Let's Watch This: "The Soulmates in the Gift of Light" (1991)

I know Christmas was yesterday, but I don't care. It's still the Christmas season. There's still time for one more Christmas special review.

This special has a very interesting history... at least online. In 2016, an Ottawa resident named Emily Charette posted a screencap from... something that she needed help identifying. This is the screencap:

After ruling out things like a Keebler elves commercial, FernGully, The Littles, The Smurfs, and The Princess and the Dragon, this very year the mystery was finally solved. The Mr. Smee-esque elf character was actually from a 1991 Christmas special called The Soulmates in the Gift of Light (also known as The Christmas Gift of Light).

This very obscure special premiered on November 27nd, 1991, produced by a company called Soulmates Productions... which presumably explains why the title characters are called "the Soulmates". It can now be found on YouTube. And seeing how the special's biggest claim to fame is that nobody knew what it was for years, it seems ripe for reviewing on my blog. Let's take a look at The Soulmates in the Gift of Light.

The special begins on the night before the night before Christmas. And all through the town of... whatever the name of this town is, not a creature is stirring - except for a blue-skinned shady-looking fella and a cigar-smoking kid. Wait, wait, wait, back up. A kid smoking a cigar? WHAT?

On top of that, he's also got a five o'clock shadow. Is he a kid? Or is he just a really short person?

And why does the other guy have blue skin? Maybe he's been out in the cold weather too long...

Anyhow, the blue-skinned guy (voiced by Al Waxman) and the cigar-smoking kid sneak around causing mischief and laughing about how they'll spread negative energy throughout the entire world. Spread negative energy throughout the entire world? Do you suppose these guys invented Twitter*?

As part of their mischief-making, they sneak over to a house that belongs to a girl (Gema Zamprogna) and her dog (John Stocker) who looks almost exactly like Pongo from One Hundred and One Dalmatians minus most of his spots. The blue-skinned guy uses his magic scepter to zap the dog, which creates some evil hands made of smoke that... put the dog in a trance? I'm very confused. Magic scepter? Hands made of smoke? Dog's put in a trance?

"I'm getting veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery sleeeeeeeeeeepy..."

After the blue-skinned guy and the cigar-smoking kid take off in their flying limousine sleigh... yes, they have one of those... it's established that Offbrand Pongo is the girl's guide dog. Not a very good one, it would seem, seeing as the girl very nearly gets turned into roadkill by a car. Perhaps the seeing eye dog needs a seeing eye dog of his own.

Meanwhile, at the North Pole...

Dig that funky architecture.

Santa Claus is watching people do naughty things on his big-screen TV. And when I say "naughty things", I mean things like stealing money from one of those sidewalk Santas. Please get your minds out of the gutter. "Whatever happened to the Christmas spirit?" he laments before setting out in his sleigh... which looks more like a rocket ship. Because this is a high-tech Santa. It bums me out to think of all those poor reindeer who are out of work now that Santa's decided to upgrade...

The Easter Bunny doesn't worry about stuff like this. He gives folks candy whether they're
good OR bad. He's not very judgmental.

Then we cut to the other side of the other side of the universe... okay, can this special choose a plotline to follow? Is this special about the blue-skinned guy and the cigar-smoking kid, the girl and her guide dog, Santa Claus, or... these things?

…did we suddenly enter an episode of Galaxy High School?

So, I'm guessing these two alien Casper-esque guys are the titular Soulmates (Wayne Robson and Shelia McCarthy). A giant floating pink bubble tells them that they're getting a distress call from one of Santa's reindeer. So I guess that rocket sleigh DIDN'T put the reindeer out of work after all...

He says that Santa flew the coop, and without Santa there won't be a Christmas. Oh, sure, people can still spend time with their families, go to the mall to buy gifts to give members of their families, and watch movies like A Christmas Story and Miracle on 34th Street... but without Santa coming down the chimney with presents, it just won't be Christmas!

"Help me, Soulmates. You're my only hope."

Then the bubble turns around, revealing itself to actually be the moon. Which is alive. And incredibly creepy-looking.

Though I know one way it could've been much creepier...

The creepy talking moon turns the Soulmates into balls of light, and then the three of them fly through the galaxy to Earth. Not shown - the moon's flying around wreaking havoc on our planet's tides. "Soulmates to the rescue!" one of the Soulmates shouts as they fly down to Earth.

