We then cut to another group of four elves taking care of one of Santa’s reindeer. In the background we can see the name Prancer above a stall so I suppose this one is indeed Prancer. Prancer looks like an actual reindeer so I applaud Disney for its attempt at realism since many cartoons seems to model the reindeer after white tail deer and not actual reindeer. The elves in this shot are taking care of Prancer by brushing the fur, polishing the hooves and antlers, and the fourth unlucky elf gets to clean the deer’s butthole. He literally lifts up Prancer’s tail and wipes the deer’s ass with a brush. He seems happy to be doing it though as they’re all whistling to the same melody. We then cut to another elf brushing Donner’s teeth and yet another giving Dancer a rub down before the scene shifts to an interior shot.

That’s a lot of last minute letters or the big man has been slacking this year.

Here we get our first look at the big man himself, Santa Claus (Allan Watson), as he sits among a mountain of letters and goes through each one with a smile on his face. He reads them aloud and as he does his secretary to his left (Pinto Colvig) consults a ledger and lets Santa know if the kid has been good or not. Little Molly asks Santa for a dolly (everyone is going to speak in rhyme so the requests from the kids need to rhyme too) and his secretary informs him that Molly is okay because she eats her spinach every day. Santa gives a belly laugh in response and tells another elf to get her a doll. The next kid, little Billy, wants a whole bunch of stuff including various animals which prompts Santa to laugh to himself as he suggests he just get the kid Noah’s Ark. We then find out little Billy hasn’t washed behind his ears in seven years, but Santa just instructs an elf to toss in a cake of soap and resumes his laughter. The helper elf says, “Okay, a cake of soap!” and he’s clearly voiced by Walt Disney since he sounds almost exactly like Mickey Mouse from that era.

I know it says “Factory,” but every time I see this shot I read it as “Fartory” and wonder what a “Fartory” would look like. I’m pretty sure I know what it would smell like.

The little elf runs off with Billy’s massive list into another room and we get to see the actual workshop in action. The elves are banging away at all manner of toys and we get to see how they build a rocking horse. First is a shot of a massive log getting cut to size so an elf can shove a horse head onto it. We then see an assembly line of elves inserting the runners into the bottom via hammer. Then we get to see an elf very cheerfully drill holes into the backside of each horse which moves along to the tail elf who grabs a tuft of straw, or fur, dabs it in glue and then tosses into the newly drilled hole. Lastly, we see the elf who applies some black spots to each side of the horse. Pretty conventional stuff here which leaves me wondering, “Where’s the gag?”

Now that we know how to assemble a rocking horse we move on to see a group of painter elves coloring up some blocks and doll heads. It’s at this point it feels like we’re seeing a lot of this just so Disney can show off its Technicolor exclusive license it held at the time. The next elf is painting checkerboards and the gag here is he has checkered paint that does all of the work for him since it goes on as a checkerboard. It’s a gag that I’ve seen used a fair amount in cartoons over the years, though for all I know, this was its origin (but probably not). We then see some elves sewing doll clothes before moving onto an assembly line for doll hair. A shaggy looking doll comes down the conveyor belt and an elf dangles a spider in front of its face. This frightens the doll so its hair stands up on end and a bunch of curlers fall from the ceiling to do its hair up nice and pretty. A second doll comes through and there’s a quick animation error as the color of its dress changes from blue to pink as the gag with the hair is repeated.

We then rejoin Santa Claus and it’s here we have ourselves a bit of controversy. If you’re watching this short on Disney+, Santa will appear to just be fiddling with a toy airplane which amuses him greatly. He comes off as a goof who is just playing with the toys while the elves do all of the work. If you’re watching the uncensored version though, then you know he’s actually testing the products. A doll comes down a chute and he asks her to say “Mama.” She says “Mom,” at first and Santa has to correct her until she says it right, then laughing heartily once more, he stamps an “OK” on her backside. As the doll walks off another one comes down the chute and this is the offensive one. We’re talking about a 1930s cartoon so you can probably imagine what the doll looks like, but in case you can’t it’s a blackface doll. It pops up on its two feet and in a raspy voice says “Mammy!” which makes Santa laugh. It does a “butt stomp” on Santa’s stamp and struts off and Santa doesn’t stop it so he apparently approves of this racist doll. After that, the airplane comes down the chute and the edited version picks up with Santa testing that one out. Should Disney have cut it? Eh, I don’t know. It’s been released so many times by the company uncut that it feels like it’s trying to hide something by not putting it on their service. They already have a disclaimer before the short, so might as well leave it, I guess. Or just put both up. The gag is definitely dated and doesn’t exactly add much, I just don’t like how it’s edited because the new version doesn’t make it obvious that Santa is testing product and actually doing something.

The is the only way to get him to stop laughing.

Anyway, with Santa laughing at the airplane the thing flies into his mouth and he pulls it out and sends it off into the workshop where it just starts knocking a bunch of toys off various shelves (see why the edit makes him look like an unhelpful boob?). The toys land on the floor properly arranged and we basically go into a parade of toys segment. Here we get more racist depictions of toys, these ones are left in the Disney+ cut, as a blackface marching band leads some white toy soldiers in a march. They’re followed by some penguins, a clown, an elephant, and a donkey. Behind the donkey comes some “China dolls” that look at the camera and have their hair shoot up for some reason. Is it racist? Maybe, they definitely shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt. Behind those dolls comes a Charlie Chaplin inspired toy with a police officer chasing after him. I’m guessing that was a pretty big hit in 1932.

The toys all march into Santa’s sack while their overlord/creator looks on approvingly. The racist band is slightly less racist now since the red lips have been removed basically leaving them looking like Bosko. We cut to another Bosko-like toy steering a carriage pulled by a donkey towards Santa’s sack and the donkey pauses to kick the carriage every few seconds to bounce the black-face toy into the air. Some wooden ducks go by in the background and we then see Billy’s Noah’s Ark go “sailing” past on wheels with various animals poking their heads out. More mechanical toys continue their march which include some flamingo-like birds, a rolling teddy bear, and some wind-up pigs. Santa stands the now overflowing sack up and the last toy to jump in is a Jack-in-the-Box because every Christmas cartoon from this era requires one be present. Santa laughs and then lets his elves do all of the work in carrying the sack outside to place in his sleigh.

