If Michelangelo is here then you know what time it is!
After a bit of a hiatus due to the Christmas holiday, we have reached the last of the four brothers from NECA Toys’ line of action figures based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the 2012 animated series that aired on Nickelodeon. And who better to save for last than the party dude himself: Michelangelo. Mikey has always been the more carefree, happy-go-lucky, turtle. He doesn’t take anything too seriously and just wants to have a good time. He does have a big heart though and the 2012 version of the character was perhaps the most childlike one we’ve seen yet. He is a teenager like his brothers, but he is the smallest of the four and kind of the baby of the bunch. Maybe there’s a bit of arrested development there, growing up in a sewer probably isn’t the best for emotional growth, but he can throw down when he has to and proved himself shockingly competent when stranded in Dimension X.
Michelangelo is the only one Raph has bragging rights over when it comes to height.
Michelangelo is another sculpt by May Thamtarana with paint by Geoff Trapp and Mike Puzzo. He’s number two in the series and with four turtles you can almost complete the mural on the side of the boxes which was done by Ciro Nieli. Michelangelo stands at 5.25″ making him the shortest of the four, as he should be. He has a smiling, almost cherubic, portrait by default which suits the character. Like his brothers, he also has a battle portrait with whited-out eyes and a yelling expression. As perhaps the most expressive of the turtles in the show, it’s a shame we only get the two heads. I’d love a pizza scarfing head, an excited yell, or something even more cartoonish. NECA likely plans on selling us more Michelangelo figures though so they don’t want to give it all up on the first go even if the box does say “ultimate.”
All of the turtles come with a slice, but Michelangelo is the only one who definitely needs one.
Michelangelo’s proportions and coloring looks pretty accurate to the show. He has thin arms and a pear shape to his body as it widens the further down you go. The plastron and belt have some nice distress effects sculpted and painted in while the pouches for his weapons are also present. Paint is mostly clean and NECA made sure to capture the freckles on Mikey’s cheeks. I do have one bit of paint slop near the left knee where it looks like some of the brown from the kneepad transferred to the leg. He’s very pleasing to look at overall and he might be my second favorite in the aesthetics department behind Donatello.
Mikey’s weapons got an upgrade in 2012.Old reliable.I feel like he needs a board to make proper use of these hands.
Michelangelo comes with a fairly substantial assortment of accessories. I already mentioned the second portrait, and for hands we have a set a gripping, pointing, hang loose, a relaxed left, and a C-grip right hand. The hang loose gesture is the same that came with Leo and it’s a much better fit here with Michelangelo. The C-grip hand continues to confound me to some degree as I’m not sure what accessory it’s intended to be used with. I guess the T-Phone, though you will have to heat the hand up first as it’s not quite wide enough to accommodate it. Which, yes, Mikey has a T-Phone as well as a slice of pizza and stink bomb, same as the other turtles. He also has his trusty nunchaku which are painted plastic handles joined by real chain link. The handles come apart where the chain meets them like the toon Michelangelo’s nunchaku, only here we’re not swapping to a spinning effect. Instead, Mikey comes with the longer chain with bladed weapon at the other end. In the show, Mikey’s ‘chuks could basically extend somehow and had a pop-out blade to make them just a little more formidable.
Aww, Icecream Kitty!
The last accessory is probably everyone’s favorite: Icecream Kitty. The mutated cat that lives in the freezer is included and she’s pretty well done. The figure doesn’t move, but it doesn’t really have to. It’s a nice spread of stuff, but with Mikey it feels like more could have been included. Some soft goods, pizza-stained, briefs would have been pretty funny. Some spinning effects would have also been much appreciated. I love the real chain look, but they don’t display well since gravity is always going to do its own thing. Like the other turtles, Mikey’s gripping hands are all really stiff so you may want to heat them up in order to get him to hold anything. With the handles of his weapons coming apart at the chain, they are easier to slip into his hands than some others. His second head also would not go on for me without heat, but your mileage may vary there.
Since we’ve looked at all of the turtles now feels like a good time to bust out the Playmates originals.
Michelangelo’s articulation is the same as the others, but with him the range is a little less. His upper body is so much smaller that getting much range out of the shoulders can be a challenge. The right shoulder on mine is a bit stubborn as well at the hinge. It’s not stuck, but it also doesn’t appear to enjoy being articulated. The hips seem more restrictive as well. The rest are fine and nothing required heat in order to function. He’s going to get into some basic poses, but likely won’t impress in that department.
Ninjas on the prowl.
Michelangelo is about as good as the rest of his brothers. In my book, that makes him pretty solid. This is a line that does a good job of capturing the aesthetics of the show in a very generic way. The characters are unmistakable for what they are, but the available portraits and articulation are limited enough that you likely won’t be able to recreate your favorite scene. That’s pretty par for the course with NECA though which is very much an aesthetics forward approach with articulation and accessory count secondary. Aside from the hands, there is no reuse between the turtles so this isn’t as cheap a line to produce as some which is also probably why a lot of accessories are repeated. NECA was able to keep the MSRP at $38, which while not exactly cheap, is also not horrendously overpriced. These are a much better likeness at a far friendlier price than what Super7 did with its 2003 line. All that is to say if you liked the other 2012 offerings from NECA then you’ll like Michelangelo. And if you bought the other brothers you’re probably not skipping this one anyway. They are the best looking figures based on the show thus far and likely will remain that way for a long time to come. We may be done with the turtles, but we’re not done with wave one just yet as we have one final figure to look at: the Shredder!
If you missed the other reviews of NECA’s 2012 turtles then look no further:
We are onto the third member of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its everyone’s favorite hot head. Raphael got softened for the 1987 cartoon series to make him sarcastic and a bit of a goof-off. He didn’t take anything too seriously and had a certain dry wit about him. It’s quite different from his…
We were able to get through some of the logistics of this line with Leonardo, so for this second review we can just get right to it. One of the best decisions the 2012 iteration of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made was bringing back veteran voice actor Rob Paulsen. He’s voiced countless characters over the…
We’re going to start this one off with a question: When you order directly from a producer, do you expect to be first in line for product? NECA’s recent launch of its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure line based on the 2012 Nickelodeon series raised this question. On September 16, NECA launched the line…
Welcome to Christmas Eve 2025! Christmas Eve is the party night while Christmas Day is the more low key, family, experience. For those not wanting to spend the night at the eggnog bowl, we have eleven Christmas specials here that you would do well to kick back with and enjoy. We’re into the Top 20 and these are among the best of the best. In truth, while these are all in an order of how great I think they are the truth of the matter is I consider most of these pretty interchangeable. What likely impacts you most is personal taste in Christmas specials. Do you like your special to be wholesome? Crass? Vulgar? Musical? Nostalgia plays a big role too and certainly some would view these next 11 and say “Of course, a kid who grew up in the 90s would come up with this,” and that’s probably fair. Someone who did most of their growing up in the 70s probably has a very different list. However, I’ll defend my list as being as objective as I can possibly make it. I look for uniqueness in my specials. I like to laugh, for sure, but I also appreciate those Christmas feels. This collection of Christmas specials is pretty robust. Most have those feels in them and if they don’t it’s because they found a way to subvert the Christmas special in a fun way. And we’re taking it to 11 today, so let’s get on with it!
I love The Tick. When it aired on Fox Kids in the early 90s, I didn’t appreciate it enough for what it was so, in a way, there’s very little nostalgic attachment for me here. As a kid, I wanted my superhero cartoons to be serious like Batman and X-Men. The Tick wanted to lampoon such though its target was more Silver Age than modern. As an adult, I appreciate The Tick for what it is and when I did a rewatch a few years back I was surprised at how well the show held up. It’s just very funny and also clever. The Tick is a buffoon, but a likable one. He’s more excitable than anything and that is on display here in “The Tick Loves Santa.” The Tick, being a bit childlike, is the only hero who believes in Santa Claus so when a villain disguised as Santa starts getting up to no good it really messes with his head. The real deal is going to reveal himself and personally enlist The Tick in taking down this Multiple Santa and he’s more than happy to do so. It’s a tremendously fun, off-beat, Christmas special and I especially love The Tick’s interactions with the local police early in the episode. If you dismissed The Tick as that dumb show with the big blue guy all these years then I recommend seeking this out. Especially if you’re a little fatigued with modern superhero media and want to laugh at it instead.
The Christmas episode of Hey Arnold! is such a favorite of 90s kids that I kind of resisted it for a long time. I just didn’t really vibe with Hey Arnold! as a show. I wanted my cartoons to either be action-packed, superhero, dramas or riotous toons not grounded by much of anything. Hey Arnold! was not that. It was most like Doug when compared with other Nicktoons, but even Doug had a certain silliness about it via its character designs and some of the odd lore in the show. Plus, it had Doug’s over-active imagination for when it wanted to break-out of its confines. Arnold really doesn’t have that. It’s a slice of life show with a very optimistic and well-meaning kid as its lead. He’s almost too nice, too perfect, like he’s a kid created by an adult trying to find the ideal child. “Arnold’s Christmas” makes good use of such a character and puts him to work in trying to reunite a father with his long, lost, daughter. It’s a tragic tale about a refugee in America and the struggles that come with being such. It’s probably a Christmas special we need now more than ever as many individuals in a similar situation presently face deportation for the crime of not being white enough. It’s a heart-warming Christmas special that also finds a way to weave the Helga/Arnold dynamic into the plot in a satisfying way as well.
This is a pretty by the numbers Tom & Jerry short from early in the duo’s life. It contains their original designs which were maybe a touch more realistic in terms of shape, especially with Tom, while still retaining that rounded-off, cartoon, aesthetic. What makes it special is it’s the first cartoon where the two warring entities find a way to get along for the sake of Christmas. Mostly though, it’s just freaking gorgeous. MGM and the duo of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had something to prove. This is very much on par with the best the Disney studios were putting out in terms of technical delight. The Christmas backgrounds are wonderful and inject some lovely coziness to the feeling this one brings. There’s some good gags with Jerry and the toys and even a little bit of a heart pull moment. And I just love the ending with an adorable Jerry discovering a mouse trap placed outside his little hole in the wall is actually a Christmas present. His ending smile is just so infectious and so warming. This is a fantastic Christmas short from a wonderful era of cartoon-making.
It just wouldn’t be Christmas without these dumbasses.
Okay, this is quite a change-up from the prior three entries. If you’ve been following along with my rankings this year then you probably know that when it comes to Christmas specials of a decidedly different flavor I’ve been trying to group those together when it makes sense. Since we’re into the top 20 it no longer makes sense. This is truly my raw opinion and we’re just ranking these by my own personal enjoyment level. And I really enjoy Beavis and Butt-Head Do Christmas. It’s a subversive take on two well-trod classics: A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life. Ordinarily, I’d rail against such an approach but Beavis and Butt-Head make it work. The duo, of course, learns nothing in their Christmas adventures. Beavis sees a vision of the future where being a loser asshole causes him to go through life without ever being with a woman and his takeaway when he wakes up is that the future is cool because he has a VCR and some porn. Butt-Head gets to see how much better Highland would be if he never existed (the guardian angel is there to encourage Beavis and Butt-Head to commit suicide), but he just concludes that the world sucks, but it would suck even more without them. It’s a rare moment when I agree with either Beavis or Butt-Head, but I have to agree with his conclusion here.
A Pinky and the Brain Christmas was really rewarding for me to rediscover. It was one of those Christmas specials I saw in the moment, but kind of filed away. I was too old at that point to be paying attention to the broadcast schedules of cartoons. I know I liked it, but I don’t think I really appreciated it in the moment. Coming back to it I found it to be truly delightful. I’m not as well-versed in Pinky and the Brain as others. I experienced the duo mostly via Animaniacs and probably watched very little of their spin-off. For me, this was the first cartoon featuring the two where they nearly achieved Brain’s goal of global domination. His plan worked, but his shame of being such a dick to Pinky causes him to abort his mission and it’s a surprisingly powerful moment. Before we even get there though there’s a fun mission involving the pair traveling to the North Pole, infiltrating Santa’s workshop, and making it back home disguised (poorly) as reindeer. It’s a great Christmas special that makes use of the extended runtime over a standard Pinky and the Brain cartoon that never feels long or overstays its welcome.
I can see how some would find the portrayal of Santa Claus in this one off-putting.
Merry Wednesday, everyone! This is the first of some truly “out there” Christmas episodes from American Dad! It establishes the lore that the Smith family and Santa are enemies after Steve accidentally murders Santa. He does so because Stan irresponsibly gifts him a machine gun and has him open fire on a snowman not taking into consideration that the bullets would fly through the snowman and come into contact with whatever was beyond the target. Like Santa. Why was he hanging out at the mall? I don’t know, I guess one mall Santa is the real one at any given time because the guy needs to make some extra money to pay for all those toys. Since Santa is a magical being, he can’t be destroyed and does come back to life and opts to spend Christmas Eve seeking revenge against the Smiths. The B plot is Stan absolutely hating his son-in-law, Jeff, and the two coming to an understanding by the end. It all culminates in a bloody, massive, violent, battle between the Smiths and the army of Santa. It’s definitely not for everyone and making Santa a villain (albeit, one who had a right to be pissed at the Smiths) is certainly a choice and one that probably turns some folks off. If you like your Christmas specials on the more subversive end, this is about as good as it gets.
In 1999, Futurama showed us how horrible Xmas could be in the future. In this one, we learn that humanity created a robot Santa to essentially make Santa real, only his standards were too high and he decided everyone is naughty. Worse, going on the dreaded Naughty List doesn’t earn one a stocking full of coal. It sure seems like murder is on the table as people are forced to hide in fear for their lives. Fry gets to learn all of this the hard way when he gets caught out late on Xmas Eve out looking for a present for Leela whom he unintentionally slighted with his insensitivity. It’s the first episode that seems to bring the pair together and it will be a long time before that relationship pays off. For now, it’s sweet and not overdone and I love all of the little, funny, moments that exist in this one. And all of the casual nudity is wonderfully utilized. This should be thought of as a pretty dark sort of Xmas special, but it somehow manages to avoid feeling like such and I owe that to how funny it is. Plus, there is a happy ending unlike the follow-up Xmas special.