Meanwhile, the reindeer are setting off to find Santa as Comet and the elves cheer them on. One of the elves just so happens to look exactly like that cigar-smoking kid we previously saw palling around with the blue-skinned guy earlier. Hmmm, I wonder if they could be one in the same?

"Oh, yeah, I'm TOTALLY an elf! Just ignore the fact that I don't have pointy ears."

And now, back to the girl and her Pongo lookalike dog. As the girl sleeps, the dog sadly packs his things and sneaks out because he thinks she'd be better off without him. The moon says that he hopes the Soulmates can help everyone overcome all that negative energy lurking around.

Speaking of the Soulmates, they run into Comet, who does what anyone would do upon seeing tiny aliens who look like Boo Berry had children with Tinker Bell would do - scream.

Who WOULDN'T be making that expression upon seeing those things?

The Soulmates tell Comet to just keep believing that he'll find Santa, and he will. And sure enough, a few seconds later, Comet spots Santa's sleigh. Huzzah!

At the moment, Santa is sitting down on a bench and striking up a conversation with Truman. Yes, apparently Santa can talk to animals. I don't know if he has this ability in any other Christmas specials...

"Don't tell anyone, but I'm really the Sultan of Agrabah. I had to get out of there - our palace
has been invaded by a scary blue CGI Will Smith desperately trying to be Robin Williams and failing!"

Comet and the male Soulmate locate Santa. Christmas is saved, right? Well, no. Santa moans that nobody believes in him or in the Christmas spirit. Mope mope mope mope mope. This entire special has basically just been watching characters mope. First the dog is moping that he's a lousy guide dog, then Santa is moping that nobody believes in him, then Comet is moping that they'll never find Santa and that Christmas is ruined... it's like a Christmas special written by Hardy Harr Harr.

Back at the North Pole, the elf who totally isn't that cigar-smoking kid who's one of the bad guys is telling the other elves that they need to find a new leader. After all, without this gig at the North Pole, the elves would be stuck making shoes, or baking cookies in a tree, or fighting against Orcs. But who could ever replace Santa? Hmmm... how about a blue-skinned shady-looking fella with a stereotypical twirly cartoon bad guy mustache and a Brooklyn accent?

"A runabout! I'll steal it! NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!"

Shady-Looking here reveals his name to be Angris McBragg (no relation to Commander McBragg) and that the elf who looks like that cigar-smoking kid he was hanging out with earlier is in fact that cigar-smoking kid he was hanging out with earlier. I know, big surprise. Oh, and his name is Thomas. DOUBTING Thomas, that is.

Angris wants to take over Christmas because [REASONS]. He wants the elves to make dolls in Doubting Thomas' likeness. The doll will make the children doubt themselves... somehow. Maybe it casts some sort of spell on them? Oh, and he captured the female Soulmate.

Are we going to get any explanation as to why his skin is blue? Is he secretly half-Smurf
or something?

As the elves get to work under the threat of being exposed to the doll's self-doubting powers themselves, we cut back to Santa, Truman, Comet, and the male Soulmate. The male Soulmate says that he can use his Soulmate powers to contact the female Soulmate, and then their combined powers will "see it, believe it, and make it come true". "It's called 'Magic Imagining'!" he says.

So he contacts the female Soulmate, who uses this "Magic Imagining" stuff to imagine herself helping Santa and Truman believe in themselves. Right after she does that, Angris uses the Doubting Thomas doll on her, allowing us to finally see just HOW, exactly, it makes kids doubt themselves. Apparently it has laser beam eyes that can hypnotize folks into thinking they're hopeless.

"Staring contest! You lose!"

The male Soulmate begs Comet, Santa, and Truman to help them with his "Magic Imagining". So Comet gives it a shot, which sends some pink pixie dust up to the moon, who in turn sends "Soulmate Energy" to where it's needed the most. It hits the female Soulmate, snapping her out of her self-doubting trance. It hits Doubting Thomas, too, turning him all nicey-nicey and removing his five o'clock shadow.

