Obscure Holiday Specials #4: It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown.

 

As you are all well aware of, I am a fan of Peanuts despite never actually calling it Peanuts. No one ever called it that because Charles Shulz hated the name. It was forced on him by the newspapers. That's why just about every Charlie Brown comic strip collection book was like "Holy Hot Fuck, Charlie Brown" or "Stop shitting on the Carpet, Snoopy!" I don't know why I always have to use curse words to try to get comedy out of something but I do. Anyway, It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown and it was the 36th animated special and the last one to air on CBS which it did on November 27th, 1992. The next one would air on NBC, and several others would go direct to video. I didn't even know about them until today, so expect reviews of them.

Anyway, I liked this special a lot more as a child, even going so far as to say that I liked it more than the 1965 A Charlie Brown Christmas which goes to prove how rock stupid I was as a kid. Anyway, this does not hold up to adult scrutiny mostly because I've now read most of the Peanuts backlog of comic strips and plan to talk about them when I read the rest. The problem with that is that well all of the material in this story was taken pretty much verbatim from the comic strips. Plus going back to the well of Christmas when the first special was so well known. Not exactly the greatest idea. Plus I was curious about the Harold Angel character and wanted to see if he had appeared before and he had appeared on The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, in a segment called The Play. I know some of the material I'm sure popped in from the comic strip to the animated specials but Charles Shulz tried to make them mostly new material. I don't know if he was busy in 1992 or what but the majority of this special is from the strips and that just feels lazy.

Another really big problem is that the special doesn't feel like it gets to the ACTUAL plot until the last 10 or so minutes, the actual plot being a play that several of the characters have to perform in (Peppermint Patty is a sheep, Marcie is Mary, Franklin is the Angel Gabriel which I'm sure bothered some racists so I'm glad it was done and that sorta thing). Not to say that some of the vignettes weren't cute or funny, just that I think they needed to spread the full plot out ya know. It's not terrible but it certainly isn't better than A Charlie Brown Christmas like I thought at eleven.

FINAL VERDICT: Admittedly this is still a fun special and I wasn't bored during the 23 minute run time but man, they could have done better. Maybe spread out the jokes about the play through the entire run time or something. The whole vignettes thing just doesn't seem to work for the specials, and I don't know if it works for The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show because it's been decades since I've seen that show. I'm just amazed that a guy who was a stickler for quality didn't want something better. Anyway, It's Christmastime Charlie Brown is a C+ special.

Obscure Holiday Specials #3: Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas (1992)

 

You know since the other Inspector Gadget piece about the Final Episode of his show was taken off of another blog I had, this is the first time I've talked about DiC Animation so I get to blather on about them for the majority of this opening paragraph. They were created in 1971 by Jean Chapolin and for the majority of their first decade they made stuff  in France. In 1981 they teamed up with those rascals in Japan and created Ulysses 31 which literally has the greatest theme song in television history. Nothing will ever top it. He then teamed up with Andy Heyward and Bruno Bianchi and they created Inspector Gadget, the show that would put them on the map. The came Heathcliff and M.A.S.K. and The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin and the Sailor Moon dub, all things that I will blab about on my blog soon enough. DiC was even bought out by Disney! Sadly in 2008 DiC was made a part of Cookie Jar Entertainment and stopped being the  DiC we all love and know. They will live on in our memories.

Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas is a decent enough piece of Gadget related entertainment. It's not as good as most episodes from the first season of the original series, but it's certainly better looking then all of the stuff they've done with the character since. Some of that shit is really ugly. Also the Matthew Broderick and French Stewart movies. Yikes and double yikes. No one deserves that double team punch. Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas came out on December 4th, 1992 and faded into obscurity. I know someone will maybe one day find this blog and go NUH UH I SAW THIS FOURTY THREE THOUSAND TIMES AS A CHILD and I'll make fun of them for watching Christmas specials outside of Christmas. That's weird you weird-o. Anyway I would watch Inspector Gadget a fucking lot as a child. It was one of my favorite shows. It would come on NTV (rumor has it the weirdo who owned NTV, Geoff Stirling made them put on an episode during the middle of the news one day. It appeared picture in picture. What a weird man.) YTV, and just about every Canadian owned channel mostly because Nelvana a Canadian animation studio helped animate some of the episodes and most of the voice actors were Canadian, like Cree Summer. Every channel needed some Canadian content. Isn't that a wild factoid to know? Yeah I know it isn't. I'm sure it even showed on some of the American channels we got. Point is I loved this show

Since I loved the original series so much it's just kinda weird with the animation here. For an 80s cartoon the show was pretty well animated and pretty consistant with that animation. It just feels a bit off like not completely the same and that's weird coming from the company that owned Gadget. I dunno, I guess I just like the way they made the characters look in the original series over this. Oh, and this special has terrible terrible songs. Terrible. I don't want to hear Maurice LaMarche sing in a Don Adamsy kinda voice. Don Adams had a great voice for comedy and all that. He did not have a great voice for music. The other song by the elves is just annoying.

