I liked the idea and the writing, with the Mandegreens, especially considering that the title itself is a mondegreen from “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”. You had Round John Virgin (from “Silent Night” ) and Richard Stands (from the Pledge of Allegiance).
But I found the story somewhat lacking, and I really didn’t care for the drawing style or the computer animation.
Still, it’s definitely a relatively forgotten Christmas cartoon. I haven’t seen it in years.
The Wikipedia page observes that there are bonus scenes that only showed up in the VHS release. They weren’t in the original broadcast or on the DVD release
Those who grew up watching CBC in the early 1980s might remember The Christmas Raccoons:
This 1980 animated special eventually led to the much better-known TV series The Raccoons, which ran from 1985 to 1992. But I don’t think the original Christmas-themed special was rerun very often.
Even though it came out only six years ago, How Murray Saved Christmas is pretty much forgotten. I thought it was quite clever (and all in verse). Even the presence of Jason Alexander didn’t ruin it (he’s only a minor character, which helps).
I think that your memory has failed you this time: it was only Murray that spoke only in rhyme.
I watched much of that when it first aired and couldn’t believe what I was seeing–it was Family Guy humor, but aired in Prime Time and aimed at kids as an actual Christmas special. Parents must have been horrified.
No. It was everyone. The narration was in rhyme, as was nearly all the dialog. I watched it again last week.
One bit of sabotage that killed it’s chances to catch on: NBC ran it the next year in a half hour slot, cutting about 20 minutes to fit it in. It did not improve things.
This is what I was going to post. I loved this version as a kid. It had an epic, sweeping feel to it and at times was delightfully scary. When the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals the 2 ghouls Ignorance and Want, that dark left turn always gave me the shivers. They used to show it year after year, then suddenly stopped, for some reason.
Then there’s ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ a Rankin-Bass stop-motion classic in the same style as ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ that used to get played every year, but I haven’t seen it on TV in years, unlike the other 2 mentioned. I seem to remember hearing it didn’t age well due to perceived racism or something. Or maybe it’s just that it’s too overtly religious, unlike ‘Rudolph’ and ‘Santa’.
I watched Nutcracker Fantasy at the behest of this thread, and it’s actually pretty great. Some of the stop motion scenes are incredible. The pace lags sometimes, but it’s worth a watch. The English dub is on Amazon Prime for free, but I tracked down the original Japanese version (Japan re-mastered it in 2014) and it’s got better music and 10 minutes that they cut out of English version. Definitely worth a watch! Thanks for the rec!
Feckin’ Bagman. I saw Nutcracker Fantasy at some point as a child, but that’s the only part that I can really remember. There’s one scene where a naughty child is staying up late reading a book (seriously, since when is that bad??), and the clock on the wall sort of twitches right before Bagman shows up. For the longest time I associated wall clocks with creepy old guys tiring sacks of mice-children.
I have a soft spot for the weird and fairly amateurish stop-motion production *Hardrock, Coco and Joe", which my sister and I used to watch when we were kids in Chicago in the 1960s.
I love the old old old cartoons. I had a videotape once of real oldies, from the 30’s or 40’s. Loved them.
Walt Disney had a Sing-Along Christmas tape which was snippets of Christmas carols and songs from various old Disney movies. Utterly charming. This was probably 30 years ago. I think there are a lot of them, this one was ‘A Very Merry Christmas Singalong’ with Mickey Mouse.
Pre-pandemic a group of us always got together on Christmas Eve for dinner and gift exchanges. One of the traditions of this was a viewing of Haedrock, Coco and Joe, Frosty the Snowman, and Susie Snowflake.
Maybe it deserves to be forgotten, but Santa in Animal Land may be one of the most bizarre (and worse) Christmas themed cartoons (technical, a puppet show, but still).
On some of those older films or cartoons, the question may be in who has the rights? The question of who owns the rights is often tangled and doubtful.
