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FEATURED CHRISTMAS SPECIALS:
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire
Batman: Christmas with The Joker
A Garfield Christmas Special
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
A Chipmunks Christmas
How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol
Spongebob Squarepants in “Christmas Who?”
Community’s “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (soundtrack)
The Small One
George and the Star
Twas The Night Before Christmas
A Claymation Christmas
South Park
Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town
John Denver and The Muppets: A Christmas Together
The Christmas Toy
Fraggle Rock’s “The Bells of Fraggle Rock” 

Yesterday’s Christmas Special
A ROCKY & BULLWINKLE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

2010′s Dec. 19 Christmas Special
COMMUNITY “ABED’S UNCONTROLLABLE CHRISTMAS”

2009′s Dec. 19 Christmas Special
HE-MAN AND SHE-RA: A CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 

]]> http://www.acartoonchristmas.com/2011/12/19/podcast-cartoon-christmas-music/feed/ 3 http://www.acartoonchristmas.com/2011/03/12/im-bored-please-enjoy-these-pictures-of-my-man-toys/ http://www.acartoonchristmas.com/2011/03/12/im-bored-please-enjoy-these-pictures-of-my-man-toys/#comments Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:02:00 +0000 cantista http://www.acartoonchristmas.com/?p=3474

Look, I’ve tried taking pictures of my stupid dolls and action figures before, but admittedly, I’m a shitty photographer. Lucky for me, I swiped this here Canon Rebel T2i or something from work, and Lickety-BOOM: Instant Artist!

Yeah, this is a pretty pointless, self indulgent post. So if your time’s too precious to look at a bunch of licensed cartoon crap, there’s plenty of stuff floating around the site that almost redeem this frivolous excuse for dicking around with a fancy-pants camera.

Classic Mickey Mouse phone, circa the 1970s. Purchased as a gift by the writer of X-Men Xmas Special – IN BOX! – with hysterical of-the-era FCC instruction manual! Thanks Brett

Hard though it may be to believe, I actually have a considerably larger collection of animated swag at my office, the place where most of your nostalgic junk will eventually gets banished to once you make the decision to cohabitate with a female creature concerned with issues of aesthetics and taste, young man!

You are Lisa Simpson! Whom we discussed previously in Simpsons Roasting On an Open Fire

For nerdy clarification, you’re technically looking at a bunch of my recently procured stuff, thank you very much. And although I’ve tried before in the past, I’ve never been able to snap close-up shots of this crap with this kind of quality and/or clarity. Oh, wanna SEE why I stopped collecting Disney Vinylmations?!

Dodger, from Oliver and Company! Technically, my only Billy Joel action figure

You buy these things blind, not unlike a pack of baseball cards, hoping and praying you get the one you want for around $10 a pop. The Animation 1 Series seemed like a great “risk” – plenty of characters I’d love to own, only a few I didn’t care for. One of which was…

Phil from Hercules (With a redeemably awesome Prince John from Villains Series)

Nothing against the Danny Devito character, but all I really wanted was Dodger, and here’s my Vinylmation chronology (which encompassed lost of wasted money and numerous trips to the Disney Store – it is a sad tale!) Phil (aww), Dodger (yay!) Then Dodger again? Then Phil again?! Over $50 later, my Vinylmation obsession was over almost before it started.

Louis from The Princess and the Frog and Merlin from The Sword and the Stone, which we wrote about briefly in the poorly aged, animated jukebox, A Disney Christmas Gift

Obviously, I’m linking around willy-nilly to stuff we’ve written about previously and where you can purchase things on Amazon. So I should probably showcase some semi-hard to find items you can only purchase in parks, right?

Yosemite Sam in front of a Who Framed Roger Rabbit Home Video standee. Roger Rabbit may as well be a reoccurring theme here.

Picked up Yosemite Sam at the Vallejo, California’s Six Flags Discovery. Those parks are probably the only places left in America where you’ll still see the Looney Tunes characters treated with any kind of reverence.

