tv specials

🦃 It’s 1983, and we’re spending Thanksgiving in July at the Saturday Supercade. Join us as we take a cue from Q*bert and pals and try to stay on topic as they learn how to build a Q home in a Q land.  

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🎙 Guests:  

Chad Young (The Horror Movie BBQ, TPIF: Thank Pod It’s Funny, @horrormoviebbq).  

Tom Coombs (The Pop Daddy, @thepopdaddy).  

Jayme Kilsby (@brainexploderrr).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. We all tried to remember who brought up the Q*bert special last year while talking about A Thanksgiving Tale, and we were all wrong.  

2. Even Kangaroo got a Saturday Supercade segment eventually.  

3. Peter Cullen was the first voice of Mario in the Donkey Kong segment.  

4. The Kingdom Chums: Little David’s Adventure, an animated retelling of David and Goliath featuring Billy Bowles (Q*bert) as a stuffed lion come to life.  

5. Pauline and her return in Super Mario Odyssey.  

6. We accidentally introduce Chad to Spookley, the Square Pumpkin.  

7. They gave the snakes arms!  

8. Viper has a Mae West voice, which leads into a tangent about Quasi at the Quackadero.  

9. Chief Q*Eagle reminded me of Randall Cunningham’s name in Tecmo Super Bowl.  

10. Saturday Supercade’s extensive use of the Hanna-Barbera Sound Effects Library.  

11. Home Movies: “Don’t Put Marbles in Your Nose.”  

12. Mike guests on TPIF: Thank Pod It’s Funny to discuss the Perfect Strangers Thanksgiving episode, Wild Turkey.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

John Wanamaker’s 1988 Thanksgiving Sale.  

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🎤 And Now, These Messages:  

Tis the Podcast.  

“Saturday Supercade,” “Q*bert,” and “Thanksgiving for the Memories” © 1983 Ruby-Spears Productions.  

Say hi on Twitter and Instagram.  
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

Reel It Back delivers a Christmas special as they close their Christmas movie month with Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus and all your Peanuts favorites. They close with their Top 5 Christmas Specials/Episodes of all-time! Merry Christmas Everyone!

Twitter: @ReelItBackPod

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Facebook: Reel It Back

Part of the Walk-Ons Network

Thank you for listening!

Our Spooktacular ends with some happy nostalgia. Brad's Halloweens always revolved around the TV specials, specifically Garfield and Charlie Brown. So instead of gore and terror, we focus on light chills and friendship. Fittingly, we start with our childhood memories of Halloween. Hear about Brad's loneliness and the annual parties Pete secretly threw.

Then it's time to discuss the main events. First up is Garfield in Disguise (the original title of Garfield's Halloween Adventure). Hear how a sweet and chipper musical takes a dark turn into something unexpected. Then we move on to It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Seemingly filled with good vibes, this special also has some deeper issues to discuss underneath the surface. Please listen and enjoy. This was one of our favorite episodes to record!

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🦃 We’re talking turkey as we dig up and dig in to a 1983 Thanksgiving special from puppeteer Paul Fusco, the creator of ALF.  

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🎙 Guests:  

Chad “Ecto” Young (The Horror Movie BBQ, TPIF: Thank Pod It’s Funny, @horrormoviebbq).  

Tom Coombs (@ClassicTomedy, TPIF).  

Jayme Kilsby (@brainexploderrr).  

****  

💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Imagicom Productions’ Holiday Specials Collection.  

2. A Thanksgiving Tale, with curated retro Thanksgiving commercials.  

3. The Joker at the 1989 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  

4. A November 16, 1983 TV listing in an archived New York Magazine.  

5. Paul Fusco’s Space Cats.  

6. David Lander in Funland.  

7. Mental Floss’s Oral History of ALF.  

8. Today’s TV Trope: Invited as Dinner.  

9. The You Bet Your Life Duck.  

10. The art of making puppets fight: Throw them into the air from behind a fence.  

11. We compare the Thanksgiving play in this special to the one in Addams Family Values.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Butterball Turkey Commercial (1985)  

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🎤 And Now, These Messages:  

Christmas Time in the City.  

“A Thanksgiving Tale” © 1983 Imagicom Productions, Inc.  

Say hi on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.  
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎃 It’s spooky time as we wheel our paraphernalia wagon back to 1977 for a Grinch Night we’ll never forget.  

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🎙 Guests:  

James Riley (@yourbuddyspooky).  

