Washed-Out Christmas Memories

 

Not all Christmas specials have had the wide popularity and repeated viewings of the Rankin/Bass specials, or Charlie Brown, or the Grinch. Here are three (kind of obscure?) ones that are a tickle in my memory, that still at least evoke the milieu of my childhood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drZWKAynlzs

Raggedy Ann and Andy in The Great Santa Claus Caper (1978), by Chuck Jones. Jones created a dog for the dolls, Raggedy Arthur, who went on to become an established feature of the Raggedy franchise. Raggedy Ann and Andy (June Foray and Daws Butler) must foil Alexander Graham Wolf (who looks and talks like Wile E. Coyote but has a red nose like Ralph Wolf) who wants to encase every toy in an unbreakable plastic coating called Gloopstik, which will make them last forever but will make them unplayable. Talk about Mint-in-Box. After Arthur is encased in Gloopstik, they find that love will break the material. Wolf repents his ways and leaves before Santa can discover his schemes. Santa and his elves are all designed in Jones’s ultra cutesy style; in fact, I find the whole special most interesting to me as an example of the famous animator’s work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-pfUjNvtVs

Before there was A Christmas Story (1983), there was A Christmas Story (1972), an animated special by Hanna-Barbera. Goober the dog and Gumdrop the mouse find Timmy’s unmailed letter to Santa and must deliver it before Christmas. Three songs in the special were later re-used in the 1977 A Flintstone Christmas and another in the 1980 Yogi’s First Christmas. It came out the same year as HB’s The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn’t; both have that early Seventies vibe to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vmQe72ozeA

The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas (1973) was produced by Depatie-Freleng and aired on NBC. Ted E. Bear (Tommy Smothers) is curious about Christmas and decides to go in search of it, rather than conform and hibernate like all of the other bears. By the time he reaches the human world and a house where they celebrate Christmas, he falls asleep under the tree and becomes a little girl’s teddy bear present. I always wondered what would happen when he woke up. Also with the voices of Arte Johnson, Casey Kasem, and Robert Holt (look him up, he had quite a cartoon career).