In my neck of the woods this movie comes on every Thanksgiving. The badly colorized version playing now is messing with childhood memories of a grainy, scratchy black and white movie.
What does The March of the Wooden Soldiers (what we always called this movie) have to do with Thanksgiving. What does this movie have to do with anything? And Laurel and Hardy? They look nothing like elves!
I’ve often wondered the same thing about why are Mommy Dearest and The Sound of Music always on at Christmas.
Family has gathered, more people are home from work, and some people need some brain candy, for various reasons. What do the elderly and young children watch together in your neck of the woods – your DVR’d complete seasons of The Wire, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead? How do you soothe your mind between cooking and eating --* American Idol* marathon? Perhaps you need no soothing or mind occupying, and all the people in your house are more sophisticated. But you’ve got to realize not every home is. Anyways, beats reruns.
For me, I actually liked the colorized version. The scratched, grainy version really annoyed me. I can appreciate the nostalgia, but the opening sequence, with the fairy singing, and the audio track just skips and pops, I’m left thinking “Why. Just lose this bit, and use a star wars type scroll.” Heck, they did that to Madsen’s monologue in Dune, what makes this inviolable?
I always figured it was because it has Santa and toys but it is not a Christmas movie. So it fits in with a pre-Christmas holiday.
On a side note I was very surprised when I IMDB’d the movie (probably last Thanksgiving) and found out that the guy who played the bad guy Barnaby was only 22 years old when that film was made.
Worse still, why is “The Godfather” series now standard fare for Thanksgiving Day in America? Every year it seems on one US network or another. What’s up with that? I mean I know there’s a family in it, but geez!
And Black Friday? How does standing in long lines at 2am, to be part of a rude mob that demands a 60" TV for $200 remind anyone of being thankful. The ‘black’ seems to make it extra festive, don’t ya think?
How did gratitude for having survived the first brutal winter in the new world, with the help of the First Nations peoples get turned into this?
And why always on a Thursday? Unless everybody automatically gets the Friday off it seems purposely ill planned. Why not a Fri or Mon, that would give everyone a long weekend? Tres confusing, I must say!
When everyone is so hot about the war on Xmas, how come no one gives a crap about a holiday that’s supposed to be, one assumes, about thankfulness?
As baffling as it leaves me, this Canadian is still going to have a turkey this weekend!
(We are very thankful folks, and we love turkey!)
Mommy Dearest? Really? I’ve always wanted to start a campaign to make Wrath of Khan a traditional christmas movie. Maybe SyFy could play it on a 24 hour loop. It makes as much sense as Mommy Dearest.
And isn’t Planes Trains and Automobiles the latest Thanksgiving movie?
All these other movies mentioned may or may not get played on Thanksgiving. However, they can all be caught on some channel at any time of the year. Babes in Toyland only gets played on Thanksgiving. I wonder how long that’s been happening. At least 40 years. Probably a lot longer.
So there’s only crappy version and colorized, and no digitally-restored original version? Or was the original in color, and you were only watching a black-and-white TV copy?
TBH, I’ve never even seen this movie at all, Thanksgiving or not. The only Babes in Toyland I know stars Drew Barrymore or is a cartoon (and I barely remember the cartoon.)
I do believe there is a remastered black and white version that is not scratched and grainy. The movie was made in 1934 so, no, not made in color. Laurel and Hardy shoulda been a tip-off.
Well, at least it wasn’t the 1980’s version with Keanu Reeves and Pat Morita.
Is this for real or are you joking?
The Keanu Reeves version was the only one I knew about before I started reading this thread about 2 minutes ago…
Which is also known as the Drew Barrymore version.
Seems to me there was also a '60s version starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, though I doubt either of the above bear much resemblance to the Laurel and Hardy version.
Hal Roach had some very ideosyncratic ideas as to what would sell at the box office. Stan and Ollie were increasingly POed over the films he was putting them into (e.g., Swiss Miss, Fra Diavlo).
To me, it’s just not Christmas without
Die Hard.
I am right now trying to convince my husband to search for the Drew Barrymore Babes right now. He is not at all interested. Even after I tell him Drew doesn’t play Bow Peep but Laurel and Hardy.
I dunno why he won’t— except for he’s now watching attack helicopters and fighter jets shooting down dragons over a futuristic city. I don’t know what movie that is but he’s transfixed, cheesy 80’s Christmas TV special be damned.
Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Blues Brothers, various spaghetti westerns…
How about The Search for Spock for Easter? 
Apparently you can actually watch the entire movie in 10-minute chunks right on YouTube.
Yeup.