Ethan (The Hungry Reader, A Special Presentation or ALF Will Not Be Seen Tonight, @TeeAitchAre).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Halloween is Grinch Night on the Dr. Seuss Wiki.  

2. The worst, non-candy Halloween treats.  

3. Carlton, Your Doorman.  

4. This special’s music was by Sesame Street composer Joe Raposo.  

5. Hans Conried (The Grinch) was also the titular character in Dr. Seuss’s The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.  

6. I badly describe the plot of Midnight Madness.  

7. The Hakken-Kraks in Oh, the Places You’ll Go.  

8. Is the Grinch’s magic only active on Grinch Night?  

9. The Euphemism, and other words I thought Dr. Seuss made up.  

10. An ode to the Whos' videophone.  

11. Dr. Seuss Goes to War, and other creators of great works doing terrible things.  

12. Bogleech’s gallery of the Grinch’s monsters, and our personal favorites.  

13. The Vug under the Rug, the Jibboo, and the Birthday Bird.  

14. Danse macabre.  

15. Is this a prequel? And where does The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat fit?  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Franken Berry and Monster Cereals, 1986, preserved by Dinosaur Dracula.  

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🎤 And Now, These Messages:  

Holly Jolly X’masu.  

“Halloween is Grinch Night” © 1977 DePatie–Freleng Enterprises.  

Say hi on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.  
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 Tune in as we mysteriously float back to 1983 on an unseasonably warm Christmas adventure through Mexico on a Saturday morning cartoon that lasted a shorter amount of time than the fad it tried to cash in on.  

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🎙 Guest:  

Gerry Davila (Totally Rad Christmas, @RadChristmas).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. The History of Rubik’s Cube.  

2. The theme song by pre-Ricky Martin Menudo. 

3. Ángela Moya, the voice of the kids’ mother, played a small but grim part in Gleaming the Cube.  

4. An ode to the family station wagon.  

5. An archived, early-Internet Rubik fan site.  

6. Rubik has more powers than Superman.  

7. Las Posadas.  

8. Date a TV show by adding a CB radio.  

9. Rubik ending up in an eagle’s nest reminded me of The Polar Express.  

10. Reynoldo’s speed cubing skills compared to the real-life Rubik’s Cube world records in 1983 and today.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Cap’n O.G. Readmore, 1985.  
Cap’n Crunch Cereal: Crunch vs. Taste, 1985.  
An Alpha Bits Cereal commercial that’s clearly still trying to ride the Pac-Man wave, but I’m not complaining, 1985.  

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“Rubik, the Amazing Cube” and “Rubik’s First Christmas” © 1983 Ruby-Spears Enterprises, Inc.  

Say hi on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.  
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 By special request, this episode of the official podcast of teaching aliens about Christmas takes you on a domesticated goose chase back to 1977 through the first fully animated feature by Canadian studio Nelvana.  

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🎙 Guest:  

Jeff Fox (Name That Christmas  Special, @chrspecials).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Jeff’s collection of A Cosmic Christmas music and scanned promotional items.  

2. Joanna Wilson’s Christmas TV History.  

3. This special got George Lucas’s attention and led to Nelvana producing the animated segment of the Star Wars Holiday Special.  

4. The Nelvana Story: Thirty Animated Years.  

5. Today’s TV Trope: Big Ball of Violence.  

6. Jellybean looks like the red-eyed Pac-Man on the side of the arcade cabinet.  

7. Duncan Regehr (Amalthor) as Dracula in The Monster Squad.  

8. Marian Waldman, Mrs. Mac from Black Christmas, also has a quick line or two.  

9. The Castle Thunder stock sound effect.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Burger King Doll Christmas Commercial, 1977.  

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🎤 And Now, These Messages:  

Weird Christmas.  

“A Cosmic Christmas” © 1977 Nelvana Enterprises, Inc.  

Say hi on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.  
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 It’s time for toys and time for cheer as the Advent Calendar House begins another 12-episode countdown to Christmas in July, starting by rewinding at twice the normal speed back to 1981 to revisit the Christmas special that helped kick off the revival of Alvin and the Chipmunks.  

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🎙 Guests:  

Steven Tsapelas (Wizards: The Podcast Guide to Comics, @StevenStaples81).  

Sean Sotka (The Christmas Podcasts Podcast, @xander0527).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Steven’s story of accidentally erasing his VHS recording of this special, only to find another recording of the same broadcast years later.  