The second that sleigh takes off these elves are busting out the eggnog.

All of the elves are waiting for them outside and they cheer at the sight of Santa Claus. He takes a stand in the sleigh and a rare, serious expression, is painted on his face. If you look closely, an off-model Mickey Mouse toy is present in the sack of toys. Santa then bobs and sways as he sings “Goodbye, my merry little gnomes,” and the elves respond in kind with “Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!” Santa then boasts that he’s bringing joy to a million homes and after the elves respond with their goodbye cheer once again he sits down and cracks his whip over Dasher’s rear. The reindeer are lined up single-file in front of the sleigh and there are actually 9 of them. They take off to thunderous applause and we get to see Santa and his sleigh pass in front of the screen a few times before they head off towards a really creepy moon. It’s our first moon shot of 2022, and it’s certainly memorable and might haunt your dreams later.

They were even doing hidden Mickeys back in ’32.

That’s all she wrote as this one is a tidy 6:40, and even shorter if you’re watching on Disney+ due to the removed content. This one is a fairly conventional Silly Symphony as it’s all set to music and there’s basically no conflict. It’s just a bunch of characters cheerfully doing stuff, in this scenario making toys and getting ready for Christmas. It’s fine, and I do like this very jolly depiction of Santa as a guy who is just tickled by his profession. He does come across as a bit of an overlord since we don’t see him do much. He’s basically king of the elves and they just do his bidding, but the song makes sure to tells us that they’re very happy with their lot in life. Does that make it better? No, not really, but whatever.

There it is, the first animated “Moon Shot” to appear in color. Many have followed and many have been less unsettling. Where’s Piccolo when you need him?

Obviously, the censorship present provides for some talking points and it might be the most interesting aspect about the short. That type of racial depiction was unfortunately very common during this time period. It’s so common that I’m actually surprised when one of these “parade of toys” cartoons doesn’t include some type of blackface gag. Apparently white audiences just loved that stuff in the 30s. It’s unfortunate, but it is what it is. If not for that, this would just be a fairly benign Christmas cartoon that’s also forgettable. It doesn’t really add anything to the Santa lore and the gags are fairly pedestrian. Still, of all of the shorts that are like this, I might like this one the most? I don’t love it, but the music isn’t tiresome and the visuals are pretty nice. The elves are a bit more noodle-armed than I like, but the character designs are pleasant and I really like this rounded Santa.

Being that this one is on Disney+, Santa’s Workshop should be a fairly easy cartoon to find if you wish to view it this year. It’s been released on Christmas DVDs and was included in the Walt Disney Treasures line of DVD releases that are now long out of print and quite expensive. I actually don’t have that set as I really couldn’t see myself sitting down to watch a marathon of Silly Symphony shorts, but if you fancy yourself a cartoon historian then it might be worth tracking down. And if you don’t have access to any of those things there’s always YouTube which is where you’re most likely to encounter the uncut version. Disney is a pretty litigious company when it comes to protecting its brand, but when it comes to the old shorts it’s surprisingly lax with YouTube.

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

Dec. 6 – Christmas in Tattertown

Nickelodeon in the late 1980s was a network on the rise. Cable was expanding to more and more households each and every day and Nick was able to seize the youth market almost from the get-go. Prior to that, broadcast networks dominated children’s programming, but restricted it to certain parts of the broadcast schedule. And…

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by Joe December 6, 2021May 3, 2023

Dec. 6 – Christmas Flintstone

The Flintstones have a well-established relationship with Christmas at this point. There have been a few specials, some even prime time, and plenty of home video releases. For that reason it’s a bit interesting that the show actually waited until its fifth season for its first Christmas episode. At that point, the show had been…

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by Joe December 6, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 6 – Pokémon – “Holiday Hi-Jynx”

Yesterday, we took a look at the so-called Pokémon killer, The Weekenders, so today we’re going to look at Pokémon itself. The Weekenders earned that nickname because it was the first to knock Pokémon off the top of the ratings charts for Saturday morning television after it had reigned for a year. The victory was…

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by Joe December 6, 2019December 5, 2019

2 Comments | tags: 1930s cartoons, christmas, christmas specials, disney, santa claus, santa's workshop, silly symphony, technicolor, walt disney, wilfred jackson | posted in christmas, Film

December 5, 2022

Dec. 5 – A Garfield Christmas

By Joe

This year, I’m bringing back a feature from last year where I take another look at, what I consider to be, the greatest Christmas specials ever made. I explained my reasoning for doing this in prior posts, but in short, the first time I looked at some of these specials I did just a short write-up and not the deep dive approach I would adopt in subsequent iterations of The Christmas Spot. It seemed silly to go lean with the best of the best, so I’m righting a wrong. Today is the first such repost of the year with more to follow and it is indeed one of the great specials of Christmas: A Garfield Christmas.

Garfield the cat, created by Jim Davis, is a character that has never completely gone away since its debut as a comic strip in the 1970s. He has definitely seen his popularity wane as the decades have gone by so it may surprise younger readers to find out that Garfield was on top of the world in the 1980s. The strips were so popular that Garfield made the jump to television via 12 animated specials before eventually getting his own television show. His popularity stayed relatively high well into the 1990s with the Garfield and Friends show lasting in syndication beyond that before giving way to new content. Coming in at number 7 on the list of television specials based on the gluttonous cat is 1987’s A Garfield Christmas.

The cat who ruled the 80s is taking on Christmas!

