Similar to what we did last year with the Top 25 Cartoon Christmas Trees, A Cartoon Christmas is letting you (AND ME!) skip the usual 1000+ words of grammatically defiant babble on this day of days, while still giving you the opportunity to look at some gorgeous animated imagery.

REAL SANTAS

1. “Classic Santa” from A Disney Christmas Gift

I forget who issued me the challenge, but it was this: Can you find 50 different pictures from cartoon Santas? Well, two years + one post a day, every day in December until Christmas = 50 posts… yeah, sounds easy enough.

2. “Party Santa” from The Snowman (buy it here)

But wait?! There ain’t no Santy Claws in Mickey’s Christmas Carol or A Charlie Brown Christmas! And a few days on the animated advent calendar over there on left are, debatebly, cop out entries… You know, I could do it if I can do cartoon approximations of Saint Nick (i.e. cartoons characters posing as Santa) in addition to the Real McDeal! And that’s how we’re going to break these down: Real and Fake Santas.

3. “Slow Santa” from Sonic’s Christmas Blast (buy it here)

Both are just as fun to look at anyway, right? Oh, and keep an eye out for a third SUPER SECRET category if I can’t meet the numeric criteria.

4. “Magician Santa” from Frosty the Snowman (buy it here)

Please enjoy our last post on the 2010’s Animated Advent Calendar, and feel free to click on image/link to read more on about the special showcase.

5. “Stranded Santa” from A Wish for Wings That Work (buy it here)

And if you feel like buying the DVD, please do it through the Amazon link provided. Doing so costs you nothing, but kicks a small percentage back to us, which helps keep the site up. Or at least we hope it will someday!

6. “Useless Santa” from The Great Santa Caper starring Raggedy Ann

7. “Second Banana Santa” from A Chipmunks Christmas (buy it here)

8. “Sickly Santa” from Christmas Comes to PacLand

9. “Recipient Santa” from A Johnny Bravo Christmas (buy it here)

10. “Shouldn’t Count Santa” from Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus (buy it here)

11. “Skinny Santa” from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (buy it here)

12. “Donkey-Worshiping Santa” from Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey (buy it here)

13. “Massive Santa” from Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves on Fire (buy it here)

14. “Writer Santa” from A Spongebob Squarepants Christmas (buy it here)

15. “Stupid Santa” from Super Mario Bros. Super Show: Koopa Klaus (buy it here)

16. “Smokin’ Claus” from ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (buy it here)

17. “Blink and you’ll miss ‘em Santa” from Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas (buy it here)

18. “Captive Santa” from Invader Zim: The Most Horrible Xmas Ever (buy it here)

19. “Young Ginger Santa” from Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (buy it here)

20. “Interstellar Santa” from George and the Christmas Star (buy it here)

21. “Sleepy Santa” from A Claymation Christmas Celebration (buy it here)

22. “Stinky Santa” from Ren & Stimpy: Stimpy’s First Fart (buy it here)

FAKE SANTAS

23. “Robotnik Claus” from Sonic’s Christmas Blast (buy it here)

24. “Opus Claus” from A Wish for Wings That Work (buy it here)

25. “Kermit Claus” (no longer) from The Christmas Toy (buy it here)

26. “Funky Claus” from TaleSpin: A Molly Jolly Christmas (buy it here)

27. “Robot Holocaust Claus” from Batman: Christmas with The Joker (buy it here)

28. “Snoopy Claus” from It’s ChristmasTime Again, Charlie Brown (buy it here)

29. “Donald Claus” from Toy Tinkers (buy it here)

30. “Racist Claus” from Mickey’s Good Deed (buy it here)

31. “Claus of Doom” from Invader Zim: The Most Horrible Xmas Ever (buy it here)

32. “Samson Claus” from A Very Venture Christmas (buy it here)

33. “Squidward Claus” from A Spongebob Squarepants Christmas (buy it here)

34. “Taz Clauz” from Bugs Bunny Looney Christmas Tales (buy it here)

35. “Dale Claus” from Pluto’s Christmas Tree (buy it here)

36. “Goofy Santa” from Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas (buy it here)

37. “An Extremely Goofy Santa” Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas (buy it here)

38. “Prince Adam Claus” from He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special (buy it here)

39. “BBB Claus” from A Fat Albert Christmas (buy it here)

40. “Sad, Drunk Claus” from Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire (buy it here)

41. “Extinct Claus” from A Claymation Christmas Celebration (buy it here)

42. “Dried Fruit Claus” from A Claymation Christmas Celebration (buy it here)

43. ” Doc Claus” from A Muppet Family Christmas

44. “Redemption Claus” from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (buy it here)

YET TO BE COVERED SANTAS

45. “Pink Santa” from A Pink Christmas (buy it here)

46. “Worst 2010 Movie Star Santa” from Yogi’s First Christmas (buy it here)

47. “Nothing to Apologize for Santa” from Pee-Wee Herman’s Christmas Special (buy it here)

48. “Warner Santa” from Anamaniacs’ ‘Twas the Day Before Christmas

49. “Ruckus Claus” from A Huey Freeman Christmas (buy it here)

50. “Robot Santa” from Futurama’s Xmas Story (buy it here)

Seriously, thanks to everyone for reading this stuff. Really means a lot. (Now go have a great Christmas!)