2. The History of the Chipmunks (RIP The Hourchive).  

3. Witch Doctor.  

4. R.J. Williams (Tommy) was 3 years old in this special.  

5. Wake, Rattle, & Roll, also starring R.J. Williams.  

6. Dave’s 3-story Victorian mansion seen only in this special and never again.  

7. Yes, the Chipmunks wear pants.  

8. Vintage Echo harmonicas are real, but good luck finding a gold one.  

9. Selling photos of Santa with dogs dressed as reindeer looks way more fun than selling dollar store junk door-to-door.  

10. Clyde Crashcup invented a popular Simpsons joke.  

11. Today’s TV trope: Talking in Your Sleep.  

12. Paw Patrol makes no sense.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

A Chipmunk Christmas Soundtrack Album, 1981.  
7up Countdown to Christmas Posters, 1986.  

****  

“A Chipmunk Christmas” © 1981 Bagdasarian Productions.  

Say hi on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.  
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

Joined by Brandon, Jordann and Special Guest Peter Popiel, for the 2020 Special Holiday Episode we talk about bad Christmas movies (Movies which should be on the "Naughty List") and Christmas Movies we don't like.

• We ask is there a bad Christmas Movie?
• We talk about popular Christmas Movies we don't like.
• We go through a list we found on the internet of Bad Christmas Movies.
  • The Star Wars Holiday TV Special is briefly discussed.
• We briefly talk about some bad Christmas Specials from classic TV shows.

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🕎 Tune in as we noisily snowmobile back to 1995 to try and figure out what everyone’s yelling about in Nickelodeon’s first Hanukkah special, created by Marc Weiner and his puppets who can’t stop screaming.  

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🎙 Guest:  

April Ryley (@Where2NextApril).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. We watched this videotaped original broadcast of The Weinerville Chanukah Special, complete with commercials.  

2. Weinerville.com is alive and well in 2020.  

3. Marc Weiner went on to be the voice of Swiper the Fox and the Map in Dora the Explorer.  

4. Marc Summers on his OCD being “blown out of freakin’ proportion,” and why he dropped his given last name.  

5. Sour cream vs. applesauce for latke dipping.  

6. Michael Gunst (Sinrek) may or may not be this puppeteer and mask maker.  

7. Brian O’Connor (Antidorkus) as Schemer in Shining Time Station.  

8. Thanks to Nickelodeon being under the MTV Networks umbrella, this special featured music by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Miami Sound Machine, and the B-52’s.  

9. The bulk of this special was filmed at the Summit Lodge in Killington, Vermont.  

10. Telephone booths still exist at Walt Disney World.  

11. Liver as a go-to food kids hate.  

12. Kevin “Diesel” Nash was likely still WWF Champion during taping, but lost it shortly before the special aired.  

13. The art of making your own menorah out of household items, recyclable objects, or fruit.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Kmart Holiday Commercial starring Rosie O’Donnell and Penny Marshall, 1995.  

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🎤 And Now, These Messages:  

Holly Jolly X’masu.  

“The Weinerville Chanukah Special” © 1995 Nickelodeon.  

Say hi on Twitter and Instagram.  
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 The Advent Calendar House kicks off another Christmas countdown by rewinding back to 1982, when Santa found himself stranded in Pac-Man’s neighborhood in the original video game crash.  

WARNING: This episode contains spoilers about Santa Claus from 11:25 to 13:30.  

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🎙 Guests:  

Lindy (@ieatvideogames) and  Alicia (@thinkbluee), the Sour Puss and Chomp-Chomp to my Pac-Baby.  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Santa is flying with 8 reindeer, including Rudolph. Who got the night off?  

2. Why some reindeer actually have red noses.  

3. This might be the first time a Christmas special shows Santa using a computer.  

4. Russi Taylor’s Pac-Baby has the same voice she later used as Robin in Muppet Babies.  

5. No one in Pacland knows about Christmas, but the Ghost Monsters know Jingle Bells.  

6. Absent from this special is the Ghost Monsters’ boss, Mezmaron.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Pac-Man Cereal, 1984.  

Chef Boyardee Pac-Man Pasta Commercial, 1984.  

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🎤 And Now, These Messages:  

A Bomb for Christmas, made for podcast Christmas movie by Tim Babb of the Can’t Wait for Christmas Podcast, co-starring Mike as “Captain Willis.”  