A Garfield Christmas premiered on December 21, 1987 and if you read the first entry in this year’s countdown you’ll know I referred to it as one of the specials that got away. My mom decided that 1987 was the year to record a bunch of Christmas specials for my sister and I to have throughout the years to come, and despite her being a fan of Garfield, she failed to record this one. Maybe it was because it aired so close to Christmas she felt the tape might be nearing its end? Maybe she had just run out enthusiasm for the exercise come the 21st? The last special on the tape is A Muppet Family Christmas which aired on December 16, so it’s certainly plausible. Maybe we had plans that night and she didn’t want to bother with the timer? I don’t know, she doesn’t know, and I’m certainly not mad about it, but I do wish I had grown up watching this one as frequently as the specials on that tape. Now we can browse YouTube and see some of the bumpers from that very year and I see some of the other specials I missed out on. It’s not really something I’m upset by, but it does make me wish we could go back to every week in December being event viewing because CBS was loaded that year seemingly devoting two nights per week to airing Christmas specials. And that doesn’t include the various holiday themed episodes of their regular programming.

The house of Garfield’s dreams is surprisingly festive.

A Garfield Christmas is another Film Roman production directed by Phil Roman and features the talents of Lou Rawls, Ed Bogas, and Desirée Goyette handling the music end with Jim Davis the credited writer. Davis considers this one to be semi-autobiographical as it features Jon (Thom Huge) returning to his home on a farm for a good old-fashioned family Christmas. We’ll get to know Jon’s immediate family, including the oddly named brother Doc Boy (David Lander), and spend some quality Christmas time with Grandma (voiced by the recently departed Pat Carroll – R.I.P.). Of course, we also have Garfield and Lorenzo Music reprises the role he was born to play. His deadpan delivery is perfect for the sleepy cat and I feel bad for talents like Bill Murray and Frank Welker who have had to follow Music in the role, but will never be as good.

And the interior of the house of Garfield’s dreams is done in crayon.

The special begins with an exterior shot of Jon’s house decorated for Christmas. The color palette is slightly washed out which is a stylistic choice because this is a dream sequence. Garfield is sleeping in his usual spot and Jon, dressed as an elf, implores him to wake up because it’s Christmas! He has his arms full with Garfield’s numerous breakfast lasagnas and lays them out in a row so that Garfield can eat his way to the tree. There he’s told that he has a present coming his way and Jon steps offscreen for a moment only to return driving a forklift with a giant, green, gift on the front. He drops it down beside Garfield and it bursts open to reveal a real kitschy looking robot Santa in a chair. Jon then demonstrates that this is the gift that keeps on giving. He sits in the robot Santa’s lap with his cat, thinks up a gift he wants, and is promptly given a green hat to complete his elf costume (which looks a bit like a Robin Hood costume). Garfield, ever the opportunist, shoves Jon off of the machine and puts the helmet on his own head and is immediately rewarded with a handful of jewels and a pearl necklace. Remarking to the camera, “That’s just for starters,” as he holds his reward he immediately starts conjuring up countless gifts as the special goes into the song “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme,” and the title is displayed above the happy cat.

Finally, a gift worthy of being called the gift that keeps on giving.

The musical number is up-tempo and quite jaunty as Garfield frolics in his gifts. Declaring a love for all of the things piling up around him, including greed and avarice, he jives to the music and we’re clearly being setup for Garfield to learn a lesson about what Christmas is all about. Garfield is soon woken, for real, by Jon and the setting reverts to something more familiar for a Garfield cartoon. The sleepy cat is not particularly pleased about being woken up. He refers to Jon as, “Oh, it’s you,” and instructs him to leave a number as he pulls his blanket over his head and looks like an adorable, little, blue, meatloaf. Jon excitedly asks Garfield if he knows what day it is and Garfield sticks his head out to tell him he doesn’t do pop quizzes before breakfast. Undaunted, Jon tells him it’s Christmas Eve morning and describes excitedly how they get to pack the car and go to the farm to see mom, dad, grandma, and Doc Boy! Garfield sarcastically responds he can’t wait to meet other “Boys,” like “Oh Boy,” as Jon takes his leave. Garfield then emerges from his bed to question why he has to leave his warm bed every Christmas to see some “stupid” relatives. He finishes his list of questions to himself with “And why am I whispering?” before the scene fades to black.

We cut to a shot of Jon, Garfield, and Odie (Gregg Berger) in Jon’s car as they leave their city confines for the farm. Jon is in a nostalgic mood while Garfield wants nothing to do with it. He reminisces about Christmases past which soon leads into a song. It’s a bit of a call and response as Jon recalls a memory and Garfield interjects with a cynical take on it that associates a tradition with work. For example, Jon recalls decorating the tree fondly, and Garfield pipes in to call it “Gardening.” The song is called “Can’t Wait Till Christmas” and it does a good job of showcasing one character’s enthusiasm for the holiday, and another that has a decidedly different take. Garfield punctuates the end of the song with the very observant, and relatable, line about the best gift of Christmas being the insomnia and anxiety kids get from having to wait. Oh were there many sleepless Christmas Eve nights spent in my bed. The song ends with Garfield instructing Jon to wake him when Christmas is through.

We then see Jon roll up on the old farm and is warmly greeted by his mom (Julie Payne) who is one of those annoying animated characters that rarely seems to open their eyes. He moves to greet his dad (Pat Harrington) and brother Doc Boy, who seems to hate his nickname. We then hear from Grandma who is in a rocking chair facing a window as she guilt trips Jon into coming over to pay his respects to his poor, old, lonely, grandmother. Not that she needed to for Jon enthusiastically strolls over referring to his grandma as his favorite girl (genuinely sweet) and she pops out of the chair to give him a warm hug. She then points out that he’s developing a bit of a belly and questions if city life is making him soft. She punctuates the thought with an elbow to the belly that doubles Jon over causing her laugh. She reprimands him for not taking care of himself and reveals that she does 100 sit-ups a day. She gestures to her belly saying it’s hard as a rock as a result and urges Jon to take a shot at her.