Brer Rabbit and a little Ms. Piggy

Again, I take zero credit for the quality of these photos, which I think look ridiculously nice given my documented lack of visual panache. Recently I went to Disneyland with a mission: Find merchandise related to Disney’s Song of the South, which younger folks only know as one of the park’s greatest rides, Splash Mountain, featuring a bunch of characters they’ve never been allowed to see. You’re looking at the sole piece of Brer Anything merchandise available in the entire park, beyond that of a souvenir Splash Mountain picture frame. It’s disconcerting how well Disney has swept that gang of characters under the rug, especially considering the presence they hold over a large portion of their parks. Hell, Brer Rabbit has his own store there, yet doesn’t get to appear on anything other than a ceremonial Disney pin.

Figment, with a little Elliot for good dragon company

Brer Rabbit came as part of a Disney Parks-related set of figures, and visitors of EPCOT will no doubt recognize Figment, the park’s on-again-off-again mascot. You gotta love how iconic Figment remains in the eyes of people in spite of almost never appearing anywhere but the Orlando resort. But hey, I’m a sucker for dragons! Speaking of which, let’s look closer…

Elliot from Pete’s Dragon!

Yes, ELLIOT, not “Pete.” Elliot is Pete‘s dragon, and calling him otherwise is tantamount to calling a certain doctor’s Prometheus “Frankenstein,” and that’s faux pas that’ll get you tossed out of polite geeky conversation, my friend. The very small figure you see above is from Disneyland/Disney World’s Collector Packs series, which I love somethin’ fierce!

How often to you get to say “Daisy Duck” and “Death Star” in the same sentence?!

I fucking love these packs so goddamned hard, it makes me want to squeal! Because… I’m an adult, you see. I like to collect inaction figures. I don’t need shit that shoots stuff, changes color, or poses at a billion points of articulation. Just sit there an look awesome. The less you aesthetically bother my girlfriend, the better.

Bernard and Bianca from The Rescuers and Scrooge McDuck, star of Mickey’s Christmas Carol in front of my ultra rad Bionic Commando lunch box!

These little 1 inchers come in packs of three, but just like the Vinylmations above, what you get is totally random yet, I prefer the Disney Collectors Packs for numerous reasons you probably don’t care about: They’re half the price of the Vinylmations, the series are more varied, random shit is still fun, giving doubles to friends feels better when it only costs you a buck and change, your chances of getting what you want are better, and perhaps best of all, they come in cellophane bags! Dorky sleuths can use their fingers to feel out the characters they desire, and I literally massaged through a rack of Collector Packs like a blind person trying to memorize someone’s face until I found one I was certain was Elliot. (I was right!)

Beast and The Beauty, with a rather unfortunate appearance byAssy McGee

Again, I take almost no credit for the quality of these images! The credit goes almost solely to the Canon Rebel T2i. I’ve gone on record as a shit-horrible photographer, and this is honestly just me dicking around with manual focus for the first time in like 15 years!

Jessica Rabbit standing on a tin of Nintendo Power mints in front of a Roger Rabbit #1 Marvel comic

I don’t know spit about “Foto-Graphy.” But I do know I’ve never been able to get this close to these tiny figures, and yes, I mean with numerous, humiliating amounts of effort and trail.

Remember, this fucker’s only a single inch tall!

I was having so much fun, I tried to go back and redeem myself for that slovenly shot I set up last December of a NEW AND IMPROVED NAIVETY SCENE! Gobo alone deserves so much better.

Fraggle Rock‘s Gobo, Fozzie Bear, a blurry Daisy dressed as Malificent, and I believe a Donald Duck Darth Maul off to the side!

Phew… I sincerely hope this post hasn’t come off as narcissistic, or anything, because I doubt it’ll be the last time I try my photographic hand. And let’s be honest, if I didn’t love looking at these toys, why would I keep ‘em around? I’m kind of 30…

Looks like somebody’s back and at their parents’ home for Christmas and doing a little rummagin’ in the old toy box!