We have yet another Nicktoon on our hands and this one stars a character I pretty much loved from the start. Rocko’s Modern Life is a show that holds up remarkably well. Even ignoring the obvious adult jokes they managed to slip into the show (that have subsequently been cut, unfortunately), the humor is surprisingly wide ranging as the show sought to lampoon exactly what the title implies – the modern world. Rocko is a young adult newly on his own just trying to scrape by and he runs into all kinds of challenges along the way. The poor guy gets crapped on, but he’s so good-natured that the show manages to remain funny as opposed to abusive. In his Christmas special, mostly the same is true. Rocko tries to celebrate Christmas with a little get-together with his closest friends, but it blows up on him when Heffer’s family basically invites themselves over as well. Not wanting to let anyone down, Rocko rolls with it and prepares to host a massive party, but when Mr. Big Head starts a vicious rumor about diseased elves attending it blows the whole thing up. Rocko ends up exactly where he didn’t want to be – alone on Christmas. Moving in across the street are actual elves and a little, mute, elf takes a liking to Rocko leading to a pretty wholesome and heart-warming resolution. Along the way though there’s a lot of great gags. My personal favorite is the Christmas tree which behaves like a dog, until its murdered by Heffer when he cuts it down. A touch dark, perhaps, but totally in-line with the humor of Rocko’s Modern Life and the slightly more edgier Nicktoons. It’s yet another Christmas special I really liked as a kid, but kind of forgot about until I started doing this blog. That’s the gift The Christmas Spot has given me in that it’s brought some of these specials back into my life or introduced me to them for the first time.
One special I definitely did not need this blog to reintroduce me to is A Charlie Brown Christmas. I’ve seen this one way more times than I could possibly count. I’ve been watching it (along with several others) over and over every December since 1987. It’s the first ever Peanuts special and it’s a great introduction to Charlie Brown as a character who, despite being a good kid, seems to be disliked by his peers and has wretched self-esteem. He’s a punching bag, and Christmas just makes him depressed which is certainly a relatable feeling for a lot of people. He’s given a lifeline by Lucy to direct a Christmas pageant, only no one seems interested in taking it seriously. When he produces a laughably bad Christmas tree for the pageant, everyone basically dismisses him by first tearing him down and then laughing their asses off at him. Linus then reminds him of the true meaning of Christmas and old Charlie Brown finds renewed purpose and the other kids basically come around and realize they’ve all behaved like jerks. It’s a Christmas special that captures that awkward stage of adolescence where it feels like all of one’s actions are heavily scrutinized by their peers. Linus injects a secular element as well which helps endear it to another audience since the vast majority of these specials ignore that aspect of Christmas. Due to its repeated airings, A Charlie Brown Christmas is obviously a classic and there’s no way I couldn’t put it somewhere in the top 20. Leaving it outside the top 10 is probably sacrilegious for some, but I’m content with this placement. I enjoy this one, I will watch it multiple times a year, but I definitely enjoy the 12 specials ahead of it more. And maybe even some of the ones grouped just behind it, but let’s not scrutinize the placement any further or else I’ll go back to tinkering and never finish this thing.
This Christmas special from SpongeBob Squarepants is brilliant. Many specials that came before it have found a way to reference the classic Christmas specials, but few embraced them like this one. A SpongeBob Christmas was a network-aired, prime time, Christmas special constructed in stop-motion animation like the classic works of Rankin/Bass. Genius! And it manages to exceed the gimmick by just being a really good, fun, Christmas special. Plankton, the resident villain of Bikini Bottom, concocts a plan to turn everyone into jerks with tainted fruit cake. By doing so, he’ll seem like a saint by comparison and make it onto Santa’s Nice List to finally receive the secret formula to the Krabby Patty recipe. The only problem is that the fruit cake doesn’t work on SpongeBob, he’s just too wholesome and pure, but Plankton gets over that hurdle by unleashing a SpongeBob robot on the town that basically wrecks everything it encounters. SpongeBob has to save the day and does it through song. Corny? Of course, but “Don’t Be a Jerk – It’s Christmas” is one of the best, modern, Christmas songs around. It’s so unbelievably catchy and fun that I remain surprised it never really broke free from this special to enter regular rotation with other Christmas songs. And despite my love of Christmas specials, I’m actually not that big on Christmas music so me praising a Christmas song is actually pretty high praise. A SpongeBob Christmas is just the rare Christmas special that when I watched it for the first time I left convinced I had just witnessed a new classic and it deserves this ranking.
This one could have kept it clean, up until now that is.
We round out today’s entry with one more subversive and downright disgusting Christmas special, but it’s one that mostly plays things straight. That’s the beauty of the first South Park Christmas episode. It’s actually a pretty wholesome Christmas special about a Jewish kid who feels left out at Christmas. I’m not Jewish, but I have to believe that’s not an uncommon sentiment among Jews around Christmas time. It’s basically the genesis for the Adam Sandler Hannukah song. This is South Park though, so in order for Kyle to bridge the gap with his Christmas-loving peers he needs to turn to a literal magic piece of crap. Mr. Hankey is shockingly hilarious the first time he shows up. A talking poop in a Santa hat? He carries himself in an oblivious manner as if he doesn’t understand how gross he is. Others certainly notice though and they basically just see Kyle manhandling a piece of his own excrement and rightly have him committed. The show does take some liberties with Mr. Hankey in going out of its way to play up the gross factor. He didn’t need to end up in Mr. Mackey’s coffee, and we certainly didn’t need that fake commercial where live-action actors select their best Mr. Hankey to play with, but it wouldn’t be South Park if it didn’t push the boundaries of good taste. Still, there’s a strangely heart-warming resolution to this episode and I find Kyle’s song about being a lonely Jew on Christmas legitimately sad. The combination of all of those elements basically make this the perfect subversive Christmas special. It hits all of the Christmas special bullet points, but gets there in a very non-traditional and downright disgusting way. That’s why I still think it’s the best Christmas special from South Park. And if I have one regret with my body of work it’s that I didn’t cover what is probably the second best, “A Very Crappy Christmas,” but we can’t do them all can we?
That concludes this installment of the Christmas special countdown. Tomorrow, we do the top 10 and the all-time best Christmas specials. There probably aren’t too many surprises ahead, but as I look at the top 10 I do like that it feels like “me.” We’ll talk more about that tomorrow, but for now, Merry Christmas Eve and enjoy all of the merriment, drive safe if you’re traveling, and don’t forget to leave out milk and cookies for the big guy tonight!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
When Pixar released Toy Story in 1995 it proved to the world that audiences would accept films created entirely within a computer. Prior to that, 3D animation was thought of as a gimmick, something for commercials and video games, but not something that could carry an entire feature length film. It’s similar to the prejudices…
It feels like, at this point in time, we have hit peek 90s nostalgia. I can recall when it felt like 70s nostalgia hit pretty hard and then the 80s arrived not too far after. It’s inevitable whenever a generation that spent much of their adolescence in a given decade hits adulthood. And by adulthood…
When it comes to doing these write-ups, I naturally trend towards older Christmas specials. The name of the blog is The Nostalgia Spot, after all, so it would only make sense for me to favor stuff that’s at least a decade old, if not more. The fact of the matter is, there’s really not enough…
We’re back to the regular entries, but not for very long. Hopefully you enjoyed yesterday’s entry on old Emmet Otter, but we’re ditching the puppets today in favor of traditional, 2D, animation. Well, for the most part. We do have one CG entrant for today to wreck the party, but since we’re talking about a top 40 Christmas special I guess it can be forgiven. Today’s entrants are all of the nice, or genuine, variety as I classified them when sorting my list. It’s also a solid mix of 90s and 2000s cartoons with one extreme outlier so this isn’t a chunk of the list being driven by nostalgia, for the most part. My nostalgic attachment is mostly pre 90s with a few exceptions. In general, if I am allowed to toot my own horn for a second, I’m impressed with my own ability to set aside nostalgia when compiling these rankings. Oh sure, some of it plays a role. Is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer really as good as I’m going to rank it? Probably not, but I’m also not out here to formulate hot takes. You just have to find that happy medium between genuine quality and cozy nostalgia. With Christmas specials, it can be hard to separate the two and in some cases downright impossible. One Christmas episode that I have zero attachment to is leading us off today, and it might be the Christmas special that surprised me more than any other.
In this episode, Buzz gets into the “holiday” spirit.
I don’t say that Buzz Lightyear of Star Command surprised me because I expected it to be crap, I just didn’t really have any expectations going in at all. I had zero interest in the universe Buzz Lightyear hailed from. Like the unsuccessful film of a few years back, this show depicts the fictional show the toy in Toy Story would be based on. I guess this is the cartoon Andy might have watched while sitting in front of the TV with his action figure. It’s a 2D animated show that actually looks pretty good for something that aired in 2000. What really works though is the casting of Patrick Warburton as Buzz and Wayne Knight as Zurg. Those two Seinfeld alum are fantastic in their roles and the show is fast-paced, witty, and full of action as Buzz and his fellow members of Star Command have to aid a guy claiming to be Santa in order to save their “holiday.” That might have been my one critique here is that the show is clearly avoiding the term Christmas which feels overthought. I get it, it made no sense for the Flintstones to say Christmas since they predate Christ, but if you’re going to replace the term then come up with something better than “holiday.” That’s a very minor complaint though as this episode was a lot of fun. It’s just a shame Disney has no interest in preserving it or making it available as in the five years since I first wrote about it the show has still not been added to Disney+. I’m blaming the failure of Lightyear for that.
Shaggy and Scooby had a little trouble with the wrapping paper.
Scoob and the gang didn’t mess with Christmas a whole lot. Perhaps it was because their vibe was more in-line with Halloween, but the remnants of Hanna-Barbera started to rectify that in more recent times. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo might be the best Scooby-Doo show that’s ever been produced. I can’t really claim to be an authority on that as I have long since lost track of the franchise. The earliest works are kind of bad though, even though I watched a ton of them. I did enjoy A Pup Named Scooby-Doo as a kid and can appreciate it still on some level and through my kids I’ve been exposed to some of the movies and other modern shows. Of them all though, this is the only one I’d sit down and actually enjoy as it’s pretty funny. It’s kind of like a very tame version of The Venture Bros. as we have the usual mystery solving gang dealing with some supernatural element each episode that’s probably a robot or something. In this one, it’s a robot dinosaur that’s plaguing a town at Christmas and looking to mess up an annual celebration. The show is able to create comedy without really dumbing down the characters. Fred is a bit like the character from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo in that he’s more stubborn than dumb. The only real negative is the show isn’t as fun to look at as some others. It’s not terrible, but I’d put it on par with an adult animated sitcom like Family Guy or Bob’s Burgers. There’s a flatness to everything, but it mostly animates well. I might be ranking this one a bit too high, but it feels more impactful given that it’s a venerable franchise finally getting a good Christmas special.
Batman and Red Tornado are teaming up to save Christmas.
Speaking of a venerable franchise getting a good Christmas episode, here’s the caped crusader himself – Batman! I dismissed Batman: The Brave and the Bold when it aired in the 2000s because I had heard it was a kid-focused show. I wasn’t mad or anything, I just figured it wasn’t for me. I may have been wrong. This is a softer take on Batman, but the show is really well-animated and Diedrich Bader is a fantastic Batman. It has a dry humor and there’s a subversive element at play and it’s on display in this episode. Especially when a robot Santa goes up in flames revealing a robotic skeleton underneath it. The show had a team-up format where Batman would partner up with another hero in the DC Universe and this one includes Red Tornado. As an android, he has to try and figure out this whole Christmas thing which is pretty humorous all the while Fun Haus is wreaking havoc on a small town and attempting to steal Christmas. There’s some flashback stuff as well to Batman being a little dick at Christmas when he was a kid just adding another layer of guilt to the trauma-laden character. The episode finds time for some sweetness at the end too, which honestly surprised me a bit just given the overall tone of the episode up to that point. More surprising, is that this is probably my favorite Batman Christmas special. It’s more enjoyable than either of the episodes from Batman: The Animated Series and I’m also ranking it above Justice League. That’s definitely not something I expected going in.
As something of a last hurrah for The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh comes this Christmas special, Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too. These days it goes by a different name, A Very Merry Pooh Year, which sounds kind of gross, but the special is the same. Disney just added some wrap-around plot and a new cartoon to basically fill out an hour. This entry is just for the original though and it’s a very gentle, sweet, Christmas episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, as one would expect. The Winnie the Pooh franchise is definitely one more aimed at young children, but it’s so charming that adults can certainly enjoy it on some level. This one has Pooh forget to ask Santa for a Christmas present, but when he and Piglet try to retrieve the list it gets all messed up. They take it upon themselves to try and play Santa and make sure their fellow denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood have a merry Christmas, but they’re not exactly successful. It’s cute and has a familiar message of not focusing on the material aspect of the holiday and it’s lovingly animated. It’s very much a nice, feel-good, Christmas special you can watch with your kids.
We all remember the time Squidward slapped his cheeks in SpongeBob’s face.
The SpongeBob generation is not one I’m connected with, but damn if that sponge doesn’t make good Christmas specials! This is the original where SpongeBob learns about Christmas from Sandy and makes it a point to share the news about the holiday and Santa with all of the people of Bikini Bottom, much to the annoyance of Squidward. He finds everything about the holiday repugnant, but when Santa passes them over the guilt of how much he enjoys their misery is too much and Squidward basically assumes the persona of Santa and gives all of his possessions away. Ordinarily, I’d be annoyed with a Nickelodeon show denying the existence of Santa Claus, but here it’s rather believable that he could miss a village of fish. Plus, he makes an appearance at the end to make things right. Though I should point out, the Santa in this one is a live-action Santa whereas future holiday episodes will make him something of an elf. It’s honestly not the most flattering depiction of the big guy that I’ve ever seen, but at least it’s unique. This one is charming and pretty funny. There’s a great musical segment in the middle and if this is a show you grew up watching you probably have it ranked higher. I’m not sure if I’m at risk of angering the SpongeBob fanbase for having it ranked behind a later Christmas special, but it’s my list and I say this is the second best SpongeBob Christmas.
He’s so bad at Christmas he managed to decapitate Santa.
This Christmas episode of Goof Troop is another example of Disney using a Christmas special as a series finale. It’s considered by the company to be a stand-alone holiday special so if you go to Goof Troop on Disney+ you won’t find it. I find this extremely annoying since it means this Christmas episode has been missing ever since the service launched and it’s a damn shame. While I felt slightly let down by this one, it’s still a great Christmas episode of a solid cartoon. It’s another tale of Goofy trying to do something right, but he goes way above and beyond what he’s capable of doing when it comes to Christmas and he “goofs” it up. Along for the ride is Pete and his family who thought they were getting away from the Goofs, only to find out they rented the cabin next door for their Christmas too. This one doesn’t dive into the Goofy and Max conflict like A Goofy Movie does or even like the segment from Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas. If the Goofy segment in that were a stand-alone special I’d be curious to see if I would place it higher than this one. The fact that it lacks some of that more emotional material is why I’m not as high on this one as perhaps I thought I’d be, but it’s still an annual tradition in my home.