Jon, not wanting to punch his grandma, deftly changes the subject and asks if she remembers Garfield and gestures to the cat and Odie (I’m not sure why he didn’t ask her if she remembered Odie, poor dog is always getting forgotten). She picks Garfield up with an amused look on her face as she seems to regale the cat as an oddity remarking they used to only have wood burning cats (whatever that is). Garfield is not amused. Mom then remarks how nice it is to have the whole family together for Christmas. As she gushes about being happy everyone is there, Grandma instructs her to “Put a sock in it, deary,” and suggests they go finish dinner. Garfield has now settled into Grandma’s arms and remarks to the camera “I can see Grandma and I are going to get along just fine.” When Grandma snaps at Jon’s mom her eyes actually “opened” for a moment too. I can’t figure out if Grandma is supposed to be her mother or mother-in-law. Grandma looks a little more like the mom than she does the dad, so I guess she’s her mother, but they have an adversarial relationship (which we’ll see more of) that screams classic mother-in-law.

We’ve seen this happen to Wile E. Coyote before.

We cut to an exterior shot and Jon is enthusiastically leading Odie and Garfield to the barn presumably to get more firewood. He’s put on a stocking cap to fight the cold, but not a jacket or even a pair of gloves. I guess he’s more hearty than he looks. Jon is still aglow from being home for the holidays and encourages Garfield to take in the scenery. Garfield remarks he can only see darkness and we see why as the snow is over his head. The only visible part of Garfield is his tail sticking out of the snow and he soon walks right into an exposed water pump.

Meanwhile, inside the kitchen Grandma is creeping up on the stove. She tastes the gravy cooking there, and apparently dissatisfied, produces a can of chili powder. Mom comes up behind her and politely suggests she isn’t thinking about adding any chili powder to “MY” sausage gravy. Apparently there is some sort of competition between the two concerning the presence of chili powder in sausage gravy. Grandma plays nice and suggests she wouldn’t be doing that, but when Mom walks away she turns a bit sinister. Muttering softly to herself “Just because my chili gravy won a blue ribbon at the county fair and your gravy didn’t even place! Who am I to tell you how to make gravy? The Green County Gravy Champion, that’s who!” Par Carroll’s delivery of these lines is so perfect and so sincere it’s no surprise that Grandma had to return for the Thanksgiving special to follow.

Jon and Garfield then enter the kitchen while a simple rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” plays in the background. Jon asks Garfield where Odie went who responds curtly “In-the-barn-let’s-eat.” We cut to Odie sniffing around some junk. He pulls out some scrap wood and a gardening tool and looks rather pleased with himself as he runs off. Back in the kitchen, Garfield’s nose has detected the scent of sausage gravy. He hops up on the counter and runs his finger through the brown liquid and gives it a taste. A look of satisfaction appears on his face as he licks his fingers which is soon replaced by one of pain. His face turns red, steam shoots out of his ears, and he releases a plume of fire from his mouth. He then returns to a contented expression and as smoke still trails from the ends of his mouth he remarks, “Perfect.”

The family is then shown gathering around the table for Christmas Eve dinner. Odie slips back into the house unnoticed while Doc Boy is reprimanded for reaching for a dinner roll before anyone has said Grace. He’s instructed to do so, but he protests this responsibility until Grandma strikes him on the head with a wooden spoon. He then recites a fairly routine prayer that Mom punctuates with an “Amen!” when he’s apparently finished. As the others get set to dig in, Doc Boy rises from his chair and goes into a more poetic poem. No one looks pleased, especially Grandma, who strikes her grandson once more with the wooden spoon prompting him to end the misery.

Jon requests his mom pass the potatoes, and she asks if he wants fried, baked, mashed, etc. which causes Jon to remark she always prepares too much. Unable to decide, he just asks for a piece of pie instead (no wonder why he’s acquiring a belly) and is met with another impossible decision as his mother prepared six different types of pie. We then cut to Grandma as she slips plates of food under the table to the hungry pets. Garfield, looking fatter than usual, and Odie are enjoying sitting beside Grandma. Garfield then praises the quality of the food and service, but criticizes the décor. He decides to rate the “restaurant” a mere 2 stars. Dad notices the empty plates before Grandma and makes a comment about her really “putting it away.” She responds that she’s eating for two now (really three) and Dad gives a smile which is soon replaced by a look of shock and confusion.

Grandma begins cleaning up while Jon praises his mom for the meal, which Grandma makes a throat-clearing sound to get Jon to acknowledge her hand in the dinner as well. He then tries to give Garfield some leftovers unaware he’s been eating this whole time. The now very fat cat politely declines and indicates he’s watching his waistline this holiday season. Mom then calls everyone over to the naked Christmas tree which requires trimming. Odie pops out of the box of lights and garland apparently searching for something. He pulls out what looks like a small bit of wire before slinking off with it.

You mean to tell me they live on a farm and don’t have a step ladder?!

The rest of the family then gathers around to trim the tree. All except Grandma who has returned to her rocking chair with Garfield on her lap. She makes a remark to the cat about the rest of the family sounding like a pack of banshees and even refers to them as crazy. She then adds that you need a little crazy to make it through this life, then declares herself proof of that since she talks to cats! We cut back to the tree and Dad is awkwardly climbing on Doc Boy to put the star on the tree and this doesn’t look like a scene that will end well for anybody. Dad wisely asks why they always wait to put the star on last when it would be a lot easier to do it first before the tree is up, but Mom dismisses the thought because “It just wouldn’t be Christmas,” that way. I had no idea so much was riding on when the star was placed on the tree. I suppose the same is true for those who place an angel or something else up there instead?