Just so you know, I had no ill religious intent in making this festive little McDonalds masterpiece. Jesus, Mary, Joesph? They’re still there! I would however argue that Gobo Fraggle, Merlin, and Buzz Lightyear kick the shit out of even the wisest of Wise Men any day of the week, though… So screw ‘em!

Click here if you actually want to see them thing ridiculously big.

An animated gift for almost any smartphone

If there’s anything I have too much of on my hard drive, it’s used and unused cartoon Christmas art. Next to optimizing it for the web, I’d say I spent a ridiculous amount of time last year scaling and tinkering the shots I pulled into the perfect iPhone Wallpaper. So, this year I’m turning that frustration into my gift to you guys! Simply, tap and hold any image below on your iPhone/iPod Touch, save, head to the Photos app and assign them using the “Set as Wallpaper” function on the left. The rest of the work has been done for you.

From How the Grinch Stole Christmas

From Pluto’s Christmas Tree

From Bug’s Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales

From Frosty the Snowman

From Invader Zim’s The Most Horrible Xmas Ever

From A Wish for Wings that Work

From The Christmas Toy

From It’s Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown

From A Claymation Christmas Celebration

From The Christmas Toy

From Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales

From How the Grinch Stole Christmas

From Invader Zim’s The Most Horrible Xmas Ever

From It’s Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown

From Mickey’s Christmas Carol

From A Fat Albert Christmas

From Fraggle Rock’s The Bells of Fraggle Rock

From How the Grinch Stole Christmas

From Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol

From Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town

From Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

From A Muppet Family Christmas

From The Snowman

From Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

From Mystery Science Theater 3000′s Santa Claus

From Mickey’s Christmas Carol

From Ren & Stimpy’s “Stimpy’s First Fart”

From Toy Tinkers

And for a taste of what’s to come on A Cartoon Christmas 2010…

Hope that makes it a little easier to decorate your smartphones this Holiday season. Stay tuned, A Cartoon Christmas is just getting warmed up!

Of all the specials we covered last year (see sidebar on the left), these have the distinct honor of being our favorites.

5. The Bells of Fraggle Rock

I’m a sucker for the almost all the output from Jim Henson’s stable of kind-souled bleeding hearts, but the Fraggles’ special should air every Holiday season in every household around the world. Sure, it’s a timeless tale of Gobo’s personal redemption, as well as the importance of friends and family. However, it’s also a gentle lesson on religious tolerance and importance of all cultural traditions. And the Fraggles pull it off without even mentioning the word “Christmas” once!

4. The Snowman

Truly a Christmas special like no other! Not a word is spoken throughout almost the entirety of the special, and instead the tale unfolds via enchanting interactions between a boy and his snowman come to life and hauntingly unforgettable music. Whereas many older animated shows retain the static look of cartoons pulled off on a television budget, The Snowman whips and pans along with a restrained, expertly shaded elegance giving it a wonderfully unique feel that falls somewhere in between the CGI of today and the 2D drawings of yesteryear.

3. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Being the world’s oldest Christmas specials currently running annually, I figured the Rankin-Bass classic would’ve showed its age more. Nay! Watching it today holds up every bit as well as I’d imagine it did for those old enough to remember the first airing back in 1964 when it was sponsored by General Electric. I wouldn’t even simply attribute its longevity to the timelessness of the subject matter, nor the Burt Ives songs we all know by heart. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is still a thrilling, extremely well-paced adventure starring fully-fleshed out characters and animated with some of the most colorful, stop-motion ambition the world has ever seen. Rudolph defied even my most nostalgic of expectations, and I can honestly say its worthy of its legacy with relative objectivity.