So now it's off to the North Pole to stop Angris, right? Nope, Santa is still in his funk. "I don't belong at the North Pole anymore," he insists. So Comet and the male Soulmate... okay, the Soulmates do indeed have names, the male one is named Orion and the female is named Orillia... head off to the North Pole by themselves. After they leave, the wind sends a letter addressed to Santa his and Truman's way - it's from the girl, asking Santa for her dog back. Only problem is, the girl didn't sign her name... which is Ella, by the way... but Santa's computer at the North Pole has some sort of letter-writer-identifying thing that can help them. But Santa doesn't have his glasses, and without them his eyes aren't that great, so he needs Truman to guide him back to the North Pole.

...wait, he's going to WALK all the way back to the North Pole? On foot? I don't know what state he landed in, but chances are it's not exactly within walking distance of the North Pole. Well, anyway, Truman says that maybe they can find their way back to the North Pole if they really, truly believe.

If the "really, truly believing" stuff doesn't work out, maybe they could hail a taxi or something?

The elves have finished making Angris' eeeeeeeeeeeeevil dolls, and since the reindeer aren't there to pull the sleigh, Angris declares that the ELVES will have to do it. How that's going to work seeing as there's no indication that the elves can fly, I don't know. Fortunately, Orion and Comet show up, followed by Santa and Truman. And Santa uses some "Soulmate Energy" to turn the Doubting Thomas dolls into NICE dolls who talks about how important it is to believe in yourself.

Santa apparently found his glasses offscreen, too.

And now that his evil plot has been foiled, Angris flees. No, really. He just flies off in his flying limo. No comeuppance. They don't even zap HIM with the "Soulmate Energy" and turn him nice. Um, okay then...

Santa sets off in his sleigh to do his rounds, Truman is reunited with Ella, the "believe in yourself" moral is reiterated, and the creepy moon makes another appearance. Now, quick, everybody "see, believe, and make come true" that world hunger has been solved.

Well? Has it?

What's the Verdict?

Honestly, I can see why this special didn't catch on. Is it a BAD special? No. It's perfectly fine for what it is. It's just... generic. There's nothing here that we haven't already seen in other animated Christmas specials. Santa doubting himself? Check. Mustache-twirling Christmas-hating villain? Check. Cutesy magical creatures who wind up saving Christmas? Check. Child with a disability? Check. Look at the Christmas specials on this list, most if not all of them include at least ONE of those things. On top of that, it's not a good sign when most of your special is just watching characters mope and moan about how hopeless everything is. It makes the special a chore to watch.

But like I said, the special isn't BAD. There are just far better Christmas specials out there.

* I'm perfectly aware that Platypus Comix's review of the special also made a joke about the bad guy being the founder of Twitter. I wrote this review before Platypus Comix wrote their (much better-written) review of it - remember, I write these reviews in advance. Just thought I'd make that clear because I don't want people to think I got lazy and stole jokes from Platypus Comix's review.

Animated Commercials Back From When Commercials Were Actually Fun - Part 3: The Christmas Edition

Didn't I say that the next one of these I would do would be a Christmas one? Huh? Didn't I?

One of the numerous great things about the holiday season are the commercials that air during it. Nowadays, you don't see as many animated Christmas commercials - mainly because you don't see as many animated commercials as a whole. I can't remember seeing one new animated Christmas commercial on TV this year. It's very weird.

Actually, most of the Christmas ads this year have been a letdown. Most of them are just needlessly depressing with nothing whimsical or Christmassy about them at all. Half the time when I'm watching TV I just see ads for pharmaceuticals. Because nothing says "Happy Holidays" like pharmaceuticals, am I right?

But I'm not here to complain. I'm here to share with you some great animated Christmas ads from over the years. My one rule for this post is that they have to be FULLY-ANIMATED, or at least MOSTLY-animated. Which, alas, means that I can't include the M&Ms Christmas ad, which is my personal favorite (I figured if I qualified THAT as animation, by that logic I'd have to qualify those POM "Worry Monster" ads as animated because the monsters in them are CGI. Where is the line drawn?).

I had to start with this one. This, along with the aforementioned M&Ms ad, is one of those ads that's been airing around the holiday season for years. It made its debut in 1989, and yet not a holiday season has gone by without it airing at least once. Not only that, but it's also one of the few commercials to have its own Wikipedia page.