Yesterday we presented our favorites, now it’s time to make with last year’s very best bad!

5. Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales

I always come off like a Disney fanboy, but the fact of the matter is that they’re just better with how they preserve and handle their animated characters. Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Carol is the perfect example of that. Not only is it the victim of horrible 70’s animation done on the cheap, outside of the Chuck Jones Road Runner portion, the whole special is pretty much a disgrace to the Warner Bros. animated legacy. I desperately desire more Xmas-themed Looney Tunes, but they’re a bit hard to find. And come on… just look at these screenshots, and you tell me how this stacks up to something like Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

4. Christmas Comes to Pacland

I might’ve been too harsh on the Pac-Man cartoon. In all fairness, it’s no worse than just about everything else Hanna-Barbera put out in the 70s and 80s. It adheres to the same wacky, mystery-solving formula, using tired gags and lame jokes, while doing its best to animate as little as possible. That makes Christmas Comes to Pacland understandable, although no less terrible. What I can’t forgive are the giant leaps in logic the special takes in order to put a first draft script on television screens. Plus, I’ve always found the fact that Pac-Man sounds like a phlegmmy, alcoholic bluesman with a three-pack-a-day habit supremely disturbing.

3. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show: Koopa Klaus

As a lifelong gamer and fan of Mario, believe me when I say you’ll only be able to watch this special through the gapped fingers of a half-hour long face palm. The live action sequences are embarrassing enough, but the depths of idiocy found in the animated portions may send some into fits of violently primal nerd rage. Why is Mario dressed for a calypso vacation? Why is he using a whip? Why is the person who voiced Toad still allowed to walk amongst men? You’ll have to watch the special to find out, which I strongly advise against.

2. The Great Santa Caper starring Raggedy Ann and Andy

I love writing about obscure, forgotten Christmas specials featuring licensed characters of yore, but this was just depressing. To watch Chuck Jones, the mastermind behind How the Grinch Stole Christmas, derivatively breathe life into these utterly useless characters and come out with just under half a Christmas special will suck the soul from your body. As someone not born in the 1920s, maybe I just don’t care about these stupid dolls enough. But still… If Teddy Ruxpin were still clinging to a shred of relevance, and paid Ren & Stimpy’s John Kricfalusi enough to humiliate himself with a half-assed Christmas special starring plushy tape recorders, I’d be bitching up a storm too. Bleh…

1. He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special

It’s with great shame that I cop to being a diehard He-Man fan as a kid, yet it’s nothing compared to embarrassment everyone involved in this crossover Christmas special should feel. I’m not sure how Mattel got away with making daily commercials that were little more than an excuse to hurl new action figures at childrens’ eyeballs for 22 minutes… But having to watch a full hour of it, skinned in an idiotic Christmas shell brought about by two kids who get sucked into Eternia, should be sternly regulated by the FDA. I am sicker for having watched this

One of the stupidest Christmas specials ever made is finally arriving on DVD… just as the format is dying and more than two months after you’ve taken down the tree.

Apparently, Warner Brothers is prepping a DVD for Hanna-Barbera’s idiotically watchable Pac-Man TV series from 1982, in what could be one of the most ill-timed releases in the history of videogames, animation, shamefully nostalgic purchases and the Holidays in general.

The controversial “Rudolph catches cold” sequence

Not only will the DVD miss Christmas 2010 completely, it’ll only be available through the Warner Archive’s manufacture-on-demand service, meaning the studio burns DVDs as they’re ordered, slaps them into generic packaging, and generally includes a substandard transfer and no bonuses whatsoever. Not unlike, say, an ebay pirate!

Do you have any idea how hard it was to crop the Cartoon Network out of the screens I captured from the torrent I downloaded illegally?!

As irritating as I find the show, I’m like a consumer deer in headlights: Powerless to resist the idea owning it. But Christ, wouldn’t it have been kinda nice to cobble some kind of supplemental feature/retrospective doc together for one of gaming’s most prolific icons? Especially since fans have undoubtedly wanted to buy the show since the last episode aired in November of 1983!