The first episode of Life with Louie is basically the only one I remember. Well, it and the other Christmas episode since I watched it somewhat recently. This was our introduction to the Anderson family in toon form and it’s a funny and sweet little Christmas episode about a neighborhood coming together to surprise a widow on Christmas. The humorous bit is that she’s actually Jewish, but it’s the thought that counts, right? A lot of the humor comes from the Andy character, Louie’s dad, who is the one most put out by helping the old lady out, but despite his grumbling we get to see he’s actually a good guy. Louie, for his part, provides a dry wit and there’s plenty of physical comedy as well as situational comedy like when a pair of cops mistake Andy for a prowler. The Fox Kids shows produced some good Christmas episodes, and this is one of the better ones.
For a time, Disney’s Frozen was inescapable and the company wanted it that way. The 2013 film was a bit of a surprise hit. I’m sure the company expected it to do well, it just was so big that such success could not be predicted or counted on. To keep the franchise in the cultural zeitgeist, Disney commissioned a pair of theatrical shorts. One was indeed short while the second was certainly not. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure was clearly developed as a network special because that’s what the runtime would indicate, but that didn’t stop Disney from attaching it to the Pixar film Coco. Sure, Mickey’s Christmas Carol had the same runtime and was released in the exact same manner, but it was attached to a re-release of The Rescuers, not a completely new film going for a very different vibe. Some found it annoying, but remove it from that context and this special starring the world’s second most popular snowman is quite delightful. At least, when he’s allowed to be the star, but in order for Olaf to go on his quest to discover new Christmas traditions we first have to deal with the lack of them in the castle. Elsa has to make every problem all about her so she goes back to being mopey and blames herself for their family’s lack of holiday traditions. It’s a stretch and something the special didn’t need. She and Anna could have just said “Oh yeah, we don’t really do anything, do we?” and left it at that for Olaf to make a big deal out of. As a result, this is the one I’m sure to question my placement of on this list for years to come. And like it or not, this is one of the few Christmas specials that receives an annual showing on network television thanks to Disney owning ABC.
Here’s a nice, simple, cartoon from the golden era. It’s a Sylvester and Tweety short where the cat is out to eat the little, yellow, canary, only this time it’s set at Christmas. That’s it. And you know what? That’s all it has to be. Adding Christmas to the usual dynamic is enough to spice up the old formula and make this a fun viewing around the holidays. Tweety is a gift from Santa for Granny, but Sylvester gets to the tree first on Christmas morning so he tries to swap his gift (a rubber mouse) with Granny. She, of course, catches him which sets the stage for more attempts at the bird. Unfortunately for Sylvester, Granny also got a dog from Santa so we get to add a big bulldog into the mix (he’s basically Hector from The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, but I don’t know if he actually had a name in 1952). There aren’t a lot of Christmas cartoons in the Warner library from this era and this one is the best one. We would have to wait many years for Warner to top it.
The rest of his family may let him down, but Taz can always count on the love of his turtle.
51 years to be exact! That’s how many passed between the release of Gift Wrapped and this episode of Taz-Mania, the Fox Kids show starring everyone’s favorite devil from down under. I didn’t watch a lot of this show growing up. I don’t know why, but it just didn’t appeal to me. I found it a little slow as the episodes felt like they went on and on. I think I was just at an age where I was losing interest in comedies and was ready for a show like Batman to come along. When I returned to this one in 2018 I wasn’t expecting much, but damn did I enjoy it! This episode centers on Taz who is really excited for Christmas only no one else seems to share in his enthusiasm. Or, they’re more concerned with their own selfishness. As the title implies, all of the characters just don’t have time for Taz and his Christmas. He interacts with a lot of the cast of the show and they’re all preoccupied with something else. Some try to use Taz for their own needs while others just kind of ignore him. It wares down the devil and we even see him have a sad cry. The town rallies in the end as they realize what’s been going on and it’s a nice moment. Did I cry? I might have, it was seven years ago that I watched this thing. I’d love to watch it some more, but Taz-Mania is a hard show to track down these days because the Warner company absolutely sucks. If you do put in the work to find this one I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.
That does it for today, but even though we just returned to the countdown format tomorrow we’re switching it up again! For the final time in 2025, we will be doing a traditional write-up of a holiday classic. And tomorrow’s entry is unique in that it’s actually the one redo I mentioned way back in November. What special is it that I felt was so important that I needed to expand on what I wrote back in 2014? Well, you’ll have to come back tomorrow and find out.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
Kids who did a lot of their growing up in the 90s likely have fond memories of The Disney Afternoon. There were a lot of programs competing for eyeballs in the weekday afternoon timeslot and Disney put forth a pretty compelling block of animation, even though the actual launch wasn’t that exciting. It included two…
It’s been said that the 80s were pretty wild, and it’s not much of an exaggeration. At least where children’s media is concerned. After years of the government getting involved in what was okay to broadcast to children, the Reagan administration basically said “Eh, kids deserve to have everything and anything marketed towards them.” There…
This year we’re celebrating two things at The Christmas Spot. Well, 3 things if you count Christmas by itself, which I suppose you should. Every fifth day, we’re celebrating the best of the best which is why yesterday was A Charlie Brown Christmas. If you read the feature on December 1st for this year, then…
Today our countdown enters the top 50 when it comes to Christmas specials. If it wasn’t apparent before, it should be now, that we’re well into the cream of the crop. The best of the best. And this collection of specials comes almost entirely from the world of kids or general audience television shows. There’s one outlier which gave me pause on just where to rank that one. If I were to bump it to the next big chunk then it would just be the same situation then as it is today. At any rate, it’s not a big issue as I don’t think it’s a particularly “adult” television show or one that’s raunchy or anything. And when it comes to Christmas episodes of this show it’s one of the most family friendly episodes anyway. We’ll get to that one as I’m actually going to place it at the end of this post, but first we’re going to start things off with a cartoon I tend to forget was part of the Disney Afternoon, but stars a character who is pretty damn popular these days.
This is the kind of chaos one expects out of Stitch.
Lilo & Stitch is a pretty fantastic movie and modern day classic. 2025 also brought with it a live-action remake that’s…fine, but it’s not nearly as good as the original. Stitch proved to be a popular character, and I’m sure kids like Lilo well enough too, so the movie was extended as both an animated series and via direct-to-DVD sequels. The format of the show was like an alien of the week via the many experiments the character Jumba created which have a tendency to get set loose on the world. In this one, Stitch gets introduced to the Christmas holiday, but things go awry when Stitch sees one of these experiments get placed in a Christmas present. This causes him to undertake a Grinch-like plot to round up all of the gifts in town in an effort to find the one with the experiment in it. Even though Stitch was revealed to be able to speak at the end of the movie, he’s not very adept at it in the series. The show also has to find ways to essentially silence him to work around this detail. Things do work out in the end, as they so often do, and the charm of this one comes largely from the characters. They’re just so well developed in the film and the series gives them a chance to go even further with some of the side ones and villains. Plus we get lots of Christmas attire for the regulars and I just found the whole thing pretty charming. It’s a show that came well after I lost interest in the Disney Afternoon and it’s one that makes me feel like I might have missed out on something.
This image of Angelica with a ninja turtle-like smile is the most enduring image from this episode for me.
Rugrats was a pretty big hit for Nickelodeon as one of the original three Nicktoons. Aside from SpongeBob, I would guess it’s been the most successful Nicktoon of all time leading to movies, spin-offs, and even a modern update (that has apparently been wiped from existence in one of those oh so popular tax write-off moves). Since it’s a show that centers around an adolescent cast, it’s no surprise that the subject of Christmas was tackled. And since the protagonists are all babies, it meant they could partake in the festivities while also being pretty ignorant of the whole thing. “The Santa Experience” sees the main cast of families all take a trip into the mountains for a holiday getaway. There, Tommy and Chuckie try to figure out a way to capture this Santa guy, Phil and Lil struggle to come up with a gift for each other, while noted brat Angelica finds herself on Santa’s Naughty List and needs to get off – pronto! There are some small plots in the adult world as well, though the most notable is Chaz and Drew both trying to inject some Santa into the festivities which is what the title refers to. I know I’ve been hard on episodes of children’s shows that play it pretty loose with the whole Santa thing, but with Rugrats I’m less bothered since there’s a clear distinction between the adult and the kid world in the show. And they do fix things with the ending, as so many cartoons often do.
A Nicktoon that came well after Rugrats is Invader Zim and the two could not be further from each other in terms of tone. Invader Zim centers on an alien, Zim, sent by his home world to conquer Earth, only he’s supremely incompetent. He is poorly disguised as a human child, but no one notices save for one boy by the name of Dib. It’s a very cynical show and the Christmas episode puts that on full display by having Zim disguise himself as Santa, poorly, and use his influence to get society to board prison ships where they’ll be sent off to be slaves or something. Only what undoes his scheme is, per usual, his own incompetence. Or I suppose in this instance, his hyper-competence? The Santa suit was built too well and it basically turns Zim into the real deal and Santa isn’t going to enslave all of humanity now is he? The best episodes of Invader Zim show Zim get close to achieving his goals only for things to blow up in his face which helps to make this Christmas installment not just an interesting and offbeat Christmas special, but also a pretty good encapsulation of the larger show.
The original prime time animated sitcom also delivered what is perhaps the origin of what I call The Santa Clause plot. This episode has Fred Flintstone take a part time job as a mall Santa in order to earn more money for the holidays, only he winds up being so good in the role that he attracts the attention of the real deal. Santa doesn’t fall off the roof and die in this one, but he is sick and needs a replacement. Fred is up to the task and together with a pair of elves helps to make sure that the people of the world have a merry Christmas even without Santa. Like a lot of episodes of The Flintstones, it’s a little slow and there’s a liberal use of the old laugh track, but I find the plot so enjoyable that I don’t mind. I was tempted to rank this ahead of the pseudo remake that would follow years later because this one is a bit more tidy, but it also lacks the bells and whistles that make A Flintstone Christmas feel a bit more special.
The rare episode that solves mysteries and rewrites history.
The 2017 edition of DuckTales delivered not one, but two Christmas episodes during its run. This one happens to be the second and sets out to explain why Scrooge McDuck has a vendetta against Santa Claus. He hates the big guy so much that he arms his mansion with numerous traps to keep him out which just confuses his nephews. His surrogate niece, Webby, on the other hand is all-in on the Santa hate. When Santa shows up injured at McDuck Manor it falls on Scrooge and Webby to help the big guy with his deliveries, even if they don’t want to. And during that night we’re treated to numerous flashbacks to show us just why Scrooge dislikes him so much and the revelation is not shocking because it makes perfect sense. Scrooge, a savvy business man who believes in the value of hard work, can’t wrap his head around a guy who just wants to give stuff away for free. Santa’s generosity blows up a business plan they concocted where Scrooge would utilize Santa’s transportation to deliver coal and thus make money. He agrees to help him in the present only because he intends to sabotage him. It’s a particularly villainous look at Scrooge, but things find a way to a happy resolution because a children’s show can’t have its protagonist be at odds with freakin’ Santa Claus. There is a bit of a “lore gone wild” element to this one, as in, did we really need this story told? It doesn’t work in my head, but every time I come back to it I walk away impressed. It’s not as good as “Last Christmas!,” but this is a damn fine entry into the pantheon of Christmas specials which is why it gets the honor of being just inside the top 50 on my list.
Every one is out to steal Christmas these days, though having Brain of Pinky and the Brain fame be involved is hardly much of a surprise. It’s actually not really one at all which is why I had a hard time ranking this one. This episode from the Hulu run of Animaniacs has Brain invent a toy based on Pinky that he intends to use to take over the world in a roundabout way only for the magic of the holiday to cause him to change his mind. It’s very entertaining on its own and there’s some great banter with Pinky, but it doesn’t exist all on its own. The main takeaway for me is this is way too much like the first Christmas special. Even that one involved the use of a Trojan Horse toy that was modeled after the Brain and the magic of Christmas caused him to basically abort his plan. It’s basically the exact same plot save for the toy Brain was a direct way to take over the world while this one was to ruin Christmas and thus make the world more susceptible to Brain’s efforts. The good news is that first Pinky and the Brain Christmas episode is fantastic which is why we haven’t encountered it yet on this countdown. If you’re going to rip yourself off then it makes sense to rip-off one of your best efforts. Sandwiched in the middle is a musical segment where the Warner siblings visit a roided-out Santa to encourage him to do his thing. It’s amusing and probably the best Christmas segment starring the trio going back to the original series, but the majority of this episode centers on Pinky and the Brain. If the original A Pinky and the Brain Christmas didn’t exist, I’d probably have this one ranked higher.
This brat needs to learn the true meaning of Christmas.
Hanna-Barbera has made many contributions to the world of Christmas, but one of the most overlooked is the 90s production The Town Santa Forgot. This one is about a spoiled, selfish, kid by the name of Jeremy Creek who sends Santa a list so long that he assumes the name Jeremy Creek belongs to a town and not some kid. Turns out, there is an actual town by that name that Santa has somehow overlooked all these years so he’s able to visit for the first time and deliver presents. Jeremy ends up with nothing which ticks him off, but when a news broadcast relays what happened he finally has a realization that maybe it is better to give than receive. The special has a fun way of telling the story that helps the rather simple message of the standalone special land a little harder. And it’s narrated by Dick Van Dyke who just turned 100 so happy birthday, Dick! The animation isn’t amazing, but there’s an energy to it that I enjoy. It feels like a precursor to the What a Cartoon era for Hanna-Barbera as it doesn’t really resemble any of their preceding cartoons. It arrived a little late to feel like a true Hanna-Barbera original, but if we’re considering it one then I do have it ranked higher than a lot of their other stuff and that feels appropriate.
The holidays sometime bring about a need to navigate awkward social situations.
We Bare Bears is a fairly lowkey cartoon about cultural assimilation. Driving the point home is we have a group of actual bears trying to fit in with society and the awkwardness that arrives from making social commitments. The bears basically spread themselves too thin at Christmas trying to make it to everyone’s Christmas party, only they prioritize attending the big, popular, one being thrown by someone they don’t even like while spending little time with the people that actually matter to them. Even though there’s an obvious message here and the bears are acting in a semi-selfish manner, it is relatable to find yourself with many social obligations all at the same time. How does one politely decline an invitation? It can happen where you make plans only for a better opportunity to surface later leading to a temptation to break those plans in favor of something else. I know it’s happened to me, though I can’t recall ever going through with breaking my original plans. I have been on the other side and even when the situation is understandable it still really sucks to have a friend basically tell you “I’d rather do something else than spend time with you.” Even though we’re dealing with bears, this one is extremely relatable and it’s also really sweet. The show handles these social settings really well so that even a kid understands what’s going on and it never makes its characters appear unlikable. That’s a hard trick to pull-off with this type of plot, but We Bare Bears manages it very well.