This is a simple ad, and some of the best things in life are the simple ones. It was directed by Carl Willat at the animation studio Colossal Pictures. There are actually two versions of this ad - the original stop-motion one, and a 2012 updated version with CGI (that's the version we've seen on TV since then). I think it's scientifically impossible for someone to watch this ad without a smile on their face.

Unless it's the 2020 version of the ad where the kisses are interrupted by live action people. Don't think I wasn't just as upset with that as everyone else was. I still get really annoyed when they air THAT one on TV.

Ah, the Coca-Cola polar bears! How come you don't see them in ads anymore?

Anyway, this ad is one of many featuring the bears produced by Rhythm & Hues. A good chunk of them are Christmas ads - which makes sense, since we tend to associate arctic animals like polar bears with the holidays, what with them being in winter. It was difficult to choose which one to do... there's also one where the polar bears meet penguins, and one where the polar bears watch fireworks. You can find them on YouTube.

The bears were the idea of a Mr. Ken Stewart. First he thought of how people drink Coca-Cola at the movies, then he thought about how much his Labrador retriever looked like a polar bear. Putting those two thoughts together, he came up with the very first Coca-Cola polar bears ad, where the bears drink Coca-Cola while watching the Northern Lights.

Hope these bears make a comeback someday. At least let 'em appear in a Super Bowl commercial for old times' sake.

This 1999 Comcast commercial was directed by Bob Kurtz at Kurtz & Friends, an animation studio that I talked about before in my very first post about animated commercials. This studio has such a great art style that adds a natural charm to anything they produce, and I love how the ad goes from calm and serene to ROCK MUSIC just so suddenly. And this is coming from somebody who knows nothing about satellite dishes or how they work. And the reveal that the ad takes place on the front of a Christmas card is a nice touch.

It's been five years, and it still feels so weird to me that Snoopy isn't the mascot of MetLife anymore. I still associate the company with the character and it's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that he and the rest of the Peanuts gang aren't appearing in their ads. Maybe a good chunk of it stems from the fact that I don't think I've seen a single MetLife ad on TV since then (was MetLife's mindset "If we don't have a beloved cartoon character as our mascot, why bother making commercials?").

The Peanuts gang is another one of those things a lot of us associate with the holiday season (mainly due to their multiple Christmas specials), so it was only natural that MetLife would have them appear in their Christmas ad. It's here we learn that Charlie Brown and his friends aren't very good at charades.

Y'know, I never thought of Godzilla and King Kong as being the type of characters to star in a Christmas commercial, but clearly someone at Best Buy did, and I am incredibly grateful that they did. This is one of those Christmas ads that focuses more on humor than sentimentality. We don't get a lot of Christmas ads like that nowadays. Maybe because the world is a far less humorous place than it was in the 1990s.

It's not uncommon to see characters from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in commercials. They've appeared in ads for Aflac, Nissan, Denny's, CBS, Window's phones, Bing, AT&T, and - as seen here - Verizon. I'll admit that this ad does feel very spiteful. Directly mocking your competitors in your ads always does. Maybe Genesis really did what Nintendon't, but still...

Speaking of phone companies making fun of each other around the holidays, here's one of MANY ads that Alltel did in which their spokesperson, Chad, teams up with Santa Claus to stop the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil plans of Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile employees to ruin Christmas. They did at least FOUR ads about this. FOUR. In fact, these characters (minus Santa) also appeared in live action ads! I don't know whether to roll my eyes at how petty this seems or laugh at it. I mean, there's a reason why Kellogg's doesn't do cereal commercials where the Trix Rabbit, Sonny the Cocoa Puffs Bird, and the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee attempt to blow up the Earth only to get beaten up by Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam.

Okay, back to the feel-good ads. I would make a "how do they celebrate Christmas in prehistoric times" joke, but a million others have done that already. So instead, let's talk about how nice it is to see Fred and Barney actually share the cereal for once. Usually, Fruity Pebbles ads go like this: Barney disguises himself and tries to trick Fred out of his cereal instead of just buying his own box of it. Fred is fooled, but then discovers it's Barney and chases after him. Barney's apparently supposed to be the one we root for. This time? Santa gently urges them to share, and instead of cheering Fred on as he pursues Barney we feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Interestingly, this ad first came out in the 1980s, but in the 1990s they redubbed it with Frank Welker as Barney and Jim Cummings as Santa. I've included both versions here.