A wonderful analogy! Complaining about the Pac-Man TV show: It’s like riding a tricycle in three feet of snow… Kid, you’re an idiot

So, why the wait? Well, Tvshowsondvd.com speculates that its Christmas-skipping, February/March 2011 release date is due to Namco’s desire to coincide with the launch of the Nintendo 3DS game, Pac-Man & Galaga. Okay… speaking from the perspective of someone who works in the “games industry,” I can assure you that Namco (re)releases Pac-Man games at a rate of about every seven seconds (HA, one even came out yesterday!)

“Hey guys, we’re finally getting some residuals!”

As someone who busts their ass to write a blog relevant to 1/12th of the year, clearly I’m no marketing strategist. However, I’m fairly certain that a far better time to release an ancient TV show starring Pac-Man that doesn’t hold up very well and should embarrass everyone involved, would’ve been during, I dunno, his 30th Anniversary! Which was in either May or October respectively, depending on whether you’re attributing his debut to Japan or North America, yet certainly doesn’t include March of 2011.

From iPhone to Xbox, every other platform in the world already tipped their hat to Pac earlier in the year, and the playable Google Pac-Man from last May was nothing short of a sensation, receiving full blown coverage from national, non-gaming news outlets, and capitalized on Pac-Man Fever in the most profound way since… well, you know.

Other no-frills Xmas specials available through Warner Archives

I love the Warner Archive program, and I imagine Pac-Man’s relegation to the made-to-order DVD format has more to do with the rights issues involved, yet I still feel Pac-Man deserves better. I dunno, what do you think? Click here to read all about Christmas Comes to Pacland.

Against all odds, A Cartoon Christmas is back for another year, bitches! We dare you to care just one more time. All we ask is that you help us out with some Animated Holiday suggestions…

Holy crap, has it really been almost a year since we last covered an Animated Christmas Special?! Couldn’t be helped, unfortunately. Google Analytics dictates we be cryogenically frozen for eleven months since almost no one is looking for grammatically incoherent yuletide bibble-babble about animated Christmas specials come January 1st. And you know, Web 2.0 and all that…

This is, essentially, how we do (From Mickey’s Christmas Carol)

Actually, screw that! We really should’ve posted more regularly as my affection for writing about Toons has done nothing but fester and mutate into a colossal red-and-green beast during the hiatus. Additionally, I was quite touched to hear a couple of friends express positive encouragement to carry on after I threatened not to do A Cartoon Christmas again at all this year.

Remember this? So do we!

But that’s what the site is for me, and possibly for those of you willing to nostalgically wade through 1000 words on cartoons the rest of the world may’ve forgotten, too: A true labor of love. (Not to mention a wonderful breather from spewing hyperbole about “those damn vidjagames” 24/7 for me personally.) So yeah… we’re back! And hopefully we’re gonna shake things up a bit.

Here’s some new stuff I’d like to do this year:
-An occasional feature?
-A Cartoon Christmas music podcast?
-Some Contests/Giveaways?
-Some custom art features?
-Possibly a guest writer or two?

Much like the Pac-man Christmas Special, ACC remains fully committed to the utterly stupid as well

Our mission statement hasn’t changed on bit, of course. Humorous write-ups on the animated Christmas specials of our past and recent present, peppered with several dozen hand-selected screen grabs, will remain our primary trade. However, I was wondering if you guys could maybe help us make it a little more interesting this year. Oh, dare I ask the obvious question?

What Christmas Specials do you want to see the A CARTOON CHRISTMAS cover?

Seriously, let us know in the comments below and I’ll see to it that we do a couple of December’s posts specifically based on a couple of your suggestions. (Please no Star Wars, k thx)

I assure you, the He-Man Special is so dumb it should be illegal

As always, we’ll be providing product write ups along with links to Amazon.com, and we humbly encourage you to buy through our links simply because it helps cover the cost of the site. Purchasing through any related product link on A Cartoon Christmas is 100% safe, costs you nothing, and kicks back a pithy percentage of each sale into the ACC coffers. So let’s give this whole Cartoon Christmas thang a shot one more time, shall we? And please, tell us you animated Holiday favorites below, and we’ll call everything square on gifts for 2010.

CHRISTMAS COMES TO PACLAND
Original Air Date: December 16, 1982

Through some undisclosed dimensional gateway, Santa Claus crash lands in Pac-Land. It’s up to the entire Pac-gang to find his toy sack, fix his sleigh, and drug his reindeer before the Ghost Gang can ruin Christmas!