Sam & Max seemed like a bit of an odd fit for Saturday morning TV, but The Adventures of Sam & Max did a fine job of adapting this odd pair for television. Sure, they couldn’t have their guns, but that didn’t stop the cartoon from being able to make prison rape jokes! This is a pretty offbeat Christmas special where the titular duo infiltrate a prison to basically stop a prisoner revolt at Christmas. The Sam & Max brand of humor is on display and surprisingly intact with this show aimed at children. I probably didn’t laugh out loud when I watched this for the first time, but I think it was a chucklefest which took me by surprise. It’s a genuinely funny episode even if it’s meant for kids and if you’re someone who dismissed this version of Sam & Max because it was made for Fox Kids then maybe reconsider that stance.
Bob and his dad have some issues to sort out this Christmas.
Our lone entrant today from the world of adult animation comes courtesy of Bob’s Burgers. Unlike an episode like “Christmas in the Car,” there’s no worry about the Santa thing being spoiled for your kids if you choose to watch this one with them. This is a pretty simple tale about Bob being uncomfortable around his dad as he’s never felt much affection from the guy. Each Christmas brings a Christmas party thrown by Big Bob that Little Bob dreads, but he sucks it up and attends after getting wife Linda to agree on a short visit. Only that goes out the window when it’s apparent that Big Bob is shorthanded at his own restaurant which is where the party is being held forcing Bob into the kitchen with his dad – the last place he wants to be. There’s flashbacks in this one to show us just what happened between the two when Bob refused to be a partner with his dad at the restaurant because their ideas for how to run a restaurant just don’t work well together. All the while, the kids get into all kinds of stuff in the basement trying to find a present for their dad. It’s definitely more of a Christmas episode that just happens to take place at Christmas without necessarily needing it to be Christmas. Since Christmas does sometimes bring about awkward encounters with relatives though, it works. There’s also a really nice portrayal of gay culture in this one that I appreciate. The show didn’t have to include it, but I like that it did. This one is not as funny as other Bob’s Burgers Christmas episodes, but it’s a bit more introspective which makes it more satisfying than some of the other ones. Don’t sleep on it this Christmas.
That does it for today. The next installment of the countdown is coming your way on December 21st which means tomorrow is another traditional installment of an all new (to this website) Christmas special! And it’s one that I think has a lot of fans, and since I’m ranking it at number 43, obviously I think pretty highly of it as well. Just what is it? Well, you’ll have to come back tomorrow to find out!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
If you were a mid-tier comedian in the 90s looking to breakthrough into television then Fox was the network for you. Whether it was via sitcom or cartoon, Fox seemed to think this was a winning strategy which is apparently why comedian Louie Anderson got his own show called Life with Louie. Life with Louie…
Whenever I approach another year of The Christmas Spot I usually have some kind of goal in mind. Maybe one could even think of it as a theme. The past few years I’ve made it a point to highlight some of the best Christmas specials I covered in the past, but felt I had short-changed…
I’m quite surprised to have made it all the way to December 19 without resorting to The Simpsons, American Dad!, Bob’s Burgers, or some other animated sitcom that has an annual, or near annual, Christmas episode. Not that I have been avoiding such shows, and I may turn to one again before this is all…
Today should be a day of 90s cartoons because we’re taking it all the way to 64 – Nintendo 64! The Christmas gods do not agree for not only does today not include any 90s properties, but it doesn’t even include a Nintendo one. It does include a video game turned cartoon and there are some 90’s adjacent stuff, but that’s as far as it goes. It’s also a bit of a mix in terms of demographic. There’s stuff here that’s definitely intended for kids and some stuff that most certainly is not. In fact, I would say this may be the darkest installment yet of the countdown and the lead-off special is doing quite a bit of the heavy lifting there as it just may be the darkest Christmas special I’ve ever taken in.
Moral Orel is a stop-motion animated show that aired on Adult Swim about a good-natured boy named Orel and his quest to live life in God’s image. It’s very much a subversive take on Davey and Goliath, just minus the talking dog. Orel, being a young kid, is completely oblivious to his surroundings in which all of the adults in his life are selfish and miserable and there basically isn’t one genuine person in his life. His father is an abusive alcoholic, his mother a bitter adulterer, and even his priest is a sexual deviant. “The Best Christmas Ever” was actually the show’s premiere, though it was never intended to be. If you caught it in the proper order, the episodes started off as a Davey and Goliath parody with Orel misunderstanding some church teaching and doing the wrong thing leading to a trip to his dad’s study to get taught a lesson. Physically. By the time the show reached this season finale, it just got depressing as his dad slipped further into the bottle and was forced to confront the fact that one of his children isn’t even his. And since Orel overhears the discussion between his parents, he gets the idea that his little brother was conceived immaculately and is actually the second coming of Jesus. In reality, the kid is terrible and his own parents regret not getting an abortion. It all ends with Orel and his brother smashing a nativity scene, because he thinks his Christ-brother is bringing about the Apocalypse, only for his mom to tell him that: He’s right that his dad isn’t his brother’s father, and they’re getting a divorce. Orel tracks his dad down at the local bar where his track coach is hitting on him and Orel comes to the conclusion that this is not the best Christmas ever. He notes there’s still two minutes left though and he has faith in the Lord to turn things around! And that’s how the episode ends which just feels even more bleak. This is definitely a very cynical look at the idyllic Protestant family and not the sort of special that’s for everyone. There’s a bit of an “edgelord” vibe to the humor, but the audacity of it all worked on me and it’s one of those specials I return to just to see if it’s as dark as I remember. And, yeah, it pretty much is. The only thing missing is a suicide joke.
This episode of American Dad! pairs rather well with Moral Orel as it’s another cynical take on Christmas with some sacrilegious displays of violence. It’s also far more lighter in tone due to the more slapstick nature of the show when compared with Moral Orel. In this one, Stan gets passed over as Jesus for his church’s play only for Roger to get the part. When Stan loses it and beats up Roger on camera over the alien’s disrespect towards his religion, he finds himself excommunicated from his church. Lucky for him though, his daughter and her husband just so happened to adopt the antichrist and if Stan can just kill his toddler grandson it will get him back into God’s good graces! It’s quite the farcical Christmas plot with numerous funny moments and some pretty strong animation from the show. It doesn’t advance the overarching Christmas plot the show has with the Smith family and Santa Claus, but it’s fun.
Smiling Friends is a much celebrated animated show in the circles I frequent mostly for its brand of humor and rough animation. It’s the latest in what appears to be cheaply produced animation for Adult Swim that turns into a hit. I confess it’s not as big of a hit with me as it is others. I don’t think it’s bad, but the show is just so damn ugly. I feel like I’ve hit my limit with ugly adult animation – why can’t we get stuff that looks nice? This is another Christmas episode from Adult Swim that’s not exactly packed with feels. Charlie dies while out looking for a Christmas tree with his friends and co-workers only to wander through Hell and find himself face-to-face with Satan. If he helps the guy out, he can go back, and since he’s one of the main characters I don’t think it’s a spoiler to acknowledge that the title of this one is a bald-faced lie. The humor is mostly dark, and even though I called this show ugly, there are some spots in Hell that are pretty inventive and surprised me. As I think about it, I probably should have switched this with Moral Orel, but it hardly matters when we’re talking two positions on a 200 episode countdown. This one fits in with a lot of the other subversive Adult Swim Christmas specials so if that’s something you like then you can easily make yourself a solid marathon of content.
Second Christmas looks pretty sweet, but of course Robin hates it. He’s no fun.
Here’s one that’s a bit more lighthearted. Our second installment of Teen Titans Go! just confronts what we all hate about the holiday – it’s end. To stave off those post Christmas blues, the Titans invent Second Christmas complete with its own Second Santa and customs. It’s basically just good-natured fun, though at the expense of Starfire who is ignorant of Christmas, and no one really learns a lesson or anything. Instead, they all fall victim to a horrible accident when Starfire is denied a Second Christmas miracle and they get to spend much of the following year in a coma which is actually a happy ending because they get to basically skip right to Christmas again! Take that, Arbor Day!
Spectacular Spider-Man was a short-lived animated series that really did an excellent job of condensing a lot of Spider-Man material into something new and fun. Unfortunately, the Marvel acquisition by Disney seemed to kill it as the House of Mouse wasn’t interested in boosting characters it didn’t have film rights to or that were animated on deals outside of their usual reach. Disney would make its own Spider-Man shows and none of them could hold a candle to Spectacular Spider-Man. In this one, Peter tries his luck at courting not one, not two, but three different women and kind of strikes out with all three (Pete, it’s never a good idea to let a woman feel like she’s not your first choice, pal). It ends up being the least of his worries as he’s soon set upon by the show’s version of the Sinister Six. It’s a lot for Peter to deal with, but he’s Spider-Man so you know he’ll figure it out. It’s basically an episode full of action and holiday puns from our hero and it’s pretty entertaining, just not really a self-contained Christmas special. You definitely won’t get as much out of it if you haven’t watched the episodes leading up to it, but even if you haven’t, it’s still the best Christmas episode any Spider-Man show has had up until now.
Chuckie and his dad do not see eye to eye when it comes to Christmas trees.
This Rugrats spin-off arrived when I stopped caring about the franchise. I wish it had come earlier as I think I would have enjoyed it in those early teen years where I was still kind of watching Nickelodeon, but not sure if I should still be. The show surprised me in the little bit of time I spent on it as it took Rugrats, a show about babies going on wacky adventures, and made it a teen drama. I wasn’t sure that could work, but what do you know? It kind of does. And the result isn’t a show as reliant on Tommy. He almost feels like an afterthought, but this is a Chuckie centric episode as he mistakenly steals a Christmas tree and feels horrible about it. There are some inconsequential B-plots as well, but the meat and potatoes is Chuckie trying to do the right thing and finding it difficult. It mostly works out in the end and Chuckie gets to learn a lesson about the importance of family or something and it will leave you feeling pretty good about things. It’s sweet and I was charmed by the conflict between Chuckie and his dad. I considered ranking this one ahead of the Rugrats Christmas episode, but nostalgia kind of won out there.
We already looked at the Christmas episode from the better, more popular X-Men animated series. Now, we’re looking at the better Christmas episode. That other X-Men special is a “so bad it’s good” kind of special while this one is mostly just plain good. It’s a more grounded episode even though it’s all about a guy with actual wings and dudes with laser eyes and such. It’s more teen drama with the orphaned Cyclops and Rogue being left behind by their peers at the X-Mansion for Christmas. While that does kind of suck, it forces them to bond a bit which is good for Rogue who has a crush on Summers that’s unlikely to go anywhere since he’s all about Jean. Since Wolverine was too old in this show to shoehorn into that love triangle I guess Rogue is a decent consolation. The two end up in the city investigating tales of an actual Angel, which is of course just another mutant. It turns into something of an arm’s race as Magneto wants to recruit him, but so do the X-Men, and the two battle over the reluctant mutant until finally he’s allowed to have a say of his own. It’s just a good-natured Christmas special with some nice action tossed in. It’s not as reliant as Spectacular Spider-Man on the audience being up to date on what is happening in the show and basically all you need to know is contained in this one. It also mostly avoids the slapstick elements of the show and plays it straight. There’s a nice little montage at the end showing how the others spend Christmas and there’s that nice touch of melancholy present in so many Christmas episodes and it’s just the right amount. If you thought the older X-Men Christmas episode was just too silly, this one will likely please you more.
It just wouldn’t be Xmas without a brutal rampage!
Enough of that sentimental bull crap, let’s cause some mayhem! Futurama is unique in that it turned Santa into a villain. Well, it was unique until American Dad! and Teen Titans Go! came along, but their murderous robot Santa is still his own brand. In the follow-up to the first Xmas special, the Planet Express crew is tasked with finally putting an end to Santa’s murderous rampage and they’re actually successful! A problem arises when they take it one step further and have Bender serve as a new Santa, one that will actually deliver presents to all the good girls and boys. After generations of growing up with an evil Santa, the people of Earth aren’t so willing to accept this reformed Santa and Bender is put through the ringer. He’s eventually jailed and sentenced to death for being Santa and the only way to save him is to free the real Robot Santa whom the crew trapped in the ice of Neptune. Do you believe in Xmas miracles? Well your faith is rewarded! Robot Santa is freed and saves Bender and the two are able to inflict carnage and mayhem on the world just as Jesus intended. Merry Xmas everyone!
Who could forget such classic characters as these?
If you’re a show that likes to do an annual Christmas episode and you’re on for many seasons, chances are you’ll eventually wind up doing a musical. I wouldn’t call this episode of American Dad! a full blown musical, but it has multiple musical numbers most of which are pretty damn fun (Haley’s is not though, that one sucks). In this episode, we get to further the plot of Santa and the Smiths by having Stan accidentally free the demon of Christmas, Krampus, whom his father had trapped in a copper pot many years ago. Krampus immediately kidnaps Stan’s bratty son, Steve, and demands he send his father to save him. Stan’s dad is a jerk though and ditches him so Stan has to seek the aid of Santa himself. The two form an unlikely alliance and go after Steve who is basically in a parody of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast where he gradually warms up to Krampus and becomes a better kid. There’s a wild battle to end things and a new part of the lore is established in the process. It’s a rewarding episode in that respect for longtime viewers of American Dad!, but for anyone else it’s just an absurd Christmas story that will probably elicit some laughter.
Is it possible for the Devil himself to get on Santa’s Nice List?
This second Christmas episode of The Cuphead Show! dares to ask the question “What does Satan want for Christmas?” Turns out it’s a choo choo as this show’s version of the Devil tries to get onto Santa’s Nice List in order to get what he wants, but the only way for him to do so is to make a deal with the big man and take his place! The Devil as Santa? That’s a worthwhile spin on what is essentially a take on The Santa Clause and the end result is pretty funny. It barely features the titular character of Cuphead, but that’s okay because the Devil is a great character on his own. It’s also really well animated and just looks fantastic for a modern piece of animation. It’s also much longer than a typical episode of The Cuphead Show!, but it doesn’t feel bloated. I was really entertained by it and it’s snuck onto my annual viewing list as a result.