This Kellogg's ad from the 1980s is another one that gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. I always like seeing advertising mascots gather together to have fun (showing us that, y'know, they do have lives outside of hocking their cereal or dealing with kids that want to steal it). The warm color scheme, the peaceful music, and Thurl Ravenscroft's gentle performance as Tony combine to make another ad that you can't watch without smiling. In a perfect world, this would be one of those ads that they air once every holiday season. Problem is, most of these characters haven't appeared in a commercial in decades (because cereal commercials aren't allowed to be fun anymore as a result of people blaming them for their kids becoming fat).

This is a more recent Christmas ad (from around 2018, I think?). Stop-motion and Christmas go together like hot chocolate and marshmallows, so it's only natural that so many Christmas commercials are done in stop-motion. This one features LeBron James, hawking Sprite Cranberry... a drink that I have never tasted. Considering I like Sprite and I also like cranberry juice, I should really try it at some point.

Look at this beautiful hand-drawn animation. This ad, for the British department store John Lewis, features animation by Disney animators Dominic Carola and Aaron Blaise - the latter of whom co-directed Brother Bear, which explains why the ad feels so much like that movie. More than anything, this commercial really makes me wish that Disney would do a hand-drawn animated film again. It helps that the ad tells a very touching, makes you all warm and fuzzy inside story... am I starting to repeat myself?

Side note, I can't hear the song "Somewhere Only We Know" without thinking of the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie. I remember the trailer for that featured the song.

Okay, I recognize this art style. It took me a second to figure out WHERE, but then it occurred to me - I'd seen characters that looked just like the ones in this ad in issues of Disney Adventures magazine! Is this the same artist? And if so, what is their name?! Could somebody please help me out with this?

Anyhow, Applebee's rarely does animated commercials. This was one of their rare ventures into the world of moving drawings. It encourages you to get somebody an Applebee's gift card for Christmas. Just hope that they don't prefer TGI Friday's.

Speaking of Applebee's, I gotta ask... do they still have all the pennants and posters and stuff hanging on the walls in 'em? What about the carousel horses in between the booths? I haven't been to an Applebee's in years, I legitimately have no idea...

This ad is for Walt Disney World's annual "Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party"... which I don't think I've ever been to. The animation here is by Eric Goldberg, who's one of my favorite animators. So there's no way I wasn't going to include it in this post.

Here's another one by Kurtz & Friends, this one for Milton Bradley games and ALSO featuring Santa Claus and his reindeer. I love the design of the reindeer here (they sort of remind me of Pony from It's Pony, if anyone is familiar with that show). Like I said before, this studio's art style just has a natural charm to it. And no matter what decade you were born in, this ad is bound to make you nostalgic - because who HASN'T played at least ONE of these games at some point?

One company that's really gotten better at their Christmas ads nowadays is Honda... or at least HAD gotten better at their Christmas ads. This year they just did a dull live action ad. But for a few years before 2022, they used stop-motion in their holiday commercials because, as we've established, stop-motion and Christmas go together like hot chocolate and marshmallows (which likely stems from the fact that so many animated Christmas specials are done in stop-motion). I've always liked their ads with iconic toys like Strawberry Shortcake, Gumby, GI Joe, and the Care Bears shilling for cars, but those are live action with stop-motion characters so I couldn't include them in this post. But they've also done plenty of entirely stop-motion ads like this one that I could put on the list. Thus...

Oh, goody, another cereal ad! In the 1990s, Cookie Crisp's mascots were Irish-accented cop Officer Crumb, the cereal-stealing Cookie Crook, and his dog Chip. Their shtick was that Cookie Crook, like many other cereal mascots, would try to steal Cookie Crisp, but Officer Crumb wouldn't allow that. This here ad is similar to the Fruity Pebbles ad we've already looked at, except this time the actual Santa Claus doesn't show up. It's nice to see even the closest thing there's ever been to a villainous cereal mascot can get some happiness around the holidays.