“Christmas Comes to Pacland” © 1982 Hanna-Barbera Productions.  

Say hi on Twitter and Instagram.  
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🦃 We end our countdown to Christmas in July by badly dancing back to 1989 to celebrate the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season in Garfield’s Thanksgiving, the clear bronze medalist of Garfield’s holiday trilogy, thanks to Jon Arbuckle going from goofy pet owner to gaslighting, mansplaining, hopelessly inept creep.  

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🎙 Guest:  

Jeff Somogyi (Talkin’ Chopp, @sommerjam).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Orson the Pig from U.S. Acres makes a cameo in Liz’s waiting room.  

2. The dumbest things we’ve done to get a date pale in comparison to Jon holding his breath until Liz concedes to going out with him. Please don’t do that.  

3. Pat Carroll is back as Grandma in her 2nd greatest vocal performance of November 1989.  

4. Julie Payne (Liz) was also briefly the voice of another cartoon doctor, Janice N!Godatu, from the other animated segment of The Tracey Ullman Show.  

5. A brief history of sock garters.  

6. This special confirms Jon can’t hear Garfield speaking, but somehow Garfield’s computerized, fat-shaming scale can.  

7. The best of Calvin’s dad from Calvin and Hobbes.  

8. Grandma Arbuckle’s Sweet Potatoes, as prepared by Dinosaur Dracula.  

9. Cranberry sauce tastes better when it’s shaped like the inside of a can.  

10. Desirée Goyette, the female singing voice in Garfield’s specials and also the voice of Nermal, also sang the title theme to It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Garfield Alpo Cat Food Commercial, 1989.  

“Garfield’s Thanksgiving” © 1989 United Feature Syndicate, Inc./Anderson Digital.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 On another Scrooge Sunday edition of the Advent Calendar House, we fly back in time to 1978 to revisit Rankin/Bass’s turn at A Christmas Carol.  

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🎙 Guests:  

Michael DiGiovanni (Classic Film Jerks, Pop Culture Retrofit, @theatomicgeeks).  

Michael May (MichaelMay.online, Sleigh Bell Cinema, Mystery Movie Night, AfterLUNCH, @michaelmaycomix).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. This is specifically an adaptation of a 1956 production on The Alcoa Hour starring Basil Rathbone as Scrooge. Rankin/Bass uses most of the songs from that special.  

2. The original Stingiest Man in Town on Sleigh Bell Cinema.  

3. Michael May’s annual coverage of scenes from this and other Christmas Carol adaptations.  

4. Sonny Melendrez (Bob Cratchit) in You and Me, Kid.  

5. This has my all-time favorite, super creepy version of Marley’s face appearing on Scrooge’s door knocker.  

6. This special gets older Belle completely wrong.  

7. Tiny Tim has skinny robot legs.  

8. The eldest Cratchit sibling, Martha, is Debbie Clinger of the Clinger Sisters, a.k.a. Superchick from the Krofft Supershow host band Kaptain Kool and the Kongs.  

9. Rankin/Bass should have made a south seas-themed special called Christmas Island. (Hi from the future! We ended up exploring this idea on AfterLUNCH.)  

10. Scrooge’s grave morphing into a giant devil face is a reminder in hindsight that this special was animated in Japan by Topcraft, the predecessor to Studio Ghibli.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Glad Trash Bags Commercial starring Tom Bosley, 1981.  

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“The Stingiest Man in Town” © 1978 Rankin/Bass Productions.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 Sail back to 1981 with us as we dig up Rankin/Bass’s penultimate and possibly most obscure stop-motion Christmas special ever, which may or may not only exist because they had the rights to use Christmas in Killarney and needed someplace to put it.  

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🎙 Guests:  

Michael DiGiovanni (Classic Film Jerks, Pop Culture Retrofit, @theatomicgeeks).  

Michael May (MichaelMay.online, Sleigh Bell Cinema, Mystery Movie Night, AfterLUNCH, @michaelmaycomix).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Ken Jennings (the voice of Dinty Doyle, not the Jeopardy! guy) in the short-lived Epcot Center attraction, The Astuter Computer Revue.  

2. Mag the Hag’s entrance reminds me of Rita Repulsa in the opening of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.  

3. Blarney Kilakilarney and his wife are a poster Irish couple and the reason everyone’s advice at your wedding is: “Never go to bed angry.”  