If you can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
If you watched a lot of cartoons in the 80s and 90s then you probably remember Nelvana. Their cartoons, like many others, would end with their own production logo which was a polar bear, I think. It was all one color and white and since Nelvana is Canadian it would certainly make a lot of…
This year, I’ve taken some time out to watch Christmas episodes of shows I’m pretty unfamiliar with. This is yet another one of those posts, only with this show I did make an attempt to get into it. A mild one. We Bare Bears is a show created by Daniel Chong that aired on Cartoon…
Hugh Harman was one of the early stars in the field of animation. In fact, we talked about one of his shorts already this year, but perhaps his most famous and most celebrated is the 1939 anti-war film Peace on Earth. According to Harman, the short subject was nominated for The Nobel Peace Prize, but…
I’ve been pointing out quite a bit as we move along through this countdown how I like to group similar shows together. I don’t want to go from The Smurfs to Beavis and Butt-Head if I can help it. Well, sometimes I can’t help it. Today is a little bit of a mix of adult shows and kid’s shows. I wouldn’t consider any of the children’s stuff to be particularly wholesome or anything, but could (or should) an 8 year old watch everything on today’s list? Probably not. It is a very Fox heavy lineup though of both Saturday morning and primetime stuff which is not by design, but kind of interesting to me. And these Christmas episodes are also interesting to me and most of them are pretty good. We also have some more tumblers from my very first list which is one of those things that’s going to happen again. A lot has changed since that first list ten years ago.
Rick and Morty seems like an odd fit for Christmas, which is why it was so surprising to see the show go to that well so early in its first season. One would definitely expect the show to have a cynical take on the holiday, but that’s not really the case. Christmas is just a framing device for this episode and excuse for Jerry’s parents to show up for a nice, family, get-together. They just happen to bring along their new playmate. Yup, Jerry’s parents are in what the kid’s call a “thrupple” these days where Jerry’s dad likes to watch from the closet (often wearing a Superman costume) while Jerry’s elderly mom makes love to a young, African American, gentlemen. And the rest of the family enjoys watching Jerry squirm. Meanwhile, Rick is busy building an amusement park inside the guts of a homeless man who just so happens to be dressed as Santa. Crazy science things happen and soon it’s raining blood over all of North America. Yeah, it’s a weird turn. This is a B-tier episode of the show. It finds humor in putting the characters in awkward positions, but it’s certainly different and a unique addition to the Christmas special database.
Bob’s Burgers loves to churn out holiday themed episodes year in and year out. The show’s meat and potatoes is Thanksgiving as the writers have kind of staked their claim to that holiday, but the show’s collection of Christmas episodes is strong as well. “The Bleakening” is a really interesting one as it’s a two-part episode with a mystery plot, not really the sort of thing the show is known for. The second part especially has a suspense/horror vibe to it as the family tries to figure out who stole a mini Christmas tree from their restaurant which definitely gives this one a unique vibe. It’s only weakness is the plot probably isn’t dense enough to sustain the double-episode run length. It’s not a slog or anything, but the ending is a bit anticlimactic and feels a little dragged out. Not the show’s best Christmas episode, but a worthwhile watch each year.
The Simpsons did a weird thing in 2020 when it decided to end Season 31 with a Christmas episode. If you know anything about network TV, then you know seasons typically end in May which is pretty far removed from the Christmas holiday season – which is pretty damn long as-is. Basically what happened is Carolyn Omine, longtime writer on the series, wanted to do an episode about the family dog, Santa’s Little Helper, and how do you separate a character with that name from Christmas? There was some talk of holding it over until the next season to air at Christmas, but that didn’t happen. Maybe COVID stuff made that a no-go or the network just said “Screw it” and aired the finished episode when it was ready. Either way, this is a solid examination of the pooch that answers some questions. Were they necessarily pressing questions? No, but it’s fine. There’s a B plot of sorts that doesn’t work for me, but the episode makes up for that in other ways. I just wish showrunner Al Jean stayed true to his word and let Santa’s Little Helper’s mom become a permanent member of the family (I don’t think she’s been seen or heard from since).
Cuphead and Mugman will risk life and limb for a tree.
For what I assume is The Cuphead Show‘s final season there was not one, but two, Christmas episodes. This is the one that came first and it’s a typical short subject episode where Cuphead and Mugman are entrusted for the first time to secure a Christmas tree. They basically screw it up by first trying to bargain too hard with the only tree guy in town and then by trying to cut down their own. The show is a throwback to old style shorts and the pacing and gags are very much in line with that. How many of those old Warner cartoons had characters nearly disemboweled in a saw mill? That’s practically what they’re for! It’s a great looking show and there’s some solid laughs and a good ending to be found. I like the longer special that follows more, but this one is pretty great too.
The first Christmas episode of Family Guy is still the show’s best. I liked it so much ten years ago that I ranked it all the way up at number 14 overall! That was clearly me overrating something I had watched a lot of in college, but I still think this is a good episode. It definitely has some of that old Family Guy DNA in it where it’s mostly a Simpsons knock-off, but with an even dumber father character and a liberal use of cutaway gags. In this one, Peter screws up and donates all of the Christmas presents to charity so the family has to brave the mall on Christmas Eve to rebuy everything. That’s one area where it does do things perhaps different from what The Simpsons would do as the family isn’t in financial ruin by losing all of those gifts, but they do end up taking Lois for granted and she goes berserk and runs amok in downtown Quahog. It is a relatable premise if you’re one of the adults who makes Christmas “go” each year. And especially so when your kids are at that age where they know how everything is supposed to go, but they don’t actually do anything to help out. It’s mostly funny and they even manage to shoehorn some Santa stuff in there via Stewie. This is the only Family Guy Christmas episode on my watch list each year, though “Road to the North Pole” is close. I just tend to fall asleep during that one since it’s a double length episode (which is why I never got around to covering it).
The other Animaniacs Christmas episode from 1993 is one I’m a little torn on. It’s hard to rank because it is pretty funny, the animation is superb, but it relies on some bad tropes of the Christmas special. I’m talking A Christmas Carol and too many fruit cake jokes. Fruit cake jokes are perhaps my personal pet peeve. Yeah, I think the holiday treat is pretty terrible, but I’m sick of hearing about it. No one gives that stuff out anymore. This episode puts the CEO of Warner Bros, the fictional Thaddeus Plotz, in the role of Scrooge. In the role of Bob Cratchit is Ralph, the dim-witted security guard whom Plotz fires at Christmas. Slappy Squirrel gets to play Marley while your trusty Warner siblings serve as the ghosts. The humor is your typical brand of Animaniacs humor which is a mix of topical, pop culture references, and old school gags. There’s no real twist which is perhaps the biggest criticism one could levy against this one. Well, if there is a twist it’s that Plotz is clearly acting out of kindness in the end because he fears damnation and figures he can go back to being a jerk on Boxing Day. The cartoon takes up nearly the entire length of the episode, but there is a “We Three Kings” cartoon short that follows for those who prefer a more secular celebration. It has some gag lines, but mostly plays it straight.
You may not realize it right now, Santa, but you’re actually in pretty good hands with Eek. Or should I say paws?
Eek the Cat received quite a bit of attention from Fox back in the day and was sort of like a mascot for the kid’s programming block Fox Kids. He hasn’t had much staying power over the years, but he did contribute a couple of Christmas specials to the scene and both are pretty solid with this first one being the better of the two. In it, Santa’s reindeer go on strike and the big guy needs help delivering presents. Meanwhile, Eek’s girlfriend’s dog, Sharky, who hates Eek and never misses a chance to maul him, is depressed and misses his family. Eek vows to help out Sharky because that’s what Eek does – he is an eternal optimist who always does the right thing even if it means tremendous pain for him. They hook up with a scab reindeer named Elmo and basically have to be the elves, reindeer, and Santa in order to deliver Christmas to the world and reunite Sharkey with his family. There’s a lot of physical humor and even some dark stuff (the special ends with Eek about to become Christmas dinner) while also just some strange things like a cameo by the Barbi Twins who were basically famous for being in Playboy. And for being twins. That was Fox though and it wasn’t for everyone, but it sure was unique.
Samurai Pizza Cats is a weird show. It’s sort of like Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers in that it was imported from Japan and then “Americanized.” Only with an animated show like this one, there was no room for new shots or anything so it was just given the weirdest dub imaginable. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had been popular so the new title the show was given was an obvious play on that and since the characters did work in a pizzeria it wasn’t entirely out of left field. The actual show is more like a goofy version of Ronin Warriors, but with cats. There’s not much plot here. The main villain, Big Cheese, impersonates Santa and causes some mischief so the heroes go out and take care of business. It’s very comedic and made even more so by the dub. I’ve never sought out an undubbed version of this show, but I assume it too was fairly comedic in nature as well. The animation is fun and it’s the sort of offbeat Christmas special that feels quite refreshing among more traditional options. If you’re into anime, then it’s definitely worth a look.
Not the Santa you want to see coming down your chimney.
What’s this? A live-action sitcom? Yes, I never set out to make my list exclusively animation, but it did mostly happen that way. There’s just way more Christmas cartoons out there and I tend to love cartoons. When it comes to live-action it’s mostly traditional sitcom stuff which, for me, never ages particularly well. There isn’t one sitcom I used to watch in the 80s or 90s with a Christmas episode I seek out each year. Well, with one exception, and it’s this one. Married…with Children was the first show I can remember my mom telling me she didn’t like me watching, and I can see why. She never stopped me from watching it, but she didn’t like it and hoped I just wouldn’t watch it on my own because of that. She was wrong. It is pretty sleezy and it was the type of show Fox was staking its reputation on. The Bundy family has little love for one another. The husband is miserable, the wife selfish and lazy, the daughter an airhead, and the boy basically spends all of his time lusting after women and jerking off. In this one, we see how shitty Christmas is for the Bundy family because they’re poor and because patriarch Al just doesn’t care to make an effort. Then a mall stunt goes wrong and a parachuting Santa lands in their backyard dead. It’s a plot that could only happen with this show. And even though Al Bundy is a pretty loathsome individual, he does at least try to assuage the kids in the neighborhood that Santa Claus is fine and the family has a Merry Christmas in the end when they discover the sack of mall gift certificates the now deceased Santa was supposed to give out. It’s pretty dark, but also pretty funny.
The Wrigley family yearns for Christmas every day.
Back to back live-action shows – this will not happen again in the countdown. I think this is actually the end of the live-action stuff, unless you include puppets in there. Nickelodeon had a ton of unique programming in the 90s and few shows sum up the vibe of the network like The Adventures of Pete & Pete. It’s just two brothers, both named Pete, and their day-to-day lives in an absurd world. It borders on cartoonish, but usually doesn’t quite go that far, especially in these later episodes where Artie is no longer around. In the Christmas episode, Young Pete refuses to give up on Christmas. Why does it have to go away when it’s so good? The interesting thing is, despite the fact that he’s a kid, he’s not hung up on the whole presents thing. He’s not looking to score a new gift every day, he just likes the overall feeling of the season. And standing in his way is the garbage man. He wants those trees, but Pete needs to rally the neighborhood to withhold them. Things get crazy as there’s a garbage strike and eventually people start to crack. Pete gives in since everyone else does, but then a final act of Christmas spirit thaws the garbageman’s heart and the magic of Christmas lives just a bit longer. It’s cute and fun and as someone who hates saying goodbye to Christmas every year I can totally empathize with Little Pete. If only we could feel that way the whole year round – wouldn’t we all be a bit nicer? Big Pete, via narration, claims the neighborhood was a nicer place after that even if they did eventually put Christmas away and that’s certainly a nice way to end the episode and today’s entry.
If you can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
We’ve taken a look at a lot of animated sitcoms this year and so far they’ve all been repeat visitors to The Christmas Spot. It feels like it’s time for something new, though it has a very familiar feel. The Cleveland Show is a 2009 spin-off of Family Guy created by Seth MacFarlane, Richard Appel,…
It was just over a week ago that we took a look at the Christmas episode of The Looney Tunes Show. That show featured the cast of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies in an animated sitcom and it was…okay. It definitely didn’t feel like Warner stumbled onto something with that idea and the search for a worthwhile…
Yesterday, we talked about South Park and its very first holiday special from the late 90s and today we’re talking about the Trey Parker/Matt Stone of the 2010s – Justin Roiland. Roiland was able to hook-up with Dan Harmon in the mid-2000s which put him on the path to comedy writer and actor, usually of…
Yesterday’s installment of the countdown trended more adult. Lots of cartoons not for the kids, but today’s list definitely is more general audience. I like the spread today. It’s dominated by animation, as it so often is, but we also have a live-action, puppet, type show. We have weekend cartoons, and week day cartoons. There’s shows from Disney, shows from Warner Bros and it’s almost all entirely dominated by 90s properties. I haven’t really been keeping tabs on the decades as I go through this list, but it makes sense that the 90s would be heavily represented all throughout. That’s when cable really exploded and we had a whole bunch of cartoons with massive episode orders and throwing a Christmas one into that mass of stuff sure makes things a whole lot easier. Networks originally were said to dislike holiday episodes, but I think they changed their tune when they realized they could program an entire day, or even week, around a holiday like Christmas or Halloween. Even the prime time shows tended to do this sort of thing. Anyway, I feel like I’ve talked about all of this before so let’s cut the preamble and get to number 93:
It pretty much looks like Christmas, but with a fridge instead of a tree.
Dinosaurs was a real treat to come back to when Disney+ launched a few years ago. I watched it as a kid when it was airing on ABC, but kind of lost track of it. I think it got shuffled around some, or maybe my family latched onto something else in the same timeslot. I don’t know. What I do know is the show is great. It holds up very well in basically all respects. The satire it went for is still biting and relevant today, which is both a good and bad thing. Dinosaurs never technically did air a Christmas episode, but instead we got “Refrigerator Day” which is basically their version of Christmas. Since there is apparently no dinosaur Jesus, they worship at the altar of the refrigerator which changed their lives so completely. It’s a society that’s very consumer-driven, if you couldn’t tell. Despite that, the plot is pretty conventional and, for some, may be a tad too much like The Simpsons since Earl’s horrible boss foregoes Christmas bonuses and things get tight for the Sinclair family. However, they stumble upon a million dollar idea, the concept of store returns, and in exchange for making a huge company even more wealthy they get a few measly gifts and their repossessed appliance is returned. It’s a bit dark, but pretty funny. If you haven’t checked out Dinosaurs in a long time then do yourself a favor and go back to it. I promise you, it’s not as dominated by the baby character as you may remember.
It’s a weird environment for Bugs and pals, but it also kind of works?
The Looney Tunes Show is perhaps a more interesting concept than show, but the little I’ve seen is honestly not bad. It’s basically a sitcom starring the cast of Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny is dating Lola Bunny and is roommates with Daffy. Foghorn Leghorn is the mayor, and Yosemite Sam is more like a rich Texas guy than an outlaw. This Christmas episode of the show involves Lola directing a play, the titular A Christmas Carol, while Foghorn and Daffy head to the North Pole to try and find a way to make their local climate cooler. Their adventure is a bit more madcap, while the story with the play is more grounded. Lola turns out to be a very interesting and funny character. She’s very self-confident without any reason to be and a lot of the characters in her orbit are too polite to tell her when she’s making a bad decision. The play is basically terrible and goes way off the rails, but also the real Santa shows up for it which I honestly didn’t expect. I can’t figure out what the audience was supposed to be for this show, but I do know I was entertained by this more than I was the conventional Looney Tunes Christmas specials and that sure surprised me. It’s still not the best Looney Tunes Christmas special though.