Jon then gets the bright idea to ask Garfield if he can climb up the tree and put the star on top. Jon sells it as a very special request suitable for a true hero, and to my surprise, Garfield goes along with it with far more enthusiasm than I expected out of the old cat. He tells Jon if he’s not back in an hour to send a banana cream pie up after him and then approaches the tree. Garfield feels this will be a piece of cake and begins his ascent. As the tree wobbles to and fro, the rest of the family looks on with concern. Jon can barely seem to watch. Soon Garfield emerges from the top of the tree triumphantly, though he looks at how high up he is and seems to momentarily lose his balance. He rights himself and places the star atop the tree to raucous applause. He decides to take a bow, soaking in the adulation, and promptly falls. He strikes the ground with a thud wrapped in lights and garland and then utters what was a very dark catchphrase of sorts at the time for Garfield, “Whoever invented Christmas trees should be drug out into the street and shot.” An ornament then strikes him on the head which seems to indicate the tree does not share in Garfield’s sentiments.

Garfield’s moment in the sun took a very quick turn.

Dad then beckons everyone to look upon the tree as he plugs in the lights. It gives off a warm glow and everyone “Ooo’s” and “Aah’s” at the sight. Mom then informs us that Doc Boy is going to sing us a Christmas song, which he wants no part of, but Dad insists given they spent a bunch of money on “pie-anno” lessons. Doc Boy goes into a slow and melancholy rendition of “Oh Christmas Tree,” but Grandma has heard enough. She shoves everyone aside to take over the keys and plays a much livelier, and shorter, version of the song and then turns to the family with a look of satisfaction on her face. Mom refers to it as interesting, which doesn’t seem to bother Grandma. This is basically the only part of the special where I think they’re trying a little too hard to make Grandma seem “cool.”

The shot likely to linger with you when this one is long over.

Jon then encourages his mom to play and we go into another musical number, “Christmas in Your Heart.” While the family gathers around the piano, Grandma returns to her rocking chair and Garfield. She asks him “How did you know I needed a cat in my lap?” She then talks about her departed husband and the Christmases they used to have. She covers the usual numbers, how they didn’t have much, but would always find a way to give the children a good Christmas. She adds that the old man was the type who didn’t show much affection, but on Christmas that would change for a day. She hypothesizes that it was his favorite day of the year given how excited he would be for the children to wake up and see what was under the tree. It gets a little sadder after that as she tells Garfield sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night thinking he’s still with her adding, “This is the night I miss him the most.” In a cartoon about a fat, orange, cat, who knew something so crushingly relatable could be found?

Mom is done playing her song and enthusiastically declares it’s time to move onto the Christmas story. This is the part of the special where Jon and Doc Boy regress into man-children. They enthusiastically inform us that the family Christmas story is “Binky: The Clown Who Saved Christmas” and the responsibility of reading the story falls on Dad. He wants no part of it and seems to be the only one capable of recognizing that this is a pretty weird tradition to carry on now that their boys are grown men, but the rest insist. They gather around Dad’s favorite chair, and Garfield and Odie even join in by sitting on an armrest each, as Dad begins the story. It’s clear that Jon and Doc Boy do derive pleasure from this ritual simply because it makes their dad feel awkward and silly. When he starts reading the story, Jon points out to his father that he needs to read it with more emotion and Doc Boy reminds him to do the voices. He lets out an enthusiastic, Binky-like, “Hey! Kids!” which Odie demonstrates his approval for by licking the man’s cheek, which Dad does not enjoy.

Dad finishes the story and Doc Boy gets in another little rib at his expense before Mom resumes treating the boys like children and declares it’s time for bed. The two enthusiastically run off like children while Odie takes a walk over to the closet. He finds a plunger inside, but removes the rubber end leaving just a handle, and tries to leave the closet with it, but gets stuck on the doorframe for a moment. He eventually figures it out and leaves and we fade to a shot of Garfield and Odie sleeping by a warm fire. Odie’s eyes snap open and he checks on Garfield to see if he’s awake. Seeing that he isn’t, he smiles rather slyly and scampers off.

Garfield wakes up shortly after and is surprised to see Odie missing. He heads over to the window to look for him and another song comes on, this one sung by Rawls and Goyette and titled “You Can Never Find an Elf When You Need One.” The bouncy little number hums along as we see Odie assembling all of the stuff he’s been collecting throughout his time at the farm. Using a base, pole, and the gardening tool he makes some kind of a post which he covers with a paper bag and proudly carries back into the house. As he scampers out of the barn, Garfield emerges with a smile on his face seemingly amused by the pup. He then stumbles and falls off a box he was standing on and a smaller box empties its contents into his lap. It’s a wad of letters and a look of surprise comes over Garfield as he informs us they must be 50 years old.

We cut back to the inside of the home and Jon and Doc Boy are checking-in on their parents who are fast asleep. They start off with whispers directed at their dad asking if he’s awake, but soon evolve into something closer to a yell and Jon flips on the lights. Dad angrily wakes up and asks them what they’re doing, but their metamorphosis into children has fully taken hold and they want to open their presents. It’s 1:30 in the morning and their dad tells them to go back to bed. Jon tries to reason with him that it’s technically Christmas morning, but he’s having none of it and the two grumpily return to bed.

We cut to an exterior shot of the house at night and the sun soon rises behind it. Inside, Mom and Dad are by the tree setting out some last minute presents while Jon and Doc Boy come into frame. We only got a sense of what they were wearing last night, but we now we see that Jon is decked out in orange-striped pajamas with bunny slippers while Doc Boy is taking things even further with full bunny rabbit pajamas. Seriously, don’t leave your kids alone with Doc Boy. Dad then playfully asks if they want to do chores, eat breakfast, or open presents first and the boys predictably choose presents.

We get a time lapse and see the family seated and enjoying their new stuff. Dad got a giant hat, Jon a sweater, Grandma a bowling ball, and Doc Boy…a toy airplane. Mom apparently gets nothing. Mom declares that it was a very nice Christmas, but gets interrupted by Garfield tugging on her skirt to tells us it’s not over yet. He then drags over the bundle of letters he found last night and gives them to a surprised Grandma. She softens immediately as Jon asks what they are and she tells him they’re love letters from his grandfather. She begins to read one aloud, but when things start to get a little steamy she just laughs. Mom asks what he said next, but she declines to share the spicy details.