2. The Christmas Toy

I’d watched this a billion times as a kid, but I had no idea it’d hold up as well as it did. As are so many Jim Henson joints of the 1980s, The Christmas Toy is equal parts uplifting and terrifying, deftly pulling off comedy and tragedy at the same time. I suppose one of my favorite tropes, regardless of Christmas, is the premise of “toys come to life” and in the article I discuss how it’s story and characters run parallel to a certain other, ahem… “toy story” we’re all a bit more familiar with today. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you pick it up bundled with another timeless Muppet classic we’ll be covering this year: Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.

1. Pluto’s Christmas Tree

Don’t care who you are… If you have eyes, a brain, and an age of over 10, you’ll recognize this Disney short immediately. You probably don’t remember where you first came upon it – hell, I can’t remember where I first saw it (although, an upcoming article could offer a clue…) – but you’re no doubt familiar with the breezy shenanigans of what happens when Pluto tries to protect Mickey’s Christmas tree from a duo of displaced chipmunks. There’s not a single frame within this seven minute cartoon that doesn’t bring me right back to the Holiday sights, sounds, and smells of the family living room of my youth, so obviously, my love runs strong with this one. Please understand how difficult this was to choose over Toy Tinkers!

A MUPPET FAMILY CHRISTMAS
Original Air Date: December 16, 1987

SYNOPSIS:
Nearly every Muppet ever created comes together under one roof for a very cliched Christmas.

BACKSTORY:
In case you didn’t already know, the word “Muppet” is a hybrid of the words “marionette” and “puppet,” and should instantly conjure images a man named Jim Henson, and the brightly-colored cloth creations he gave to the world.

Early versions of Rowlf, Kermit, and Jim Henson

It’s hard to nail down when exactly what we now know as “The Muppets” first started. A barely-recognizable version of Kermit was seen on a Washington D.C. NBC affiliate as far back as 1955, on Henson’s first show Sam and Friends. However, Rowlf the piano-playing dog was the first to gain stardom, thanks to his popular appearances in Purina dog food commercials and on The Jimmy Dean Show in 1963. Sesame Street began airing in 1969, although without any of the characters, aside from Kermit, that we associate with The Muppet Show, which came seven years later.

See Gobo back there?

None of that’s important, anyway. The fact remains that A Muppet Family Christmas is the culmination of Henson’s unprecedented success. With at least four separate Muppeted shows airing on television simultaneously, this Christmas special is the one and only occasion when the stars of all of them came together in a single production.

Unfortunately, no official uncut version of the program is available for sale, and likely never will be. Several songs licensed only for television are presented, and The Jim Henson Company currently retains rights to only the Fraggles, with Sesame Street owned by The Children’s Television Workshop and The Muppets now being the property of Disney. Television is the only place you can hope to see the special in its entirety, yet the broadcast version, too, has seen many cuts over the years – due to remastering, added footage and extended commercial breaks.

BREAKDOWN:
You know those Christmas special parodies where celebrities find an excuse to stop by a snowed in cabin just to sing songs? I’m too young to be entirely sure of what exactly they’re sending up, aside from some vague notion of Dean Martin or Andy Williams doing something to that effect years before I was born.

Fozzie, quite rudely, brings the entire cast of The Muppet Show over for Christmas at his mother’s without so much as calling ahead

Stephen Colbert did one last year. Shit, I just made one too, which is a pretty good indication that spoofing that Old-Timey Christmas special is no longer even remotely clever. If that’s the case, Jim Henson studios didn’t get the memo.

Fraggle Rock’s Doc and Sprocket have rented a room in the hopes of finding some holiday peace and quiet

I know I’ve said the same about adapting A Christmas Carol, but as far as Christmas specials go, the singing-cameo formula is definitely the bare minimum you can do creatively. Especially when it’s done straight-faced, without a hint of irony. So keeping in mind that this came from the people responsible for some of the greatest Holiday specials ever made, yes, A Muppet Family Christmas is a bit of a letdown.