The folks over at Warner Bros. got a lot of mileage out of this bit.
Our second look at The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries is the stronger of the two Christmas episodes. It’s a sort-of parody of It’s a Wonderful Life, only instead of focusing on the George Bailey character it centers on a stand-in for his drunk uncle. If you’ve never seen the movie, what sets the plot in motion is George’s uncle Billy losing a deposit of money that their savings and loan business was to make that night. Essentially, they lost the money of a bunch of people and would have probably been arrested for theft or misappropriation or something. For this cartoon, Granny and her animals are going to help her brother find the money he lost by retracing his steps from the prior night. They do a solid job of tiptoeing around the whole alcoholic aspect of the Uncle Billy character to keep things PG, and we do get a Potter stand-in to act as the villain. There are some solid gags throughout and none of the characters really dominate the episode, which is a full-length one as opposed to the half-length one we looked at days ago. It will amuse you if you’re familiar with the movie, but also you don’t have to be in order to be entertained. And it even one-ups the movie by having the Potter stand-in actually face some consequences for his thievery.
It’s kind of weird that they can’t share the same tree.
The Nicktoons tended to have solid Christmas episodes, few great ones, but most of them are fine. CatDog was one I had ignored for a long time because I simply wasn’t watching Nickelodeon when it was airing. I knew it had a Christmas episode and it was on my list for years until I finally sat down and watched it just a year ago. And you know what? It’s fine. I liked it more than I expected and I’m even ranking it ahead of shows I did watch a ton of like Doug and The Ren & Stimpy Show. I’m not elevating it to the level of Rocko’s Modern Life or even Rugrats, but this episode is fun enough. It’s almost a little like Mickey’s Good Deed in that CatDog essentially sells itself to a wealthy family as a Christmas present, but then has second thoughts. It’s the Christmas special that taught us being a whore isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Everything works out though and even the bratty kid that bought them comes around. It has a pretty straight ending where everyone learns something, but it’s not too syrupy sweet or anything. If you’re like me and didn’t really give CatDog much of a chance then you may want to reconsider this Christmas.
I still can’t believe I enjoyed an episode of Bonkers more than Darkwing Duck – and a Christmas one at that! Bonkers is the character no one wanted. He should have been Roger Rabbit, but that just wasn’t possible so we got this weird bobcat character. At least he’s better than Bubsy. This episode is a solid one though and it actually doesn’t feature a ton of the titular character. It’s centered more on his partner Lucky and an amnesiac Santa Claus. Poor Santa got knocked out of the sky and stuck with the character Fall Apart. Since no one can find him, the elves turn to the police and Lucky is chosen to basically be a stand-in. His motivation to help out is his daughter’s belief in Santa Claus. Pretty conventional stuff, but it all wraps up nicely. The animation is also gorgeous as it often is for the Disney Afternoon and the antics between Fall Apart and “Jim” are pretty funny. This also is just a fun world and the premise of the show is terrific, it just rarely came together to form a cohesive half hour of entertainment. For Christmas though, it nailed it.
Maybe this is why Batman doesn’t seem to like Christmas?
This Christmas episode of Batman: The Animated Series is fine. It’s funny, the Joker is a good villain for this type of thing, and I usually watch it every year. It’s also an episode that I just wish was better and that’s because of the show it hails from. Batman is the greatest superhero show to ever come around. I say that as a lover of X-Men, but the quality was just so much better. The writing was tighter and the budget greater so it looks terrific. It also helps that the cast was small and that’s one reason why I just can’t get into shows like Justice League following this one. This episode is a fairly standard Joker plot where he’s kidnapped some people and there’s a bomb or something. It just happens to be at Christmas so we get some Christmas puns and festive attire out of the Joker. It unfortunately doesn’t look as good as some episodes and there’s some awkward shots in here. Maybe it was rushed so there was no danger of missing the holiday? I don’t know, I just know it’s a pretty even episode of Batman, but not one of the show’s best.
You just know they’re going to spoof some holiday classics.
Batman’s network-mates the Tiny Toons got to make a contribution to Christmas. Unlike the more seasoned Sylvester and Tweety, their It’s a Wonderful Life parody mostly plays it straight. In the role of George is Buster Bunny who is questioning his own worth. Not to the degree that George was, but maybe he’s just not cut out for the life he wants? Through the magic of his guardian rabbit, Harvey, Buster is going to see what life would be like had he never been on Tiny Toons. Plucky is the star, Montana Max owns the Looniversity, and Babs is a humorless solo act. Naturally, Buster has a revelation and has his life restored where he’s able to help the other toons put on an entertaining Christmas show. It doesn’t do anything to upend the framing device, but the humor of Tiny Toons is able to carry this one. Tiny Toon Adventures is a show I can only handle in small doses, but when done well it’s usually pretty rewarding. This one is animated well and there’s some easy Christmas special gags to be found as well which are real crowd pleasers. I tend to lose track of this one among the many other Warner Bros. Christmas episodes and specials, but it’s worth returning to.
TaleSpin, like Bonkers, is another Disney Afternoon show I didn’t really care for in the moment, but it has a good Christmas episode. This one centers around the child character Molly, who is the daughter of Baloo’s boss, Rebecca. She’s having a bit of a Christmas crisis where her belief in Santa Claus is in doubt and it’s mostly all because of Baloo. He, with the help of Louie, tries to stage a North Pole to trick Molly into believing, but when Louie’s bar is closed for way too long on Christmas Eve the local drunks overrun the place and blow the whole thing. Now, this episode does fly too close to the sun for me when it comes to whether or not Santa Claus is real. I don’t particularly like it when a show aimed at young children places too much doubt on his existence, but they do rectify it at the end (as if there was any doubt). And that’s really my only complaint with the episode. It otherwise is pretty entertaining and it’s very well animated and heartbroken Molly worked on me so when her moment of triumph came it also affected me in much the same way. TaleSpin isn’t reinventing the wheel when it comes to Christmas episodes, but it brings the feels.
And that’s not even close to capturing the whole Anderson family.
Life with Louie is one of those forgotten Fox Kids shows. The network never celebrated its works like a Disney or a Nickelodeon would. They kind of just paid for them for the moment, then sold them off when it no longer suited them. As such, I think this show is owned by Disney who bought most of Fox Kids if not all. The company kind of treated most of these shows the same way Fox did using them to pad out expanded, digital, cable channels until it was no longer profitable. Some shows saw DVD release, and many did not. Life with Louie was supposed to according to series creator Louie Anderson, but it never happened. It’s too bad because Life with Louie is a sweet coming of age cartoon. There’s not a ton of stuff like that, especially from the 90s, and it managed to be plenty funny too. In this Christmas episode, Louie basically finds out a kid he thinks is the greatest is actually an orphan and it forces him to reexamine his own relationship with his family. It’s all heartwarming stuff and we get to see Louie’s dad be forced to play Santa which is where a lot of the comedy comes from. I prefer the first Christmas episode from this show more, but this is a worthy (if unexpected) follow-up.
Sing it with me, “It’s time for Animaniacs!” Yes, the first of three entries for the series is “‘Twas the Day Before Christmas.” In 1993, Animaniacs did the odd thing of releasing two Christmas episodes. I guess when you’re a weekday afternoon program you can afford to do that. It also helps that Animaniacs was a pretty large ensemble so giving everyone their own Christmas arc was just not possible in a single half hour episode. Maybe they first envisioned an hour long prime time affair? I don’t know, but this is the lesser of the two despite the other one being a parody of A Christmas Carol. I know – shocking! And the main segment is basically designed to squeeze most of the cast into one short as Aunt Slappy relays the story about the day before Christmas on the Warner lot. It’s the strongest segment across both specials, but it’s not very substantial since its just Slappy reading a parody of A Visit From Saint Nicholas with some funny stuff animated to it. The second segment is Chicken Boo who is playing a mall Santa. One kid sees the character for what it is, a chicken, but no one else does and he freaks out. It’s pretty damn funny, but also brief. The third segment is just the Warners in a toy store after hours where the toys come to life. It’s pretty weak and drags this one down, but it’s not terrible. It’s still an entertaining 25 minutes and most of these characters work best in quick bursts anyway, but there’s better stuff ahead. Especially for a couple of laboratory mice.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
When it comes to Christmas themed cartoons featuring Popeye, I’ve somehow managed to work backwards. We’ve looked at two previous Popeye cartoons that center around the holiday, but today’s Christmas short is Popeye’s very first. It comes to us all the way from 1933 where it premiered as just the fourth Popeye cartoon. I don’t…
Today we continue our lookback at the best holiday specials ever sent to television and today’s subject is everyone’s favorite pair of Gen X deadbeats Beavis and Butt-Head. Beavis and Butt-Head were created by Mike Judge and the pair got its start on MTV’s Liquid Television in 1992. There they were a cruel, destructive, pair…
Today we are continuing our look back at the best of the best when it comes to Christmas specials and today’s entrant comes from the quiet, mountain, town of South Park. South Park burst onto the scene in 1997 and basically transformed the Comedy Central network from the get-go. The show about four foul-mouthed kids…
We’ve got another 11 special slot for you today. After all, it is the season of giving, is it not? And once again, we’re mostly sticking to the land of children’s fair or G-Rated content. In fact, our most aggressively G-rated special leads things off today.
I detailed in the write-up for this one that I basically have a “No Preschool” shows rule when I do this and that’s because that’s a genre that is very specialized. It’s not that adult comedy isn’t, but preschool might be the only genre that really can’t entertain a demographic other than its intended one. However, one show rises above them all: Bluey. I know many adults who adore the Australian import and her canine family – I’m married to one of them. The show is charming and clever and it manages to impart worthwhile life lessons without feeling too formulaic. The adults are incredibly patient with their children and always down to play making them seem like the idealized version of a parental figure. Unfortunately for our purposes, the Christmas episodes aren’t the best. This one unfortunately is a bit formulaic as Bluey is wronged by her toddler aged cousin and basically seeks revenge by hurting her feelings. Still, there’s some fun stuff and I really like the food coma impacted adults. Bluey might make the parents play like kids, but it’s also not afraid to show them as adults.
Pokémon may not be as popular as it was in the late 90s and early 2000s, but it’s still plenty relevant. The show, in its various forms, number hundreds of episodes and yet this Christmas episode from 1999 is one of the harder to view today. That’s all due to the presence of Jynx, the pocket monster who resembles a character in blackface. Even though she’s been recolored to deemphasize that, this episode still remains “lost.” Is that a big deal? Only if you really like Christmas episodes. In this one, Ash and his pals wind up at Santa’s village and need to help him out and thwart Team Rocket in the process. There’s a bit of a B plot with Jessie and her connection with Christmas, but it’s nothing profound. It’s a pretty okay episode of TV with some interesting lore (that I think the show dropped) if you’re a Pokémon fan.
It still blows my mind that the 1987 iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never tackled Christmas. There was no Christmas episode, no Christmas themed action figures, nothing. The 1991 movie The Secret of the Ooze got a Christmas-themed poster to help sell VHS copies of the movie which feels like the closest thing we got. We really should have had a mutant reindeer or something in the Playmates line. Anyway, this holiday episode comes from the 2003 series and it remains the only Christmas episode any TMNT cartoon has featured – which is perhaps even more insane. It’s based on the Michelangelo one-shot from Mirage Studios and features a simple plot where Mikey thwarts a Christmas robbery and also adopts an adorable kitten. Klunk is the original ice cream kitty. The issue was adapted for the show and it’s pretty faithful. The only major change is that while Mikey is out doing stuff the rest of the gang is back at the lair hosting a bunch of friends they’ve made throughout the show. It’s solid, nothing spectacular or revolutionary, and it does feature some nice Christmas outfits during the final scene that I’d love to see in action figure form. At least in 2025, the Christmas drought comes to an end for TMNT with the theatrical short Chrome Alone 2: Lost in New Jersey. It’s from the current version of the franchise and is attached to a new SpongeBob movie opening on the 19th. Hopefully, it can be viewed easily without seeing that movie.
At least it gives Disney a new look to sell as a doll for Belle.
In 2017 I had the crazy idea to dedicate one of my write-ups to a movie – what was I thinking?! If I had to guess, I was just curious if this direct-to-video midquel for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was any good. The actual movie is one of my wife’s favorites so it was something we could check out together. And it’s okay. Honestly, most of the direct-to-video Disney stuff I’ve seen has been perfectly fine. Not on the level of the theatrical output, but mostly entertaining. It doesn’t look as good, naturally, and features some regrettable CG that hasn’t aged well, but it tells a decent Christmas story that mostly fits into the movie without creating too many obvious plot holes. And it has Tim Curry who is wonderful in everything. Honestly, if you’re able to separate this from its theatrical better then it’s perfectly fine. That’s just an admittedly difficult thing to do if you’ve already seen it a bunch.
The Disney show that asked “Do you want to build a snowman?” way before Anna.
Interesting that we wind up at The Weekenders a mere three spots ahead of Pokémon. That’s because the legacy of this show seems to be that it temporarily dethroned Pokémon as the Saturday morning ratings king. I honestly don’t really know why. The Weekenders isn’t a bad show or anything, it’s just a bit of a low energy one which feels a bit out of place for Saturday morning. Then again, it’s from ABC which always had the low energy Saturday morning shows. It was like their specialty or something. I was a Fox Kids kid so I didn’t watch much of the stuff on ABC and by the time this show was airing I wasn’t awake on Saturday morning anyway. This one is fine though. It does the thing where it gathers a bunch of kids from different backgrounds, gives a snapshot of their holiday experience, and also sneaks in one wacky adventure that mostly goes wrong. I don’t like the look of this one at all, but the kids are well represented and feel authentic. It’s an emotionally mature cartoon, whether or not that’s something you like is more subjective than anything.
The Christmas special where Nickelodeon tortures a kid and his dog.
Interestingly enough, this leads us to Doug. Doug was the quiet Nicktoon. It’s grounded, to a point, but has its own cartoon traits to distinguish it from live-action. And most of those traits rest with the dog, Porkchop, who is the subject of “Doug’s Christmas Story.” Porkchop is a bit like Scooby Doo, though without the talking. He gets accused of attacking one of the kids in town which is preposterous for all regular viewers of the show, but it gets taken very seriously. We basically see the titular Doug imagine his dog getting put down and it’s made rather apparent that euthanasia is on the table for old Porkchop. It’s a humorless Christmas special that’s rather weighty as a result. And that’s fine as long as the show does the plot justice. As far as that goes, the results are a bit mixed. It loses me in the final act, but it’s not bad and a sad story about a dog at Christmas is sure to bring about some Christmas feels.