4. This special keeps adding new rules about how both banshees and rainbows work, like they’re Mogwai.  

5. The Leprechauns’ “phantom island of Tralee” shares a name with an actual mainland town in Ireland, but is closer to Dursey Island, population (as of 2016): 4.  

6. The only thing many remember about this special is its Nightmare Face reveal that a beautiful woman Dinty finds washed ashore is the banshee in disguise.  

7. According to the Christmas Specials Wiki, Arthur Rankin said a promotion was planned involving prizes buried in random places around the United States for children to dig up, but was abandoned for safety concerns.  

8. Jack O’Lantern, from Rankin/Bass’s Festival of Family Classics TV series, featuring a leprechaun disguised as a pumpkin.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Gremlins Gizmo Plush Pet, 1984.  

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“The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold” © 1981 Rankin/Bass Productions.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 Go-go Gadget podcast! It’s time to spring back to 1992 to take Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas in for questioning.  

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🎙 Guest:  

Chad Young (The Horror Movie BBQ, @horrormoviebbq).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Nick Knacks, a show-by-show video history of Nickelodeon.  

2. Halloween 1992 was the year of white kids dressing like Steve Urkel.  

3. Inspector Gadget’s run on Nickelodeon got me into Get Smart on Nick at Nite.  

4. The time Chad got an crew jacket from the set of the Inspector Gadget movie.  

5. The action figure that revealed Dr. Claw’s goofy face.  

6. The Inspector Gadget Super Nintendo game, featuring the same alternate theme song as this special.  

7. The Mount Rushmore of Frank Welker Voices.  

8. Maurice LaMarche subbing for Don Adams for Gadget’s weird version of the 12 Days of Christmas is similar to Jim Cummings finishing Be Prepared for Jeremy Irons in The Lion King.  

9. Where’s the camera Penny’s Not Apple Watch uses to see Brain?  

10. Jerry “The King” Lawler entering the 1997 Royal Rumble Match in the middle of saying something, then finishing the sentence after being eliminated in 4 seconds.  

11. Disney’s Christmas All-Time Favorites.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Cookie Crisp Cereal Christmas Commercial, 1992.  

****  

“Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas” © 1992 DiC Entertainment.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 Join us as we slowly slink sideways back to 1983 to celebrate the time someone literally threw an idea at the wall to see if it would stick. It’s Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls, an animated Christmas special about Wacky WallWalkers. But first, we need to talk about the man behind the WallWalkers, Dr. Fad.  

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🎙 Guest:  

Joey O. (Y-Not Radio, Words With Nerds, @ImGonnaDJ24).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. The Dr. Fad Show.  

2. Eight ’80s Xmas Specials You Might’ve Forgotten, from Dinosaur Dracula.  

3. X-Entertainment’s preserved 2003 tribute to the Wacky WallWalker.  

4. This isn’t the right Apple Jacks commercial, but I can’t not mention young Julia Stiles scoffing that it doesn’t taste like apples.  

5. Writer Mark Evanier’s blog.  

6. The WallWalkers’ home planet looks like an M.C. Escher painting.  

7. Darryl is voiced by Scott Menville, best known now as Robin on Teen Titans, in one of his earliest roles.  

8. Darryl’s friend, Kenzo, is named after one of Dr. Fad’s sons. His other son married comedian Ali Wong.  

9. The most expensive things we’ve asked for from our parents for Christmas, which pale in comparison to a $1,000 toy car — which, of course, we then look up its adjustment for inflation.  

10. Waxing nostalgic about popcorn garland on Christmas trees.  

****  

📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Corn Pops Cereal with free Wacky WallWalker inside, 1984.  

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“Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls” © 1983 NBC Productions.  
“The Dr. Fad Show” © 1988 Tradex Corp.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🐰 

Hello, sunshine! Join us for a hop back to Easter 1986 to revisit the Jim Henson special, The Tale of the Bunny Picnic — which is about neither Easter, nor a bunny picnic — but it did introduce the world to Bean Bunny, the Muppets’ Nermal.  

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🎙 Guest:  

Emily Rowley (@mlerowley).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Jim Henson’s original introduction to The Tale of the Bunny Picnic.  

2. The Jim Henson Hour.  

3. Bean Bunny is still around at Muppet*Vision 3D in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  

4. Bean was also a late-series addition to Muppet Babies, and his picture is on the playroom wall in Disney’s new Muppet Babies.  