Miss Piggy is held up by a photo shoot

It wouldn’t say it flat-out sucks, mind you. But while I certainly remember looking forward to each and every airing as a kid, I also remember boredom setting in within minutes.

Gonzo tips a turkey off about Swedish Chef’s plans to cook him

Of course, I have a slightly different appreciation for it now. I’d grown up with these colorful characters. Even my parents liked the Muppets, or at least had some history with them and found them more tolerable than the majority of the 80’s children’s entertainment cesspool.

Fraggle Rock is located under Mama Fozzie’s house apparently…who knew?

That kind of universal appeal is a remarkable feat in and of itself, but the sheer number of shows Henson had concurrently running on television is nothing short of astounding.

One of many momentous meetings

Sesame Street was still a revered standard. Fraggle Rock was popular enough in 1987 to receive a (horrible) animated spin-off series. Muppets Take Manhattan had been well received in theaters, and Ted Turner was about to launch TNT on a sturdy backbone of Muppet Show reruns. And Muppet Babies was in the middle of an outrageously popular six-year streak, having just been extended to 90 minutes on CBS Saturday mornings.

The gang watches a home movie starring the live-action Muppet Babies from Muppets Take Manhattan, on which the cartoon series was based

And A Muppet Family Christmas was to be the instance where they’d all appear in the same place, at the same time, for the first time ever!!! “HOLY SHIT!” exclaimed my prepubescent brain, “Oh, man… I wonder what they’ll say to one another… what kind of adventures they’ll have?!”

Electric Mayhem’s performance of “Jingle Bell Rock” is a triple-edged sword

Well… they’ll just be singing songs, apparently.

Even more bad comedy would’ve been nice

Not that there’s anything wrong with a Holiday song showcase, even if it’s not my cup of tea. But when you look at the Christmas specials that have become Holiday standards, none of them revolve around the sole act of singing classic Christmas songs (fortunately).

Gonzo and the Jive Turkey square off for the affections of Camilla

For example, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was based off of that titular Johnny Marks song, and Marks still wrote new songs for that special that would go on to become cherished standards. Even Henson’s other Christmas specials featured numerous original tunes, one of which is reprised here!

The Sesame Street gang shows up a’Carolin’

It’s undeniable that by Emmet Otter and Christmas Toy standards, and so A Muppet Family Christmas is pretty damned dull and uninspired by comparison. It’s not that the songs are bad… they’re just way too abundant. There’s very little dialogue, almost no attempt at comedy, and as you can see, the whole shebang is easily summed up in screen shots alone.

Doc is informed that his name starts with the letter ‘D’

I don’t mean to downplay the feat of assembling all the Muppets in a single room. That’s why I’m showcasing the special in the first place: I recognize that this gathering of epic proportions is truly a resplendent spectacle to behold.

The Turkey convinces Chef to cook a bigger bird…

The internets thought this joke was hilarious, even though Henson did it twenty years ago

I’m a giant Muppet dork and I can name at least a hundred characters who appear here just off the top of my head. So, I can only imagine a substantial part of the budget went into the feat of puppeteering all of these beloved creatures at once…

Kings of refuse

Because it certainly didn’t go into the writing. That’s part of what pisses me off about the special to begin with…

Snowed-in guests from Sesame Street perform “Twas the Night Before Christmas” as payment for their stay

Many notable characters never do, or say, anything. Granted, Elmo wasn’t yet the shining star of Sesame Street, but he’s completely silent in the two versions I’ve watched.

TRIVIA! The Elmo puppet has been around since the early 70′s, although he was referred to as “Baby Monster” until 1980. Four years later, Elmo was given his distinctive voice by Kevin Clash, and he’s gone on to become one of the most prolific Muppets of all time. In A Muppet Family Christmas, he never says a word.

Multiple versions, you say? Oh yeah… I won’t fault Henson for the lack of foresight into licensing music rights for home video, but it infuriates me that the very element that brought down the entire special, is also what made a definitive version unattainable.