I didn’t know how to separate these two, so I didn’t! This episode comes from Disney’s take on Doug which is largely viewed as inferior to the Nickelodeon years. I mostly subscribe to that notion, but I honestly didn’t keep up with the Disney version. I am by no means the authority on Doug, but I did enjoy this episode just a little more than the first one. The plot is Doug’s family is preparing for a new baby and that basically consumes his parents at Christmas time. His dad is apparently afraid to leave the house or has money concerns with a new kid on the way so the Funnie family won’t be buying anything or doing anything this Christmas. Doug hates this lack of Christmas spirit so he and Porkchop vow to have their own, secret, Christmas up in his room. It honestly takes up only a few minutes of the episode’s duration as most is devoted to Doug navigating the holiday and then the final act is all about the baby. It’s charming though and the final act hits better than the first Christmas special.
The DC Animated Universe has made a few attempts at Christmas episodes, but I don’t think any are really a home run. This is the one from the ensemble show which brings its own challenges, but also opportunity to view the holiday through different perspectives. Writer Paul Dini attempts that with “Comfort and Joy” and the results are just decent as opposed to a Christmas classic. I think I enjoyed the more offbeat plot between Flash and Ultra-Humanite the most. It had some solid humor and I like the depiction of Ultra-Humanite. The Martian Manhunter plot is the one that I think the episode wants us to be moved by, but it’s pretty conventional “Guy goes to small town and finds the Christmas spirit,” plot. It’s fine, but it’s been done before. And the Hawkgirl and Green Lantern plot is a waste of time. No Batman and no Wonder Woman so if you wanted to see them you were let down. Considering Batman has already taken a go at Christmas, it’s not a big loss. I guess I would have liked to see what Wonder Woman was up to, but at least she wasn’t shoehorned into one of the other plots which were crowded enough.
If you want a brief, Christmas, short that looks pretty cozy then have I got the cartoon for you. Bedtime for Sniffles is a Chuck Jones directed Warner Bros. cartoon starring the mouse in his cute days. Sniffles would evolve into more of a pest since his cartoons weren’t funny enough, but here he’s just a sweet character trying to stay awake on Christmas Eve. There’s some visual humor, but nothing outlandish. This is Jones really trying to audition for Disney as the look of this one is very evocative of a Mickey Mouse short with realistic and well-detailed backgrounds and a character that emotes in the cutest way possible. It’s harmless fluff and better than a lot of other Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies Christmas specials.
Bobby – slamming doors in the face of carolers since 1995.
More cutesy stuff as we’re onto the Fox Kids series Bobby’s World. This was a Howie Mandel creation back when it felt like a lot of comedians were getting opportunities in television. We had Camp Candy, Little Rosie, and Life with Louie among others. Bobby’s World felt like an early breakout hit for the Fox Kids Network on its march towards Saturday morning dominance. Bobby was pretty wholesome, but the show was also a comedy so there’s plenty of silly stuff to entertain the kids. For this one, Bobby travels to see his grandparents and engage with his extended family. He wants a video game for Christmas really bad, but he’s going to have to learn the Christmas spirit instead because everything goes wrong. It’s solid, though I did kind of hate the resolution. It’s worth watching and you could really put together a solid viewing party of Christmas specials from Fox Kids if that was your goal.
My mom loves the kid on the left so much she named her cat after him.
Boy, did this one take a tumble since I first mentioned it? This one was part of my initial list of my 25 favorite Christmas specials which I compiled back in 2015. Then, I had it ranked all the way up at number 16! There may have been some recency bias at play for even though this special debuted in 2009 I think I had seen it for the first time fairly recently in 2015. Back then, I mostly stuck to “the classics” when it came to my Christmas viewing and it was doing this blog that really caused me to both branch out and to rediscover Christmas specials I had not seen in years. Yes, Virginia suffered as a result, but it’s still plenty fine. It might have worked a little better as a shorter subject as it is a little slow, but I enjoy the story which is loosely based on reality. In it, Virginia is a believer in Santa, but she’s at that age where her peers stop believing and she’s getting left behind. Her dad has a saying that “If it’s in The Sun, it’s true,” referring to the local paper so Virginia decides to write to the paper asking if Santa Claus is real. And wouldn’t you know, they print a reply that says “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!” It’s a great climax, it just takes a bit to get there and some of the stuff along the way is less fun. Plus, it revolves around mostly adult characters who dismiss the idea of Santa which limits the special’s reach with kids. I never liked showing my kids stuff that might create doubt about Santa so maybe this is more of a special for kids in Virginia’s age range. They do sneak in a real Santa at the end, but I don’t know how reassuring that is. By far though, the real reason why this has dropped so much is it is ugly to look at. Cheap, 2000’s, CG has not aged gracefully and maybe that’s why it’s no longer on TV? There are other versions of this story out there which I should check out, but even though I no longer have this one in my top 20, I still think it’s worth watching provided you’re not bothered by the Santa stuff I already mentioned.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
This year we’re doing not one, but two classic Mickey Mouse shorts set at Christmas time. The first one, Mickey’s Orphans, was a cartoon I had failed to mention years ago when doing a scattershot look at Mickey-related Christmas specials. Today’s subject, Mickey’s Good Deed, was mentioned in that post and is the second Mickey…
I don’t think there’s much debate that the most popular and enduring character churned out by the Hanna-Barbera factory during its hey-day is none other than Scooby Doo. About the only franchise that even competes with the big dog is The Flintstones, which hasn’t been relevant for ages. Scoob has basically had an omnipresence ever…
When I was a kid growing up in the 80s The Berenstain Bears was a popular series of books that usually imparted a simple, clear, message. I seem to recall a fire safety book being a go-to in school for fire safety week and I know I got a copy of one about not eating…
Today’s portion of the countdown is a little like yesterday’s. We have a few adult cartoons mixed in with mostly kid’s stuff. I liked the flow of yesterday’s list so I’m going to stick with that and front-load today’s list with the few adult cartoons I want to talk about before moving onto the general audience television specials. And if you’re curious, my arbitrary ranking for all of these pretty much coincides with that approach. I haven’t been including my scores for each special because they’re purely subjective and not part of my original review/write-up. They’re simply the product of my gut reaction to looking at the list of all of the specials I’ve covered and only used to help get me started when it came to organizing this thing. If you’re curious though, everything here has the purely arbitrary score of 6.5-6.75 on a 10 point scale. We’re firmly past mediocre and bad and into the “fine” portion. I know everyone’s reaction to 10 point scale scoring is either different or everyone thinks anything under 8 is bad, but for me it’s something like this:
0-1 – Abysmal
2-3 – Bad
3-5 – Time Waster
5-6 – Mediocre
6-7 – Fine
7-8 – Good
8-9 – Very Good
9-9.9 – Excellent
10 – Near Perfect
My approach may not be a 10 on my own scale, but it worked to get things in order and then I moved stuff around as I saw fit. In general, I don’t like numerical scales for deciding if something is simply good or not which is why I don’t use them. That’s just a little peek behind the curtain though, now let’s talk Christmas!
The Christmas Peter was visited by the ghost of Patrick Swayze.
Family Guy has probably never been celebrated for its creativity, even among its fans. It’s more about subversion and shock so when I found out the show did a parody of A Christmas Carol in 2017 I can’t say I was very surprised. The twist, if you want to call it one, is that instead of someone Peter actually knows serving as the ghosts of Christmas it’s Patrick Swayze (voiced by his brother Don) in the role of all 3. He takes Peter on a trip through time to examine how selfish he is and also to revisit the show’s Patrick Swayze jokes, of which there may be more than you think. It’s a bit self-indulgent and likely only works if you’re a long time fan of the show and enjoy callbacks. I think Family Guy relies on such tactics far too much and they rarely work on me. The jokes are mostly predictable and the episode ends exactly how you would it expect it to, but it’s also Family Guy where there’s a joke every 10 seconds so you’re almost guaranteed to laugh at something. How often is what will determine your overall enjoyment of it.
That doesn’t seem like the best way to win over a kid, Santa.
Yes, I’m ranking the Family Guy spin-off ahead of not one, but two Family Guy Christmas episodes. Considering this one is only one spot ahead, I wouldn’t read too much into it. I’m giving it the nod because it doesn’t rely on the A Christmas Carol trope and because the next entry on the list is going to be…well, you’ll see in a moment. The Cleveland Show was not something that worked for me. I didn’t stick with it for very long before dropping off which I suppose is unfair since many shows don’t truly find their footing until the second season or so, but also no show just deserves your attention until it gets good. My issue with it was it was just way too similar to Family Guy to the point where it felt redundant. The Cleveland character seemed to have to become mean like Peter and the family dynamics felt all too familiar. Nevertheless, the first Christmas episode is all right. Cleveland’s stepson Rallo hates him, but worships his biological father who’s a total deadbeat. Cleveland loses it while playing Santa and informs Rallo that his real dad is a piece of shit which sends the kid spiraling out of control. In the end, his real dad shows up for Christmas and invents a new lie for why he never has time for his kids: he’s the real Santa Claus! It was a clever way to return the show to the status quo, which most of these sitcoms aim to do. It’s just along the way there were many dud jokes of questionable taste, but some not so bad ones. If you’re a Family Guy fan who has exhausted that show’s Christmas offerings then you could do worse than turning to Cleveland.
Yup, a trio of Seth MacFarlane cartoons are leading off this section of the countdown. I honestly can’t really separate these three in terms of quality, they’re all very similar flavors. It’s like choosing between 7Up and Sprite. This one gets the nod over the other two because it actually has a little heart. This episode takes place in the brief period of time when Brian, the dog, is dead and replaced by a new dog named Vinny. Stewie ends up going on a time travel adventure to prevent Brian’s death, but the lead-up to that moment is pretty clever and doesn’t really occupy the whole episode. Instead, we have a Peter and Carter B-plot for that which includes bukkake jokes which I suppose is pretty unique for a Christmas plot. Nevertheless, this is Family Guy so the sweetness has to be undercut at every opportunity which lessens the payoff and makes the preceding 20 minutes feel like it may not have been worth it in the end. I did enjoy the resolution enough to slide it past the other two, but I don’t blame others if they find the other episodes funnier.
If I liked this series more I’d be calling for a Christmas Duckula action figure to be made.
Count Duckula is basically the unofficial first Nicktoon. It’s the first cartoon Nickelodeon produced for its network, though by the time the network got to the actual Nicktoons the process was changed up and they had a firmer grip on the legal component. Duckula is a spin-off of Danger Mouse and a superior one at that. I never cared for Danger Mouse, but Duckula was okay. I think I like the idea and character design more than the execution. This Christmas episode of the show is a bit odd as about half of it is devoted to Duckula reading an in-universe comic book and we get to see the story unfold on screen. It has basically nothing to do with Christmas. The plot of this one is that Duckula is your typical selfish protagonist eager for Christmas, though he’s more general kid selfish and not over-the-top Scrooge selfish. Santa is delivering presents, but gets lost in the maze that is Castle Duckula while the local vampire hunter is basically in the same predicament while trying to deliver a trap. It’s a very low stakes episode and no one learns anything in the end. Santa does escape while the vampire hunter’s Christmas trap literally blows up in his face. It has a bit of a British feel to the humor so if that’s your thing you may enjoy this one more. I enjoy it mostly for the animation and character designs as you don’t find too many of these spooky Christmas specials. It’s way better than Little Dracula.
Most people are probably familiar with the Disney feature Lilo & Stitch, especially now that it’s been given the live-action treatment. Fewer are probably aware of the animated series Lilo & Stitch and even fewer there are familiar with the anime, simply titled Stitch! This one was mostly for Japanese audiences, but it did receive an English dub and I do believe it aired on the Disney Channel at some point, but it has yet to make the leap to Disney+. There is no Lilo to be found in this one so maybe Disney thinks it wouldn’t play well with American audiences. It is animated just fine and supremely cute. The plot is pretty safe as well and similar to the other animated series as Hamsterviel is the main antagonist. He dresses up as Santa and lures in children with mind control cookies which Stitch easily counters with cookies made by Jumba. It’s just to kill time as the last act is reserved for Stitch helping Santa Claus out by playing him. It mostly just leads to a fun character design of Stitch as Santa and we get the customary sweet ending. It’s cuteness for the sake of cuteness. If you love Stitch then you’ll probably enjoy it.
Not to be confused with the comic of the same name, Ultimate Spider-Man is another perfectly cromulent Disney Channel vehicle for the webslinger. In this holiday episode, Spider-Man has to house sit for Doctor Strange and things get out of hand when Moon Knight crashes the party. The enigmatic hero mistakes Spidey for a villain and the two soon find themselves teaming up to stop the spawn of Mysterio who uses her mind-altering powers to conjure up a violent Christmas. If you ever wanted to see Spider-Man and Moon Knight battle against Christmas themed rogues then this is the special for you. The Spider-Man here is likable and full of his usual quips and it amounts to a mostly satisfying experience. It even manages to sneak in a little Christmas feels in the end with a redemption arc of sorts for Mysterio. Humanizing villains in superhero cartoons is always a pretty solid path to a successful Christmas episode.
Okay, here we have yet another adaptation of A Christmas Carol. As far as adaptations go, this one isn’t any better or worse than the usual lot. And the show it hails from is merely decent. I rank it this high though because Captain Hook is played by one Tim Curry and he’s fantastic. I absolutely adored this take on the pirate brought to life by Curry and some of that praise should definitely go towards the writing staff who do a tremendous job with Hook’s dialogue. He’s cultured, articulate, but also vicious, mean, and vile. It may be another version of A Christmas Carol, but in this one the protagonist (who is actually the antagonist) learns almost no lesson. He emerges from his visit with the ghosts of Christmas just as mean and vicious as before. If anything, he’s even more committed to his life of villainy! That’s a Captain Hook I can get behind. We just talked about a villain receiving redemption in the Spider-Man show and that’s all well and good, but sometimes villains need to just be that and no redemption is necessary or even wanted.