The plot is well your usual Inspector Gadget plot. Dr. Claw wants REVENGE on Santa Claus because he didn't bring him a Dirty Trick Sled when he was a child so now he's out on a RAMPAGE on the North Pole! Gadget comes in and does his dopey idiot schtick and Penny and Brain save the day and all like usual. Gadget was not the most plot heavy show. What I liked were the goofy ass gags and jokes and this special delievers them. A lot of very amusing jokes within this one, at least I thought so. It did end on a weird note with Dr. Claw's car being stuck and he was almost captured when Santa has the reindeer create a ice floe for him to escape.  I guess they didn't want to reveal who he was just yet because they were putting out those action figures. Man I remember seeing them on vacation and almost shitting my pants and trying to get my poor old mother to buy them and yes this happened when I was 8, not 28. I promise.

I said in my last review that I would rate this between Ernest Saves Christmas and Elmo Saves Christmas. This is not as good as Ernest Saves Christmas because it has very little Vern or Bobby action within. Despite never seeing it this is clearly better than Elmo Saves Christmas because Elmo is the worst Muppet out of the 28,000 Muppets created. That's right, I say the things we are all thinking but are too afraid to say! ELMO SUCKS! RISE UP PEOPLE!

Next Time: Let's go back to Charlie Brown and his second time at Christmas fun! Yes, I said second time...

Obscure Holiday Specials #2: Happy New Year, Charlie Brown

 

I know you're all like OBSCURE, CHARLIE BROWN! Charlie Browns not obscure! Yeah you're right but when is the last time you've heard anyone ever mention this holiday special? That's right, probably the day after it aired on January 1st, 1986. Happy New Year, Charlie Brown is pretty obscure for the whole Peanuts thing ya know. At least I think so and it's my blog so you can kindly eat my sweaty asshole. Anyway the first time I saw this was probably sometime in the 1990s on YTV. YTV would show all of the specials (which had to be at least 30 at that point) along with the tv series that was made in the 1980s, The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show. They would also show three of the four movies (Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown, Snoopy Come Home, and Bon Voyage Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back) which were pretty enjoyable and I'm glad that they were made so I can eek out a few more words into this article.

It's literally ONE minute before Christmas Holidays and Charlie Brown is thinking how the teacher hasn't given any work to do over the holidays and BAM, she tells them to read and then write an book report on War and Peace.  Yes, the depressing old Russian story that's like 8,000 pages and is way over the reading level of fourth grades. What I'm saying is the teacher is a fucking sadist. So Charlie Brown goes home and starts trying to read this insanely long, insanely depressing story about war. Linus comes in and tells Charlie Brown about how Leo whatever's wife Sonya had to re-write the book seven times with a dip pen and to stop whining and read the damn book. Except nicer and not realizing he's being a doof. 

To make things worse Peppermint Patty is having a boys asking girls dance party on New Years Eve and wants Charlie Brown to ask her out, and Charlie Brown is oblivious to the fact that Peppermint Patty wants him to ask her out. I don't get the Peppermint Patty and Marcie are lesbians joke. The CANON of Peanuts show that they have crushes on Charlie Brown. Plus are all weirdo children gay? Plus the joke has been done about four thousand nine hundred and eight three times and really needs to die. Please. 

Anyway Charlie Brown FINALLY asks out the Little Red Head Girl (who is apparently named Heather) and did you know that Charles Shulz had a unrequited love who was also a Redhead. Wild. Anyway you know he gets his hand stuck in the mail letter thing doors used to have. Do doors even have them any more? Anyway guess what happens she actually SHOWS up to the party but Charlie Brown is sleeping out side in the backyard. Poor Charlie Brown never wins, but he never gives up. Gotta respect that. Oh, he finally reads and writes the report at 3am the night before and gets a D- and the teacher decides that he or she loves being a sadist and has them read Crime and Punishment another long ass depressing Russian book.

This was actually a pretty fun special, I laughed several times. I liked the one scene with Rerun the best, where he blows square balloons and Linus keeps trying to get him to blow a correct balloon. Shit if my little sister blew a square balloon I'd have freaked my ass out and made her never stop. Uh, the music in this is pretty good too. I like the depressing Russian sounding music that plays every time Charlie Brown tries to read the book. I also like the one song from the special about musical chairs. It's very catchy. The music isn't as good as the Vince Guaraldi stuff, but Ed Bogas and Desiree Goyette who did the music for a lot of the other specials. This one isn't as good as the A Charlie Brown Christmas  or  It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown but it's certainly better than It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown. Can you believe they made Arbor Day into a special before New Years? That's absurd. Who the fuck gives a shit about Arbor Day? Not me. Fuck Arbor Day.

Next Time: I'm not watching It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown. I don't even know when Arbor Day even is. No we are going to watch Inspector Gadget Save Christmas. How many people Saved Christmas? I know Ernest did it. So did Elmo. Where will Inspector Gadget fall on that scale?!? Find out next time!