Last Muppets Standing

Reportedly, no version of Muppet Family Christmas ever available for sale has been presented uncut.  Renewing the rights to many of the songs proved too expensive beyond television – the only place where the special can be shown in its entirety and still isn’t due to longer commercial breaks! – so there were almost literally dozens of truncated Muppet Family Christmas DVDs available in numerous territories with distinctly different edits.

Almost the entire Muppet Babies sequence is cut from the DVD due to music rights

Not that this matters anymore anyway… A Muppet Family Christmas has been discontinued on DVD and will most likely never be available to own again in any capacity. So, while I actually do believe Sesame Street and The Muppets are in good hands with their respective new owners, I sense something a little shadier in afoot here…

Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em

Given the time frame, Jim Henson was certainly in negotiations with Disney to acquire the Muppets at the time that A Muppet Family Christmas was created… And the special certainly reeks of something hastily assembled. So I’d speculate that it may have been made because many of the characters had a price tag on their heads and Henson knew this was probably his last chance to cash in on an epic crossover to end all crossovers.

Creepy: Kermit and Disney CEO Michael Eisner introduced A Muppet Family Christmas‘s rebroadcast on The Magical World of Disney in 1989

But with The Muppets’ recent YouTube resurgence, I can’t imagine A Muppet Family Christmas is something a fan would ever want to be without. And as I sat through the final third of the special – almost 15 minutes of uninterrupted singing – I couldn’t help but get a little irritated. The fact that it ends with a roomful of the greatest characters ever created wishing me a “Merry Christmas” for the fiftieth time was little consolation.

Christ, we get it! Stop singing already!

Cheating! But there’s one appearance by a life-giving bearded man whom I absolutely worship… and his final words are immensely touching.

“They certainly look like they’re having a good time out there… I like it when they have a good time.” – H.

Doc enters the house dressed as Santa briefly at the end (even though he was seen inside a second ago, during the previous scene, wearing plain clothes). Maybe my memory’s a little fuzzy, but now that I think of it, I can’t remember any Muppet Christmas specials featuring an appearance by the actual Santa Claus. Can you? Comment below!

“Santa cares not for your earthly continuity!”

How could I rate it any lower? There’s a shitload of Muppets here! That alone has to be worth something, if for no other reason than it’ll undoubtedly never happen again. While it can’t be denied that A Muppet Family Christmas is representative of a” warm seasonal feeling” under the strictest sense of the definition, this was never the program I wanted to see. Coming from a studio that brought us some of the the funniest, most heartwarming and most enduring Christmas specials known to man, the fact that such a monumental assemblage of its entire legacy failed to live up to its own standards is a sad one indeed.

It’s still worth checking out, though, and if you’re really in to Christmas songs, it could earn some repeated play on your television. Oh, wait! No it can’t, since you’re practically required to watch it in stolen internet bootlegs for the foreseeable future… *sigh*

PRODUCT INFORMATION (Support the Site!)

A Muppet Family Christmas has been discontinued on DVD the world over, due mostly to Disney’s acquisition of the majority of the characters.  However, you can find a used/new copy on Amazon for a substantial mark up, and I believe there’s a Google ad on the right side of this very page that links to a legitimate retailer selling off the old stock. Needless to say, if you see a copy out in the wild, snatch it up immediately: It will be worth hella money!

As far as Muppety Christmases go, you could do a helluva a lot worse than A Muppet Christmas Carol, which features all of the characters you know and love in a much better production, as well as a feature-length commentary from Jim Henson’s son, Brian. I haven’t seen the newer made-for-TV Muppet specials, so I’m just going to make a personal recommendation instead. I’d have to go with The Christmas Toy (which was incidentally included on the UK version of the  Muppet Family Christmas DVD as a bonus feature!) just slightly over Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas, but you could also save yourself a chunk of change and just buy both in a cheap-ass bundle!

Yesterday’s Christmas Special:
MICKEY’S CHRISTMAS CAROL