BACKSTORY:
Immediately following his introduction to the world as a Japanese arcade game character in 1980, Pac-Man could do no wrong.

The original game and a Christmas album completely unrelated to the the cartoon

It didn’t matter that his character and design were attributable solely to the graphical limitations of the day – during the early 80s, Namco’s insatiable circle was the basis for more video game sequels and spin-offs than Mario, with toys, a breakfast cereal, a chart-topping album and – you guessed it – an animated Christmas special.

For a time, Pac-Man’s show was so popular that Tengen based their NES cover art on its design

Hanna-Barbera added Pac-Man to its stable of awful cartoon series in 1982, and according to legend the number of advertisers dying to hock their wares during the premiere necessitated commercial breaks that were twice as long. A single Christmas episode aired during primetime that winter and continues to be shown on Cartoon Network’s Boomerang network every year, even though the show ceased production in 1984.

BREAKDOWN:
Hope you weren’t looking for Christmas Comes to Pac-Land to stray from the Hanna-Barbera formula of weakly animated, asinine storytelling with a lethal dose of catchphrase-spewing stupidity.  Even the Christmas Spirit has its limits.

Those responsible

In case you don’t know, what separates PacLand from our world is its spherical (well, rounded) appearance and an inability to celebrate Christmas.  So Pac-Man, Pepper Pac, and Baby-Pac open the special by minding their own business outside in the snow.

Pac-Man and the fam, rapt in heathen Holiday delights

But there’s definitely something in the air… Not only do we see no sign of the series’ villain, Mezmaron, but even the Ghosts Gang doesn’t seem all that concerned with Power Pellets, the accumulation of which had been one of the series’ primary themes.

In a simpler time, characters fought with their faces

It’s the time of year for B-grade motivation, and if you’re unfamiliar with the only thing Pac-Man can really do, that would be…chomping. Yes, biting each other.  But whereas Pac-Man and his wife “Pepper” bite back only in self-defense (and with the necessary aid of Power Pellets), ghosts Clyde, Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Sue seem hellbent merely on sinking their teeth into something.

Power Pellets are in such short abundance, they’re stored in unlocked roadside boxes and grow on trees.

Once the Pac-Family swallows the pill-like Pellets, they’re momentarily endowed with super powers and can fend off their supernatural attackers.

Wakkawakkawakka

And the Bitees become the Bitten.

Purple is the new blue

Nevermind that nothing really happens after getting chomped…

One of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen

No sustenance is gained, and the figures eventually go back to normal. Pac-Man just falls down and looks dizzy, but the ghosts lost their clothing and must brave the chilly Pac-night to get home for a wardrobe change…

CANON!

Unfortunately, though, their wayward amphibious eyes just so happen to startle Santa’s reindeer this time!

Oh no!

Santa has fallen to earth (er, PacLand) all because of a literally translated plot device!

A warm Christmas image

Santa’s in bad shape, so Mr. Man and the family haul the fat man and his reindeer back to their house for a little TLC.

The precursor to the interrogation scene in Basic Instinct

Santa informs Pac-Man that if he can’t find his sack of ancient toys,  Christmas is fucked beyond all repair.

Even while inside what is basically a video game, Santa is committed to bringing children toys from 1945

There’s no way Pac-Man’s going to disappoint every boy and girl out there on this cultural occasion. And he’d never even seen a human until a few minutes ago, so that’s pretty damned heroic! Or just fantastic writing.

After a brief interlude that sees the ghosts changing into new outfits and going all self-referential…

I know I’m supposed to be taking the piss out of this thing, but this brief aside to the original Pac-Man design was years ahead of its time

…Pac-Man ventures out into the Pac-Wilderness with his trusty pup, Chomp-Chomp (are you noticing a theme yet?!), to find Claus’ misplaced sack.

Pac-Man’s never heard of Christmas, but Nature clearly has

Unfortunately, it’s the ghosts who find it first.

The ghosts develop a rare third interest

In another act of valiant scripting, Pac-Man concocts a plot to dig a tunnel under the snow and grab the bag out from under the preoccupied ghosts.

The reality is that this is one of two actions Hanna-Barbera could animate in less than an hour

And of course, when you’re scripting action based solely in the economic interest of drawing the bare minimum of movement, it doesn’t work:

Durrrrrrr

Chomp-Chomp hides with the bag that’s carrying an entire planet’s worth of gifts, while Pac-Man runs away from the bite-mad ghosts.

I was going to make fun of this until I realized it’s actually extremely authentic to the game

Sadly, he trips and falls, allowing the Ghosts to catch up to him!