We’re still not done though! Odie then gets Garfield’s attention and drags over his contraption. When he removes the paper bag Garfield is a little puzzled, but Odie is there to demonstrate that he’s invented a cat scratcher. He rubs himself all over the thing and seems to really be enjoying it. Garfield thinks it’s great and happily gives it a try. Declaring it the best gift a cat could ever receive, he tells Odie that sometimes he surprises him and gives him a hug. The family looking on let out a loud “Aww” which prompts Garfield to address everyone. I don’t think any of them can hear him, but we can, as he tells us “Christmas: It’s not the giving, it’s not the getting, it’s the loving. There, I said it. Now get out of here.” See, he learned what Christmas is all about in the end!

All right, I’m going to say it too, “Aww!”

We then break into “Good Old-Fashioned Christmas” which is like a rag-time kind of song. Everyone dances and sings and it’s the song that takes us into the credits. A Garfield Christmas is a bit of a good old-fashioned Christmas, the kind that would make Clark Griswold jealous. We get to see Garfield go from viewing all of the traditions of Christmas as a chore, to happily partaking in them and even getting in some gift-giving. His window-side chat with Grandma is touching and definitely makes me miss my own nana who always seemed to miss my grandfather the most at Christmas after his passing. I still remember the first Christmas without him and as the dust settled on the frenzy that was the opening of presents by the younger crowd, her taking a seat in his old chair and having a little cry. It’s the nice, but also the sad part of the holidays which always seem to conjure up memories of holidays past and all of the people we lost along the way to get to the current one.

Not to say there isn’t a bunch of humorous moments in this one. Garfield is a character basically made for Christmas. He can be dismissive of the chores, but welcoming to the food and merriment. Jon’s family is fairly ordinary, though the lack of kids from either Jon or Doc Boy gives the gathering a different feel. Of course, we see a lot of Jon and Doc Boy and it’s readily apparent why neither has children. I’m not even sure Doc Boy has moved out of that house. It’s largely a special of small moments that build to Christmas morning. The moments are almost so small and meandering that there is a bit of an anticlimactic feel to it, but it comes across as nice and more believable a Christmas than some of the specials I’ve seen that don’t feature a talking cat.

If you’ve seen any Garfield specials before then you know what to expect from the presentation. The performances by the actors are all well done, especially Pat Carroll as Grandma and, of course, Lorenzo Music as Garfield. The music is also pretty damn terrific. The song “Keep Christmas in Your Heart” does border on being a bit too sappy, especially the way they use it to cap the somber moment between Grandma and Garfield, but it’s okay and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The classic, public domain Christmas songs are used sparingly, but with great effect. They’re just subtle ways to keep the Christmas theme going in scenes when it wouldn’t be obvious you’re staring at a Christmas special. And the animation is quite lovely from Film Roman. It doesn’t attempt anything incredible, but the characters emote well, they’re bouncy when they need to be, and I love the little touches in the backgrounds.

Everybody call their grandma, if you’re fortunate enough to still have one.

If you haven’t seen A Garfield Christmas by now then I don’t know what you’re waiting for. The special turns 35 in a few weeks and is sadly no longer shown on television. It is available for free on YouTube and has been printed numerous times on DVD usually with other Garfield holiday specials that are also well worth your time. It’s definitely not a hard one to view and I definitely think it should be in your holiday rotation this year and for another 35 years at least. All right, now I really want some lasagna.

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

Dec. 5 – Pluto’s Christmas Tree

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…

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by Joe December 5, 2021May 3, 2023

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 December 5, 2020May 3, 2023

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 December 5, 2019December 4, 2019

1 Comment | tags: a garfield christmas, christmas, christmas 1987, christmas catoons, christmas specials, film roman, garfield, jim davis, lorenzo music, lou rawls, pat carroll | posted in christmas, Television

December 4, 2022

Dec. 4 – The Pups’ Christmas

By Joe

The Pups’ Christmas had the very seasonable release date of December 12, 1936.

Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were among the first stars of cartoon creation to burst onto the scene. Together, the duo would work for Disney, Warner, and MGM (among others) creating and overseeing some of animation’s most memorable characters from the golden age. After working with Leon Schlesinger’s studio to produce Looney Tunes shorts, the duo jumped to MGM in 1934 taking one of their creations with them: Bosko. Bosko isn’t exactly the most well-remembered character from that era, but for a little while, he was indeed a bonafide star. Harman continued making theatrical shorts of the character under the new banner Happy Harmonies while Ising specialized in one-offs that sometimes returned characters, and sometimes did not. One returning set of characters was a pair of puppies which debuted in the short Two Little Pups, but it’s their next appearance that we care about today which came in the 1936 short The Pups’ Christmas.

MGM’s Happy Harmonies series of cartoon shorts didn’t last long, but had a respectable output.

It is a bit of a stretch on my part to call these puppies returning characters. They look basically the same between the two cartoons as far as the general shape and model look, but the original pups were white while the two we’re about to meet are brown and black. The thought process for both shorts is essentially the same though which is to watch two, ignorant, and curious pups interact with the world around them. And for this cartoon, that world happens to be the underside of a Christmas tree full of presents. It’s a fairly simple and basic premise that lends itself well to physical comedy. There’s almost no dialogue present in the short, apart from a few lines spoken by some children, as the focus is going to be squarely on the puppies and the toys they encounter.

The cartoon begins in typical Christmas fashion. We get a rendition of “Jingle Bells” over the standard MGM intro followed by a simple title card that fades to show the exterior of a snow-covered house as “Silent Night” filters in. Maybe some day I’ll go back through all of the Christmas cartoons I’ve consumed over the years and count the number of times “Silent Night” brings us into a short because it sure feels like there’s a lot. When the camera enters the house we find three children, two boys and one girl, as well as our two title characters lurking on the stairs. They’re all spying the goodies recently left by Santa under the tree, though while the children display some excitement, the pups show uncertainty. The kids, which are mostly just shown from the feet as the camera is locked-onto the puppies, beckon the pups to follow while also reminding them to keep quiet as they continuously bark at the sight before their eyes. The two eventually descend the stairs, but not before the brown pup gets its head stuck in the banister supports. The pup is able to yank its head out, it’s neck stretching impossibly long to do so, and the two head for the tree.