For those wondering, the reason why you don't see these three characters in Cookie Crisp ads nowadays is because... well, for one thing, do they even still DO Cookie Crisp ads? I can't remember the last time I've seen one on TV... but also, around 2000 the folks in charge of the Cookie Crisp ads decided to ditch Cookie Crook and Officer Crumb and just have Chip be the mascot. Then at some point they replaced him with a wolf who basically does the Trix Rabbit's shtick.

Okay, this one does have a bit of live action in it, but the majority of it is animated so I'm putting it on the list.

Who doesn't love Chuck Jones' adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas? This ad, directed by Frank Molieri at Acme Filmworks, apes the special's animation style extremely well. It actually makes me wonder why they haven't done more ads with the Chuck Jones verison of the Grinch - oh, there ARE other ads where the Grinch appears, but they all either use the 2000 live action version of the Grinch or the 2018 Illumination version of the Grinch. Very odd, seeing as he's just as iconic a Christmas character as Rudolph...

So that's a bunch of animated ads that celebrate the holiday season. With any luck, animated Christmas commercials will make a comeback at some point.

Let's Watch This: "Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas" (1999)

Well, I've looked at one Christmas production starring one of the world's two most iconic cartoon characters... guess it's only fair that I look at ANOTHER Christmas production starring the OTHER most iconic cartoon character!

Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas was released on November 9th, 1999, produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. The film features three Christmas stories starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and their friends. It's a charming little film, and while hardly the most well-known of Disney's direct-to-video output, it's nonetheless well-liked enough for channels like Disney Junior and Freeform to air it around the holidays.

So let's give it a watch!

Let's Watch This: "Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales" (1979)

In the 1970s and 1980s, Warner Bros. churned out a lot of television specials starring the Looney Tunes characters. Most of these were really just compilations of pre-existing shorts with new animation acting as a framing device (for example, 1981's Bugs Bunny: All-American Hero featured shorts like Yankee Doodle Bugs, Bunker Hill Bunny, and Southern Fried Rabbit). In fact, one of them, 1977's Bugs Bunny in Space, didn't feature any new animation at all!

But, some of these specials actually DID consist of completely original animation. The special that we're looking at today, Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales, is one of them.

This special premiered on CBS on November 27th, 1979. It was directed by Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. I watched it back in 2016 (I was on a bit of a Looney Tunes kick at the time) and recall finding it okay. Now I'm going to watch it again. Because 'tis the season. Let's get started!

We start off with Bugs (Mel Blanc, of course), Porky Pig (Mel Blanc), Elmer Fudd (guessing Mel Blanc but he doesn't have any solo lines so it's hard to tell), Yosemite Sam (Mel Blanc), Foghorn Leghorn (Mel Blanc), and Pepe Le Pew (Mel Blanc) singing "Deck the Halls". This actually brings up a common complaint I've seen about modern Looney Tunes productions - they portray the characters as buddy buds. People look at productions like Space Jam or the Christmas albums and go "why are they all acting so chummy with each other? Since when are the Looney Tunes friends? Don't most of them try to kill each other?". Well, as this special shows, this isn't entirely new for Looney Tunes. Heck, remember 1956's A Star Is Bored, which portrayed Bugs, Daffy, Sam, and Elmer as Animated Actors? I think it's reasonable to assume that the characters get along fine "off-camera".

Speaking of Daffy, I should probably bring up that he doesn't show up in this special at all. Maybe he flew south for the winter or something? Marvin the Martian doesn't show up either.

Elmer looks high as a kite right now, doesn't he?

After that, we get our first short - a retelling of A Christmas Carol. Sam is Scrooge and Porky is Bob Cratchit... a role he'd also play in 2006's Bah Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas (but we'll look at that one another time). Bugs barges in to greet Sam... I mean, Scrooge... eh, what the heck? I'm just calling him Sam... a Merry Christmas, to which Sam goes into a rant about how much he hates Christmas and kicks Bugs out. On the one hand, Bugs did barge in uninvited (Fred at least had the excuse that he was Scrooge's nephew. What's Bugs'?) so I can understand why Sam was annoyed, but Sam didn't have to make such a big deal about it.

So as you might have guessed, Bugs decides he's going to go all "Of course you know this means war" on him. Also, Sylvester (Mel Blanc) is in this short too. He's Sam's cat, but really doesn't have much of a role. In fact, I think he only has one line. Dunno why they even bothered to include him, but I guess they had to find a place for him in the special SOMEWHERE.