Sometimes a Christmas special just hits right for me when, objectively speaking, it probably shouldn’t. That’s why I do this though because I like the corny aspect of Christmas specials. I like the feel good moments. If a special can penetrate my wall of cynicism then it usually wins me over. That was the case with ‘Tis the Season to be Smurfy. Where the other Smurfs special almost completely failed, this one succeeds. It’s somewhat a retelling of The Elves and the Shoemaker substituting in the Smurfs in place of elves, but it goes about things differently. It’s very much a “Christmas Magic” plot where we need a character, a woman named Elise, to have plot sickness and the only cure is Christmas. Sassy and Grandpa Smurf find out about the poor woman and take it upon themselves when no other Smurf will. A thief sees the error of his ways, some rich guy learns to not be a dick, and everyone has a merry Christmas in the end. Along the way you get the usual Smurfs antics with Brainy, Hefty, and all of your favorites. If you have no affection for this sort of thing then scroll on by. If you’re in the mood for a surprisingly well-animated Christmas special with a feel good ending then go for it.
One of the most surprising experiences for me in doing this countdown was this episode of RoboCop: Alpha Commando. Prior to discovering it, I had no idea this show even existed. It came out at a pretty odd time for a new RoboCop cartoon and that it seemed to be a continuation of the short-lived 80s cartoon was even more surprising. And it’s not bad! It does some silly, late 90s, “extreme” stuff like giving RoboCop Roller Blades, but the animation is competent. The voice performances are fine, but what surprised me the most was the humor. The villain, appropriately named Tannenbaum, has some pretty suggestive language in this one that kept making me laugh. Was some of it only funny because it was so unexpected? Probably, and it’s not the sort of humor that could sustain an entire series, but for someone like me just dropping in for Christmas then ducking out it connected. There’s also just enough cynicism and sarcasm owing back to the film to make this not feel too foreign as a RoboCop property. It doesn’t have much Christmas sentimentality, but that’s definitely not something I’d expect from a RoboCop cartoon.
It’s Christmas Eve and the dog is about to die – sounds like a great setup!
Like The Smurfs, this one just happened to hit me in the right way on the right day. I can still remember watching this one in my bedroom on my little 13″ tube TV. It almost certainly would have been airing on Cartoon Network and I was somewhere in my teens when this one did something I wasn’t expecting it to: it made me cry. I can’t recall if I was feeling especially susceptible at the moment, but Christmas has a way of doing that. At the time, it was a rarity, but now it’s almost a guarantee with anything uplifting. And what got me here was the damn dog. They kill Astro! It’s Christmas, so it all works out in the end, but that got to me. And as the title implies this is yet another adaptation of A Christmas Carol. This time, it’s George Jetson’s boss, Mr. Spacely, in the role of the Scrooge figure and the special plays it straight. Jetson gets a raise and Astro is saved, though I don’t think anything changes from a continuity aspect. I don’t think there are many more episodes to follow anyway. Plus, Spacely’s motivation to save Astro is because the Jetsons sued him following the dog’s death since it was caused by a toy made by Spacely’s company which bankrupts him. In other words, he’s just out to save himself and his money. In the grand scheme of things, A Christmas Carol adaptations are boring and overdone, but in the case of The Jetsons this is one of the more successful ones.
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
It was a week ago that we took a look at the Seth MacFarlane produced American Dad! and I remarked it had been a minute since we did an American Dad! Christmas episode. Well, it’s been even longer for the MacFarlane original, Family Guy, the show that was famously unloved, cancelled, and then brought back…
Today, we return to my best Christmas specials of all-time list with television’s first family: The Simpsons. The Simpsons are the brainchild of series creator Matt Groening who allegedly came up with the idea as a spur of the moment one when he needed something to pitch to the Fox Network. He essentially based The…
Alvin and the Chipmunks is one of the oldest, family-owned, pieces of intellectual property left in the world. And it might not be for much longer as the franchise is reportedly up-for-sale and has been since last year, but as-of this writing nothing has been agreed upon. The Chipmunks date back to the 1958 novelty…
I can feel it, folks – we’re getting closer! Closer to the Christmas specials that are almost universally worth watching! That’s not to say the specials that have appeared in the countdown thus far are not worth it, they just might require more nuance. These are the specials that are watched year in and year out chiefly due to nostalgia. They’re the ones you grew up with that you just have to watch each year or the holiday just wouldn’t feel complete – even if they’re objectively bad. And I do think we’re beyond the objectively bad, well past that even, and just into the splitting hairs category. Yeah, you could watch the specials spotlighted today, but each moment spent with one of these could also probably be spent watching something superior. Take our first Christmas special of the day…
Some redesigns are fine, while some are just “meh.”
Alvin and his chipmunk brothers Simon and Theodore are no strangers to Christmas. They had a stand-alone TV special in 1981 as well as a Christmas episode during their run in the 1980’s in a show with a very similar name. This particular Christmas episode comes from the most recent iteration of the franchise which aired on Nickelodeon in 2020. If you’re familiar with the 80s cartoon, then this one should feel very similar. It just looks different. Alvin and his brothers, while still not the size of actual chipmunks, are a great deal smaller than they have traditionally been depicted in cartoons, but also their features otherwise are a bit deemphasized. They look more like kids with weird noses. And it’s a CG-rendered show that while not as ugly as some of the CG shows from the early 2010s, is still far less pleasant than the 80’s cartoon. In this holiday episode, Theodore is feeling unwanted at home, and when he gets mistaken for an elf and brought to the North Pole, he thinks no one back home actually wants him. And Alvin kind of gave him to the North Pole because in most versions of this franchise Alvin is a selfish dick, but he learns his lesson, Theodore makes it home for Christmas, and everything is fine. It’s just why would you spend your time with this one when you could be watching the far superior A Chipmunk Christmas? I don’t blame you though for preferring this to the It’s a Wonderful Life parody that showed up in the 80s series.
By sheer coincidence, we have another CG program from the 2010’s that aired on Nickelodeon starring a character who was pretty popular in the 1980s: Garfield. And like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield has a much better Christmas special from the 80s you could be watching instead. Garfield and his pals made an okay jump to 3D. The models are a bit texture-less, but not unpleasant to look at. Frank Welker takes over for Lorenzo Music as the titular fat cat and does a solid job of capturing the same tone as Music. He’s low energy, almost bored, and rarely genuine. This episode, which is a tidy 12 minutes, features Garfield caroling because he sees it as a path to free food only no one he carols for seems to enjoy his antics. Meanwhile, Nermal and Odie are caroling together and dragging a wagon full of food behind them because they’re just so cute! There’s a few moments of genuine humor and since it’s so short it requires a much smaller sacrifice of time than most, but in the end it might still leave you wishing that you watched the more famous Christmas special featuring the orange cat.
I can think of something very wrong with that title. Yogi Bear’s All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper is pretty light on comedy, as most Hanna-Barbera things are. What it is not short on are cameos. That’s the “All-Star” part as you’re going to see most of the classic Hanna-Barbera characters in this one, even Fred and Barney! That’s actually the only part that did get a little laugh out of me as Snagglepuss points out the absurdity of the situation. Anyway, this one is about a lonely, mistreated, girl mistaking Yogi for Santa and him being unable to come clean about it because he doesn’t want her to feel worse. They need to help her greedy, selfish, father see the error of his ways. It’s not very good, and if I’m being objective about it then I probably should have ranked this one lower, but I do have some nostalgia goggles for it. It did get a genuine reaction out of me when I was younger which is hard to let go of. And I am a sucker for big ensembles, just not enough for me to make it through Yogi’s First Christmas. That damn thing is an hour and a half and I refuse to ever watch it again.
Space Goofs is a Fox Kids cartoon that started airing when I started tuning out on Saturday morning. Once X-Men and Spider-Man finished their respective runs I was all done. After watching this Christmas episode though, I do think I may have missed out. This is a bit of an ugly late 90s cartoon, the aesthetic for the era is not one that I look back on fondly, but it was pretty amusing. The premise of the show is a bunch of aliens are hiding out in a house and they’re oblivious to human culture, save for what they can get on their television. When Santa shows up on Christmas Eve, they think they’re being invaded. This Santa is incredibly stubborn though and insists on delivering presents so he keeps trying to sneak into the house which results in him getting caught by the various traps inside. He takes a beating, but he keeps on coming. It’s a bit like Smokey and the Bandit in that Santa keeps absorbing more and more punishment until he’s in a full body cast by the episode’s end. It’s an easy one to watch these days and if you like that 90s physical comedy that was present in many cartoons then you probably won’t need the benefit of nostalgia to find some enjoyment here.
If you didn’t like Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales then it makes sense why you’d give New Looney Tunes and its Christmas episode a try. Unfortunately, it’s not that great. It’s not terrible, and I am ranking it ahead of that first one, but it doesn’t take advantage of the holiday very well. This one has two segments. In the first, Bugs is Christmas shopping and after a hot item, but so is Yosemite Sam. This means the two go to war in a Walmart-type store for the last item available. There are some decent gags, but nothing particularly memorable (except maybe Porky having to mop up spilled ham). The second segment features Bugs’ friend, Squeaks, misdelivering his letter to Santa to a guy called The Barbarian on account of the fact that he kind of resembles Santa Claus. Bugs has to get the letter back so he can get it to the real Santa, but Barbarian is apparently not interested in giving it back. It’s kind of stupid. Again, it’s just Bugs inflicting pain on his opponent (with some pain returned) through comedic means none of which is particularly memorable. You’re unlikely to hate it, but it’s not the sort of Christmas special you’ll be inclined to watch again. And there are better Looney Tunes specials to come.
The Pink Panther is basically a silent cartoon star. The cartoons are not absent sound, but there’s no dialogue from anyone. The story is moved along through animation and the object is usually to convey pretty basic emotions that almost anyone can understand. Like most cartoon stars, The Pink Panther is accustomed to short subjects, but this television special had to fill a half hour and it really hurts the pacing. In this one, Pink Panther is basically homeless and just wants a hot meal. He goes through all kinds of hoops to land one which also lands him in trouble with numerous people along the way eventually leading to him getting arrested. It has funny moments, and there’s a nice ending to it as well, but it’s the sort of special that just wares me down. I don’t have any particular affection for the Pink Panther. I don’t think there’s anything especially sympathetic about him in any of his cartoons, but even so I get sick of him constantly losing throughout this one even knowing it’s going to work out in the end. Had this been a cartoon short, I think it would have worked better. It’s a bit too miserable in this form, but some may find that the constant misery leads to a better payoff I suppose.
Don’t be fooled by his cuteness, he just kicked the crap out of Santa.
Here’s one for the British readers. SuperTed is a living teddy bear that’s also a superhero. I really liked this guy as a kid and had pretty much forgot all about him until I stumbled upon this Christmas episode a few years back. In this one, the villainous Texas Pete is out to steal Christmas and it’s up to SuperTed to stop him. The amusing wrinkle in this one is that SuperTed thinks he gets the drop on ole Pete only to find out it’s the real Santa Claus, err, Father Christmas. He actually beats him up pretty well too in what is an almost shockingly funny little bit. Outside of that, it’s a perfectly fine little Christmas episode that probably works better if you have some affection for the character.
I swear it’s just a coincidence that SuperTed is followed by Super Dave.
Comedian Bob Einstein’s Super Dave alter ego actually had his own cartoon series in the early 90s. It was short-lived, but it’s one of those things that impresses me to this day. Super Dave, if you’re unaware, was a daredevil. Since this was a bit by a comedian, he was a terrible daredevil. None of his stunts go right and he often winds up in extreme pain. It makes sense to turn that type of guy into a cartoon since you can really do some damage to a cartoon character and he’ll always come back ready for more! In this Christmas episode, Santa is kidnapped and Dave has to rescue him. Why does a daredevil have to be the one to rescue him? Who knows? It has its moments, but mostly it ends up getting ranked this high because I remain tickled that this is a thing that exists. I also appreciate that it really has no moral. Sometimes we don’t need a preachy ending, we just need an ending.
Eek is the good-natured cat that roamed the Fox Kids Saturday morning lineup in the early 90s. He is an eternal optimist which makes him a great fit for a Christmas special. He can also scream like a bastard and take some serious punishment which makes him an ideal cartoon character. In this Christmas episode, Eek comes across a gift for Little Joey and takes it upon himself to make sure it reaches him. Along his journey, he’s going to get the snot kicked out of him. He’s also going to help people along the way which just in turn leads to more misery, but the cat comes through in the end and delivers the present to Little Joey. Who turns out to be a rat or something. It’s entertaining, it’s just not one of the better looking shows from the era. And since it doesn’t really invoke the “feels,” it comes up just a tad limp for me in the end. If Eek was your guy, or cat, when you were a kid then you’ll probably derive far more enjoyment out of coming back to this one than I ever could. I also think his other Christmas special is just a little bit better.
I apparently named this image “Dick Dexter.” I amuse myself sometimes.
Our final entrant for today is Dexter of Dexter’s Laboratory fame. He was one of the original Cartoon Cartoon stars for Cartoon Network and I have mostly positive memories of his show. In his Christmas segment, Dexter is confronted by his own ignorance for he gets into an argument with his sister about the existence of Santa Claus. Dee Dee insists that he’s real while Dexter insists that it’s merely their father in disguise. He seems to think his dad puts on an elaborate show to keep up the ruse indicating that while Dexter may be a boy genius, he’s also still a boy. Dexter then waits up all night and catches the real Santa in the act, only he still thinks it’s his dad and does horrible things to the big man in order to prove it. This just leads to injuries and destruction. Santa even loses his beard (coincidentally, the same thing happens to the Santa in Space Goofs)! Yeah, it’s kind of unsettling. What I love about this one is the continuity. This being a Hanna-Barbera Christmas episode that aired in 1998, it still made sure to have a Santa that looks exactly like the one from A Flintstone Christmas. That’s pretty neat, even if other versions of Santa have appeared over the years in other Hanna-Barbera productions. If you’re going to copy one though, that’s the one to copy. This Christmas episode is brief, but funny. A little dark, perhaps, but we need that from time to time out of our Christmas specials.
What’s not dark, is tomorrow’s Christmas special. Actually, it technically is dark, just not in tone or humor. You’ll see what I mean in short order, but tomorrow is a full write-up of a Christmas cartoon I never got around to. It’s one that has been on my “to do” list year after year and even pre-planned on at least one occasion, but I just never got around to it. That all changes tomorrow so come on back and see what ended up in slot number 147!
Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:
I told you we would probably take a look at the other Christmas episode from The Cuphead Show!, though maybe you expected a buffer. I considered it, but why not pair them up just like the creators and Netflix already did? This second Christmas episode comes right after the first. Titled “A Very Devil Christmas,”…
When two billion dollar organizations butt heads, it can be hard to know who to root for. Take Disney, somewhat of an “evil” overlord when it comes to content, which seemingly owns everything these days and likes to throw its weight around when it comes to copyright claims. And then there’s Fox, owned by the…
In 1964, Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass unleashed a Christmas Classic upon the world in the form of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The special basically put the company on the map and put it on the path to holiday domination for decades to come. Despite that, few of the specials that followed Rudolph truly hit…
The Nostalgia Spot 