5. The Muppet Musicians of Bremen and its grotesque, full-size Muppet bad guys.  

6. Sweetums in Tales from Muppetland: The Frog Prince.  

7. Bean trying to tell the other bunnies to quiet down or the dog will hear them is also the plot of the first act of Trolls.  

8. Every Easter Bunny costume is terrifying.  

9. Y’all remember Puffalumps? You do now.  

10. The Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta is home to several Muppets from this special, including both Bean and his Dragon Bunny form from his dream sequence.  

11. Carlin Trammel’s Video Tour of the Center for Puppetry Arts’ Jim Henson exhibit.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

McDonald’s Muppet Babies Holiday Huggables, 1988.  

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“The Tale of the Bunny Picnic” © 1986 Henson Associates.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 Happy birthday! The Advent Calendar House kicks off a countdown to Christmas in July by setting the table for Rankin/Bass’s eventual epic crossover, starting with Frosty’s Winter Wonderland, a snowy sequel from 1976 starring a strange, tall goblin claiming to be Andy Griffith.

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🎙 Guest:  

Brandon Medley (@brandmed, Blessed Are the Geek, Star Weirdos).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. A brief guide to finding obsure things on Disney+, like Melody Time, starring Dennis Day, (the voice of Parson Brown) as Johnny Appleseed.  

2. Barbara Jo Ewing voiced one of the kids in her only known credit, but somehow IMDb knows her height.  

3. We do the math to figure out how far the wind carried a newspaper from Frosty’s hometown to the North Pole.  

4. Frosty beat The Santa Clause 2 to the “gotta get a wife” plot point by more than 2 decades.  

5. Frosty’s “specifications” for his ideal woman are the same as Sir Mix-a-Lot’s.  

6. Are snow people self-aware before coming to life and stuck in a comatose state?  

7. Jack Frost’s “winter that almost didn’t end” foreshadowed the real-life Blizzard of 1977 by less than 2 weeks.  

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:  

Freezy Freakies, 1984.  

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“Frosty’s Winter Wonderland” © 1976 Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎉 It’s a special, post-Christmas bonus episode of the Advent Calendar House as we turn back the years to 1976 and tip our oversized hat hiding our oversized ears to Rankin/Bass’s first sequel special, in which Rudolph has to save the Baby New Year from a  big, angry bird.  

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🎙 Guests:  

Brandon Medley (@brandmed, Blessed Are the Geek).  

Joey O. (Y-Not Radio, Words with Nerds, @ImGonnaDJ24).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Rudolph devolves into a younger-looking reindeer, because the original model may have been lost. But also he seems to forget he can fly.  

2. According to our narrator, Father Time (Red Skelton), this story begins “on that very same foggy night.” As in Christmas Eve. When Santa’s kind of busy.  

3. I learned who Red Skelton was from a joke in a Tex Avery cartoon.  

4. The Phantom Tollbooth.  

5. Tik-Tok from Return to Oz.  

6. Creepier song about time: The Moving Finger Writes from this, or Older by They Might Be Giants?  

7. Ralph Archibold, Philadelphia’s longtime Ben Franklin impersonator.  

8. Billy Corgan rides a roller coaster.

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“Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” © 1976 Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 On a very wound-up and thrown out into a pile of junk in another dimension episode of the Advent Calendar House, we set our sentient clocks back to 1988 for a one-time-only trip to Tattertown, the holiday brain-child Ralph Bakshi and Nickelodeon’s first-ever original animated TV program.  

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🎙 Guest:  

Chad Young (The Horror Movie BBQ, @horrormoviebbq).  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Christmas in Tattertown info and sketches from Bakshi Productions.  

2. Christmas in Tattertown review on Nick Knacks, a show-by-show Nickelodeon retrospective.  

3. Muffet initially appears to be the victim, much like the other guy, actually named Guy, in Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham.  

4. Cameos by early Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks characters Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Flip the Frog, and later Popeye.  

5. Today’s TV Trope: The “real world.”  

6. A shout-out to the dearly departed Hollywood Video for staying open on Christmas Day for idiots like me who forgot to ask for required accessories like the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak.  

7. Wawa’s Holiday Gobbler hoagie.  

8. Another cameo by Bosko and Honey turns into a tangent about the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, Fields of Honey.  

9. A brief introduction to “snoap,” Florida’s fake snow.  

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“Christmas in Tattertown” ©1988 Bakshi Productions, Inc.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.