Don't you hate it when you come into work and somebody's wearing the
exact same outfit as you?

Bugs' way of getting back at Sam is to... put a piece of coal in the fireplace so Porky is warm, then invite in carolers. That's it? THAT'S how you're gonna put Sam in his place? Come on, you're BUGS BUNNY! Can't you at least stick dynamite down his pants or something?

Sam is so enraged to have carolers in his place of business that not only does he throw them and Bugs out, but he also fires Porky even though Porky had nothing to do with it. Jeez, Sam...

After that, Porky invites Bugs back to his house for Christmas Eve dinner. He's introduced to Mrs. Cratchit, played by Petunia Pig, Tiny Tim, played by Tweety Bird (Mel Blanc), and two kids who don't get names. I'm going to assume that Tweety was adopted since he's the only member of the family that isn't a pig.

There have been shorts where Sylvester was Porky's pet. Why not make him the
Cratchit Family's pet? Or did they just think it'd be disturbing having him try to
eat Tiny Tim?

Some guy shows up at the door with a message from Sam - he's foreclosing the pigs' mortgage and he wants them out of the house by midnight. I bet he also punted puppies into the Grand Canyon and set fire to a building for the heck of it, that Sam. Bugs vows to teach Sam a lesson he'll never forget.

Over at Sam's house, Sam gets in bed, and we discover that he has the ability to talk without moving his mouth. But then, he hears Bugs and the carolers again, and he runs outside to beat them up... only to wind up slipping on the ice and into a snowbank. Again, this seems very tame for Bugs. Then Sam makes himself a hot bath, but Bugs peeks in through the window and fills the bathtub with snow, so when Sam jumps into the bathtub, he gets a nasty surprise. Okay, that's a little better.

So now's when Jacob Marley and the three ghosts show up, right? Well, no. I guess the writers couldn't think of a way to make the past, present, and yet to come stuff funny, so we don't get any of that adapted in this short. I dunno, I think they could've found a way. They could've had Daffy and Marvin be two of the ghosts as a way to work them into the special. The third ghost could've been... I dunno, Pete the Puma? Beaky Buzzard? Gossamer?

But nope, instead we get Bugs dressing up in a sheet and dubbing himself the "Ghost of Christmas".

Wheeeeeeeeeeee...

After some WHACKY SHENANIGANS, Bugs tells Sam that he's going to send him to that dark, fiery place for being such a horrible person. Sam promises to become a better person, puts on a Santa suit, and runs outside to give money to the poor. He also gives Porky his job back offscreen.

The next short stars Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. We see them lurking outside the pigs' house (which is pretty creepy now that I think about it), then Wile E. chases the Road Runner into the desert... or at least I think it's the desert. I'm pretty sure deserts don't have gigantic snow-capped mountains.

Then again, I've never been to a desert so what do I know?

Wile E. reads in a book about road runners that they hate cold and snow and are easy to catch in snow drifts. So all he has to do is chase him up to one of those snow-capped mountains we saw before and he'll be able to nab him, right?

Oh, who am I kidding? Wile E. will never catch that bird. With his luck it'll probably turn out that the book was written by somebody who knew absolutely nothing about road runners.

And here's another interesting fact about road runners: they're immune to literally
anything that the ACME Company makes. I think one short actually revealed that the
company was owned and operated by the Road Runner.

Instead of, as I suggested, just chasing the Road Runner up to one of those snow-capped mountains, Wile E. decides to buy an ACME snow-making machine. It actually works... but it keeps dumping the snow onto him. After the fourth time, Wile E. goes "to heck with it" and dumps it into a canyon. But it STILL dumps snow on him, and the combined weight causes the cliff he's standing on to fall off and send him into the canyon. It's funnier than I made it sound, trust me.

So THEN Wile E. decides to, y'know, just get the Road Runner up to the snow-capped mountains somehow. But apparently that book was indeed a load of baloney, as the Road Runner can run just fine in the snow. Eventually Wile E. pursues him onto a frozen pond, then dons some skates to create a hole in the ice around the bird. You fool. You never do that in a cartoon. It always just results in all of the ice except that circle you carved with the skates falling into the water and YOU falling in instead of what you're trying to make fall in.