The stuff of 1980′s nightmares

Pac is surely a dead man…or perhaps this is a Saturday Morning Cartoon-based special not brazen enough to depict a violent group-gnashing? Yeah, it’s the latter.

One life left

Turns out being attacked by the Ghosts Gang – the lone threat to Pac during the entire series – results in nothing more than a light daze. Nevertheless, Pac-man has failed.  But in the Hanna-Barbera style of moving things along, this somehow resolves the conflict completely and he succeeds anyway.

A little cocoa soothes even the most savage plot hole

With the toy sack secured and the sleigh fixed, it looks like Christmas is fully on the mend. Suddenly, however, we’re then informed that Santa’s reindeer are too sick to fly. Somehow these majestic beasts, who hail from the North Pole and travel the entire world – a good portion of which is experiencing some form of winter – in a single night, have caught cold after crashing in snowy Pac-Land.

Christ, is this thing being animated LIVE?!

Pac-Man leaps into his mid-sized sedan and tugs Santa to a place sure to reinvigorate the reindeer.

Incidentally, Pac-Man’s car sounds exactly like The Jetson‘s

But – wouldn’t you know it – the ghosts are still on the prowl. On the prowl for what? To get Pac-Man, I guess! Sure, they already seemed to have gotten what they wanted, having bitten the guy just moments ago, but this is the motiveless give-and-take standard synonymous with thinly veiled 80’s cartoon shows meant to sell more than commercials.

Kill me later, please?

Now here’s a weird one. The barely articulate “Packy” (as his wife refers to him, with no thought to how offensive that term is to Pakistani people) manages to convince the ghosts to give him and Santa a pass on their pending shenanigans in the interest of preserving the timeliness of a Holiday they’ve never heard of.

Pac-Diplomacy in action

Thus our action starved heroes move along to an orchard where the entire cartoon series’ central object of struggle literally grows on trees?

A foot-high fence ensures that no flying ghosts gain entry

The reindeer feast on the anabolic Deus ex Machina…

No need to test its effects on earth mammals – EAT!

…until the radioactive glow of Holiday performance enhancement lets Santa know that the Power Pellets have indeed kicked in.

“Dude, you look so Pac-ed up right now!”

Mission accomplished, Kringle gets the hell out of dodge at Mach 10, and the gang returns home.

“Goodbye! Side effects may include erectile dysfunction, bone deterioration and loss of the will to live!”

But somebody’s left a surprise that neither the events of the “plot” nor Santa’s trans-dimensional break-out can account for…that must mean Christmas!

A Christmas Tree with all the trimminz

And even after the ghosts have a second change of heart and barge into Pac’s house looking for a fight, we find that Santa didn’t forget about them either.

No, seriously. You shouldn’t have.

Zilch. Two intertwined dimensions was probably one too many. There’s no way the Pac-Man writers were going to leave autopilot long enough to shoehorn Christ into this story.

Plenty. The big guy’s a central character, so why the middling score? If his innate power to shower the world in gifts during a single night can’t get him out of Pac-Land – Fine. If he doesn’t want to lift a finger to help ward off a roving gang of savage ghosts – I can accept that, too. But something about seeing Santa’s calves is all kinds of wrong, thus it’s docked two cookies

Dude, you’re scaring the children…even more than usual!

At the expense of the series’ (debatably) established premise, Christmas Comes to PacLand enjoys a heaping dollop of obligatory Christmas feelin’…which is exponentially stupider than usual and that’s saying a lot. I can only recommend the thing to lifelong gamers like myself, who somehow get a kick out of seeing the medium done a profound disservice.

PRODUCT INFORMATION (Support the site!)

Neither Pac-Man, the cartoon series, nor Christmas Comes to Pac-Land are available on DVD. There are plenty of episodes available on YouTube, some even in an official capacity, but I wouldn’t recommend them. Pac-Man’s magic lies solely within the games he sprang from, and I wanted to link folks to numerous means of getting a fix because I absolutely love the original game, and hey, I write about video games for a living. This will always be my idea of A Pac-Man Christmas:

Pac-Man Collection for the GameBoy Advance contains only the finest Pac-Man games still worth playing, at a super-low price. The GBA game still works on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite, although NOT the Nintendo DSi. Pac-Man Championship Edition is the most worthy update to the original Pac-Man EVER! Fast, fun, and optimized for High-Def, widescreen televisions. And the table top arcade unit we all remember from many a pizza parlor growing up? Super-expensive, but awesome nonetheless. I know I’ve always wanted one, and up until now I had no idea Namco was legitimately selling new ones to the public.

Yesterday’s Christmas Special
THE GREAT SANTA CAPER