Just the first of many toys these puppies are going to have a bad experience with.

Once at the tree the pups run and bark at the assortment of packages and toys left neatly piled all around the tree. These kids seriously made out like bandits this year based on the sheer amount of stuff present. One of the boys starts fiddling with a toy train that the brown pup is suspicious of, while the girl is seated in a new rocking chair with a doll. The brown pup goes to inspect the doll and jumps when it says “Mama.” The two pups are then further startled when the toy train takes off. They run and try to hide behind a large box, but the other boy comes blasting out from behind that on a new tricycle nearly running the pair over as they dash for cover. It’s a scary world for these pups.

They’re right to be suspicious of diseased Pluto.

The pups take refuge in what is I assume one of their Christmas gifts: a dog house with a bow on it. Near the dog house is a pup-sized, fake, Christmas tree and numerous packages that must be intended for the dogs for they include dog collars and a miniature fire hydrant. The black pup seems quite please with the hydrant, but before he can even entertain the notion of taking a whiz on it he’s startled by a stuffed, polka-dotted, dog that kind of resembles Disney’s Pluto. The black dog retreats towards the dog house where the brown pup has been hiding barking all the way. The barks turn to growls as the pup slowly creeps towards the doll with the brown pup in tow. The two approach the doll with a great deal of trepidation and when the black pup stops short of it the brown pup starts pushing it. The two circle the doll nervously sniffing at it until it collapses causing the two to frantically run away and seek shelter amongst the unopened gifts.

Rudolf Ising has no problem going for the cute, so the pup gets a bonnet.

When the black pup emerges from one of the boxes it tore through it’s sporting a Native American headdress. A stereotypical Native American jingle plays in the background as the pup barks in the direction of the doll. It cuts out rather quickly as the camera pans to reveal where the brown pup is hiding. It’s in a doll stroller and it pops up from under a blanket with a bonnet on its head. The doll from earlier is positioned behind the pup and it tilts forward saying “Mama,” as it contacts the pup’s rear. The black pup jumps out of the offensive headdress to look in the brown pup’s direction as that pup bats at the doll (behaving more like a kitten now than a pup) each swat causing the doll to say, “Mama!”

This little wind-up tank is about to make this puppy’s Christmas miserable.

The black pup then takes note of the little boy once more. This time he’s winding up a tank toy. When he lets go the tank practically comes to life as the sound of drums rumble in the background. It hops and blasts the poor little pup with a shower of sparks from its cannon as it lurches forward. The tank waddles more than it rolls as it marches through the area while the black pup hides behind a large ball. Once the tank passes the pup nervously pursues it. As it sniffs at the tank, the pup gets too close and the tank whirls around and blasts it once again causing the pup to retreat into a large bass drum. Seemingly satisfied, the bird-like tank turns itself around and resumes it’s march with the top turret bouncing on a spring with each step.

Apparently the tank is allowed to be cute too.

The black pup is clearly a little miffed at the treatment it’s receiving from this toy and stalks after the tank. The tank climbs a rectangular box that’s leaning against a cubed one, and once at the top, literally jumps a gap over to the next stack of presents as this thing is clearly alive at this point. It doesn’t quite make the leap, tanks aren’t known for their agility, but is able to pull its rear end over the edge of the gift and disappear to the other side. The pup runs around and looks behind the gifts expecting to find the tank, but unbeknownst to it the tank anticipated this and pops out from around the other side. It starts shooting off sparks once again and the pup spins around to yelp and run away after taking a shot to the face.

This poor pup gets blasted a whole bunch in this cartoon.

The pup runs away and right into a small, hand accordion. It crashed through one end and emerges out the other clearly destroying someone’s new gift. It then runs and hides behind a present and now just looks plain terrified instead of curious or angry. Too bad for the pup the tank remains one step ahead of it. We see it slip past the pup, and as the pup backs away from the present it’s rear end comes to rest in a French horn. On the other side is the tank which shoots its sparks through the horn and connects with the puppy’s backside. It yelps and runs away crashing right through the gift it was previously hiding behind and emerging out the other end draped in someone’s new pajamas.

Are we supposed to just ignore the murder that took place off camera?!

The sound of “Mama” gets the black puppy’s attention and we pan over to see the brown pup is batting at something on the floor. It’s the voice box for the doll which says “Mama” each time the puppy hits it. In the background is the doll itself torn to shreds. Where are the kids during all of this? That little girl is going to be heartbroken when she finds her new doll. Judging from the volume of gifts though, it looks like mom and dad can afford to get her a new one. The brown pup stops smacking the toy and instead chooses to bark at it which causes the black pup to bark too. That dastardly tank, apparently not yet satisfied, comes up behind the black pup once more and blasts it with sparks. The black pup yelps and runs away only to collide with the brown pup causing it to swallow the voice box. Now the brown pup is confused as every time it’s butt connects with something it hears “Mama!”

Impressive vertical displayed by the tank.

The tank returns to inflict more terror upon these hapless pups. Seeing it, the brown pup takes shelter behind more gifts while we see where the black pup ended up following its collision with the brown one. It, once again, smashed through another box only this one contained boxing gloves. It emerges from the box with the gloves on its front paws. I expected the pup to then use these to bash the tank, but instead it reacts more like an actual puppy would if it found itself in such an improbable situation and starts trying to shake the gloves off. One goes soaring across the room and the tank has to duck to avoid it. Then comes the other one which the tank jumps to avoid. Now apparently mad, the tank goes after the black pup and resumes blasting it with more sparks.

Definitely the look of someone wondering why their ass is talking.