Long story short, road runner stays dry and coyote falls into water. And of course Wile E. still hasn't figured out that he should stop buying his supplies from ACME, because we then see him putting on ACME rocket-powered skis.

Seriously, hasn't Wile E. considered that maybe he should try to buy his supplies
from another company?

After that fails, he buys a dogsled and some sled dogs - only to get mauled by them. According to the shipping label, sled dogs LOVE having coyotes for supper. Considering that coyotes are wild dogs, wouldn't that be considered cannibalism?

I looked it up. Apparently, coyotes can eat dogs. Ignoring that it's still cannibalism, if that's the case why doesn't Wile E. just eat the dogs instead of trying to catch the Road Runner? I mean, other than "because the dogs will maul him before he gets the chance".

Actually, Wile E.'s creator, Chuck Jones, provided an answer for this. He dubbed Wile E. a fanatic, quoting George Santayana's observation that "a fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim". By now, he's just so focused on nabbing the Road Runner that it really doesn't occur to him he can find other ways to get food. There was also a scene in the failed pilot Adventures of the Road Runner where the two boys watching the show ask why Wile E. chases the Road Runner in the first place. Wile E. pauses and explains to them (and us) that road runners are, to coyotes, the tastiest things on the planet - complete with a handy chart.

Okay, now back to the cartoon. Wile E. rides a rocking horse and tries to lasso the Road Runner - doesn't work. Next he tries a giant snowball, but that idea is a bust too. Guess poor Wile E.'s only hope is that Santa brings him some road runner cold cuts for Christmas.

The next segment features Bugs' little nephew, Clyde (June Foray). This actually is not the character's first appearance, as he previously appeared in at least two Bugs Bunny shorts beforehand. However, this special certainly made him a lot cuter.

Cartoon characters in footie pajamas are always cute.

Also appearing in this segment is the Tasmanian Devil (Mel Blanc), who finds himself at the North Pole while the airplane he's in flies over it. He winds up in Santa's suit, then in Santa's sleigh. The very confused and/or frightened reindeer take off.

I mean, there's no way that the reindeer actually looked at this beast and thought,
"Yep, that's definitely Saint Nick"... IS there?

Meanwhile, Bugs is reading his nephew 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Suddenly, he hears a noise on the roof - it's Taz and the sleigh, and Taz winds up falling down the chimney. It's a little unclear whether or not Bugs actually thinks Taz is Santa or if he's just trolling him (I'm guessing the latter), but either way, he welcomes Taz in and offers him a snack.

If Bugs actually thinks that's Santa, I think he should've put a pair of glasses
on his Christmas list. Aren't carrots supposed to be good for your eyesight?

Oddly, Taz doesn't make the attempt to eat Bugs as he usually does whenever they're in the same cartoon. Instead, he eats a table, a chair, oranges hanging on the tree, some lights, and Clyde's Christmas list. Then he gobbles down a jar full of unpopped corn... right in front of the fireplace. Thankfully, they don't have him blow up like in a certain Larry Doyle-produced short. Then Bugs offers Taz a present, but he has to go outside to open it. I was expecting the present to turn out to be a bomb or something, but instead, it's a self-inflating life raft. Says so on the box. But Taz still eats it, because as we all know he's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

Taz goes into orbit, and Clyde is bummed that Santa didn't leave him any presents in his stocking. Bugs reassures him that when they return his sleigh to him, he'll be so grateful that he'll give Clyde enough presents to put Toys R Us to shame.

"Eat your heart out, Jack Skellington!"

And so the special ends with Bugs and the others doing some more caroling, now aboard a Taz-pulled sleigh... which Taz promptly eats.

What's the Verdict?

I personally liked Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales as a whole, but it definitely got better after the first segment. The Christmas Carol re-enactment was a big missed opportunity. So much of it is wasted on Bugs giving Sam a hard time, it almost felt like the writers forgot what story they were adapting for a while and then realized, "Oh, crud. We forgot the ghosts." It's also the least funny of the three segments. The Wile E. Coyote / Road Runner and Taz segments fare better. They aren't the funniest Looney Tunes shorts ever made, but they're certainly good for a few chuckles. Also, I wish Daffy at least made a cameo, but that's a small thing.

Next review: Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas (1999)