Obscure Holiday Specials #1: Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976)

 

Ah yes, Rankin Bass. Now this is the good shit! Started on September 14th, 1960 as Videocraft International, Ltd and became Rankin/Bass Inc. sometime after because Incorporated is a better word than Limited. Sadly ended in 1987 when they were closed down by Lorimar Pictures. They were an company that made a whole hell of a lot of stuff, like Lord of the Rings animated movies, and helped make that Last Unicorn movie people talk about but I've never seen. Oh and Thunder Cats! Is ThunderCats one or two words? It looks weird written either way. Man I ask the important questions! Anyway what they are probably most famous for is their Christmas specials which they made all the way between 1964 and 2001 (I didn't even know about this last one called Santa Baby that has Eartha Kitt in it! Everyone talks about how she was one of the like 82 women to play Catwoman in the Batman 1966 TV show but she'll always be the old lady in Ernest Scared Stupid to me) and that's what we are going to talk about today. Not the most popular stuff, because really what can I say about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or Santa Claus is Coming to Town that most people haven't already said? Nothing. You come to me to talk about the weirdo shit no one remembers! 

This brings me to our first special and usually I babble on about my memories of these things from my youth and how I loved it then! Well, uh... I had no idea Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976) even existed until I found a VHS tape of it at Value Village sometime in the past seven years or so? I don't know. I can remember dumb shit from my childhood but the adulthood is a blur. A sad boring depressing bore. Anyway I hope I still own that VHS tape because really I'm kinda tempted to start a new VHS tape collection and a VHS tape of this would be a great weird-o thing to own. I like weird-o things. Anyway this first appeared on December 10th, 1976 and was apparently a co-production with Japan's TV Asahi, with the special finally appearing there on December 24th, 1979. Now if that isn't a way to end the 1970s than I don't know what is! Also Japan likes Rudolph and American animation like that so SUCK IT ANIME FANS!!! (if any anime fans actually read this blog I'm sure they will mention this when I talk about how I like some animes later on in this stupid blogs future because they are dweebs who don't get my great comedy) (EDITORS NOTE: Apparently most of their 1960s stop motion stuff was done in Tokyo Japan by a guy named Tadahito Mochinaga who was credited as Tad Mochinaga, and there's nothing more in this world than I love then Japanese names.)

So this is clearly a sequel to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and I know some dweeb on the internet has seriously and geniunely complained that Rudolph was an adult at the end of that special and in this one that he's somewhere between a kid and an adult. The only reason I'm probably even going to mention that is because well I just want to make fun of people who get really angry about plotholes. My favorite horror franchise is Friday the 13th after all so I care about plotholes about as much as I care about I dunno something lame like comics made by Micah Curtis. I just care about having a fun time with something and it's gotta be an insanly impossible to ignore plothole for me to really care and that really isn't it.

This is a very goofy and weird little sequel though. The plot involves Happy who is the Baby New Year who has ran away because everyone laughs at his big ears (I would probably laugh at his big ears too just because of the goofy sound effect that comes along with them) and he went off to see the Archipelago of Lost Years. Archipelago is apparently a word for a bunch of islands near one another. What a cool word I just learned. The Islands are were Last Years go. So there's islands with Dinosaurs on them. A quick way to get me to enjoy anything is to put a dinosaur in it. An even quicker way is to put a cute stop motion dinosaur in it. I'm a simple man who enjoys simple things. Anyway this is bad because if Happy isn't around on December 31st to ring in the new year then DECEMBER NEVER ENDS! Oh shit son. To make things EVEN worse a giant ass vulture named Eon The Terrible (named because he lives for an Eon) wants to make it so that December 31st never ends because if he does he will turn into ice and snow. It's up to Rudolph and his new pals (including a Caveman, Ben Franklin and a giant whale with a clock on its tail!) to stop his evil plan...of not dying. I mean the Dude's apparently been a jerk for an Eon but I can't really blame him for not wanting to die.

The best part of these specials is the old timey stars that they get to narrate them. They always seem so happy to do it. One of them was Fred Astaire. Another was Burl Ives. This special has Mr. Red Skeleton. My old man likes Red Skeleton so you know he's an old timey kinda guy. The other members of the voice cast are Paul Frees (who did just as much work as Mel Blanc and people need to give the man more credit, damnit), Don Messick, Frank Gorshin (who voices probably my favorite character in the story, the Camel, and my least favorite, the Knight from the year all the Fairy Tales apparently took place in.) and the lady who wrote the novel Beaches. You know it was turned into some sappy movie with Bette Midler....not that I've ever seen it. The songs in this special are also pretty good but not as memorable or good as the ones in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Of course those probably have the best songs in any Holiday special so it's not exactly fair to compare them to this.

The Rankin/Bass specials are fun wholesome Christmas specials... even when they are doing other Holidays. It's weird to explain but they all feel very Christmassy. Although it's hard to really not connect Christmas and New Years. This has a lot of fun animation and puppets and I enjoyed watching it. Also he's not in the special but remember fuck Burgermeister Meisterburger. Nothing makes me happier to see his dumb ass portrait fall into the trash where it belongs. Fucker getting into Santa's shit.

Next Time: I think I'll stay with New Years and review the only other New Years special I can think of, staring the Peanuts gang! From the 1980s!