The brown pup emerges from its hiding place seemingly ready to help out the other pup, but instead chooses to sit down. This causes the soundbox to go off again and the pup spins around confused. We then go into a little dance where the brown pup keeps searching for the source of the “Mama” soundbite, but can’t find it since it’s coming from inside it. Once the pup does figure that part out, it keeps gently sitting down and popping its bum back up the second it hears the first little piece of sound. Only when the pup sits with more force does it freak it out causing it to run for another hiding spot.

Toy? Ornament? Whatever it is, this monkey is all right. Or rather, it was…

The brown pup, in its haste, crashes into another toy. And yup, I figured this was going to happen, it’s racist. The toy is a dancing black person depicted in a very offensive manner. It’s limbs flail about as it does a dance ending with a “Hey!” as it spreads its arms out wide. The bit is mercifully over in a few seconds as the pup takes off. It comes towards a monkey toy, or ornament, that is very much alive as it climbs up a string to avoid the puppy. It then slides down with a look of shock on its face, only for the barking pups to come running by once again, this time with the tank in pursuit. The monkey avoids them all, but for some reason the tank whirls around to regard the monkey up in the Christmas tree. The monkey is pretty ticked off at this point and it yells down at the tank with a bunch of unintelligible, high-pitched, squeaks similar to what Chip and Dale do at times. The tank does not take kindly to this at all and fires off a volley of sparks in the monkey’s direction catching it clear in the face and utterly destroying it. Poor, little, monkey.

There’s a surprising amount of murder in this little cartoon.

This terrible tank them goes after the pups once again. As they run away, they run into a toy airplane hangar and quickly bounce out. That’s because it’s occupied by a toy plane which comes rolling out and takes to the sky. The tank ducks under the plane, but once clear of it fires more sparks at it. The plane soars around the Christmas tree seemingly avoiding the tank which only makes it madder. The tank fires off another round with the last one being something akin to a “charged” shot. That’s the one that strikes the plane which stops in mid-air to grasp at it’s chest like it was a man shot in the heart. It then goes into a tailspin with flames shooting out the back. The pups run for cover in their new dog house seemingly shutting the tank out. It runs around in circles, but with no where to go, does the only thing it can: duck and cover.

A pile of dead toys. Toy Story never had the balls for this!

The planes lands a direct hit on the tank reducing both toys to a pile of twisted steel and springs. The pups emerge from their house to sniff at the pile, only for the tank’s turret (which is basically its head) to pop out on its spring and fire one last blast of sparks at the pups when it strikes the ground. The pups race back into the dog house, but turn around to bark incessantly in the tank’s direction. “Jingle Bells” plays in the background as we close on an iris shot and one last, somewhat joyful, yelp from the brown pup.

Well, at least the brown puppy seems happy.

And thus, the first Christmas for these two little pups is concluded. They caused a lot of mayhem as they investigated the gifts under the tree. I’m not sure what happened to the kids from the beginning. Did they go back to bed? Head into the kitchen? Or did they just watch these toys torture their little puppies with amusement? I have to believe they vacated the room since the brown pup was able to absolutely savage that doll. The destruction wrought by the pups almost makes them villains, in a way, albeit innocent ones. At least it would if not for that asshole tank. Seriously, what is that thing’s problem? One puppy sniffs your backside and you make it your mission to murder the little dog?! That thing got what it deserved, but not before it “killed” a monkey toy and a plane toy that were all just minding their own business. Why couldn’t it have killed the racist toy?!

These little pups are cute because they’re meant to be. It’s really that simple.

For its part, The Pups’ Christmas feels like a Rudolf Ising short. It’s mostly set to music and relies on the animation to depict a fairly conventional setup that doesn’t really have a plot. It’s just two, cute, puppies getting into mischief. It’s the sort of cartoon Ising does well as the animation style is very pleasing to the eye and the production values appear fairly high for this sort of thing. Probably too high for the folks at MGM since the Happy Harmonies series of shorts was ended because they routinely went over budget. I do like how the puppies are presented, even if some of their behavior felt more cat-like than dog-like to me. That detestable tank was also animated in a very amusing manner. It’s waddling and bouncing is a lot of fun, even if it appears to break a whole bunch of rules as far as sentience goes. The short begins with the puppies having exaggerated, but realistic, encounters with objects around the tree until that tank comes into the picture. From there, all of the toys basically come alive with no explanation. Not that one is necessarily needed since we’ve looked at a bunch of pictures like this in the past where toys on Christmas Eve behave like living beings. And of the ones I have looked at, this one is probably the best so far.

I definitely didn’t expect to see flames circling a Christmas tree in this one.

The Pups’ Christmas, being an old cartoon short, is not an easy thing to come by if you want to actually pay for it. It’s never been released on home video and isn’t streaming on any of the major streaming platforms even though it’s owned by Warner Home Video at this point. And I’m guessing the one offensive toy will keep it that way, unless a renewed push is made to get the Happy Harmonies series up and running. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily hard to watch it though as Warner apparently sees no value in protecting its asset which means this short can be found streaming for free all over the place, including YouTube. Just punch it in and you’re sure to find multiple options. MeTV has also shown it in the past year, with the racist toy edited out, so chances are it will pop up this month either as part of Toon in With Me or as part of the Saturday morning Tom & Jerry block of cartoons. And if you’re a dog lover, you’ll probably find this one cute and if you just like animation there’s a lot to enjoy here. It’s nothing amazing by any means, but at a running time of less than 8 minutes why not give it a look?

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

Dec. 4 – Family Guy – “Christmas Guy”

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…

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by Joe December 4, 2021May 3, 2023

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 December 4, 2020May 3, 2023

Dec. 4 – The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police – “Christmas Bloody Christmas”

Come 1997 I was moving away from what is largely considered “kid’s stuff.” I was in my teens and gearing up for high school and the Fox Kids I had grown up with was changing. My beloved X-Men came to an end that year and with it came my disinterest in Saturday morning cartoons. I…

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by Joe December 4, 2019December 3, 2019

1 Comment | tags: christmas, christmas specials, happy harmonies, hugh harman, mgm, rudolf ising | posted in christmas, Film

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