Advent Calendar House

🐰 Hello, sunshine! Join us for a hop back to Easter 1986 to revisit the Jim Henson special, “The Tale of the Bunny Picnic.”  🎙 Emily Rowley hops into the guest chair for this special, which it turns out is about neither Easter, nor a bunny picnic… but it did introduce the world to Bean Bunny, the Muppets’ Nermal.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Jim Henson’s original intro to this special.  “ T...

🎄 It’s another Scrooge Sunday in the Advent Calendar House as we’re swept through a rip in the space-time continuum back to 1986 for a Christmas Carol-themed episode of “The Real Ghostbusters.” 🎙 Tommy Coombs and Chad Young join the adventure after our heroes accidentally save Scrooge from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Hey, grown-ups! Rememb...

🎄 Mr. Snowman, I don’t feel so good. Rankin/Bass’s Avengers assemble in the studio’s longest holiday special ever.  🎙️ Brandon Medley returns to marvel at “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July.” Frosty’s a dad! And Rudolph’s a fake uncle whose nose stops shining at the beginning of this story… but what happens to Frosty and his whole family is even worse.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   King...

🎄 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,” the “Weird Science” of Christmas specials.  🎙️ Brandon Medley belly-whops in to salute this snowy sequel from 1976 starring a strange, tall goblin claiming to be Andy Griffith.  ****  💬 Topics & Tang...

How do you do, fellow holiday special enthusiasts? The Advent Calendar House has emerged from its slumber in the Mariana Trench a few months early to celebrate Leap Day!  🎙️ Joey O. joins the celebration of  the “30 Rock” universe’s most important holiday. As such, nothing that happens in this episode counts, and we’re just your imaginary friends whom no one else can hear, because real life is for...

🎉 It’s a special, post-Christmas bonus episode for your oversized ears!  🎙 Joey O. and Brandon Medley help us turn back the years to 1976 and tip an oversized hat to “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year,” Rankin/Bass’s first sequel special, in which Rudolph has to save the Baby New Year from a big, angry bird.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Rudolph devolves into a younger-looking reindeer, because the o...

🎄 It’s the 50th episode of the Advent Calendar House, so it’s time to address the spotted elephant in the room.  🎙 Joey O. and Brandon Medley fly in to tackle the 1964 Christmas special that put Rankin/Bass on the map and into our hearts.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Is Santa really this big of a jerk or just hangry?  The History Channel on the creation of Rudolph .  Mashable’s 12 ‘Rudolph...

🕎 Kick off Hanukkah with the objectively better son from “Growing Pains” spinning bad puns like he made them out of clay.  🎙️ Sarah Shay stops by as we shine a light on a 1990 episode of “Shalom Sesame,” an on-again, off-again co-production of “Sesame Street” and its counterpart in Israel, “Rechov Sumsum.”  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   “Shalom Sesame” on Muppet Wiki .  Israel’s Big Bird stan...

🎄 Set your sentient clocks back to 1988 for a very wound-up and thrown out into a pile of junk in another dimension episode of the Advent Calendar House.  🎙 Chad Young joins us for a one-time-only trip to Tattertown, the holiday brain-child of Ralph Bakshi and Nickelodeon’s first-ever original animated TV program.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   “Christmas in Tattertown” sketches from Bakshi P...

🎄 Every unstoppable monster has a beginning.  🎙️ Erin Evans , Joey O. , and Brandon Medley squeeze onto the couch to celebrate the 30th anniversary of “The Simpsons” and its series premiere, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” or, as it was introduced to us in 1989, “The Simpsons’ Christmas Special.”  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   The time I accidentally watched “ The Tracey Ullman Show ,” b...

🎄 Of all the animated Christmas specials we have covered and will cover, this is the nearsighted granddaddy of them all.  🎙 Anthony Caruso and Julia Colburn from Tis the Podcast visit the Advent Calendar House for a very special Scrooge Sunday episode as we nearly-blindly fumble back to 1962 to celebrate “Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” TV’s first ever animated Christmas special.  ****  💬 Topic...

🎄 Warning: If you usually let your children listen to your podcast feed with you, you may want to get the kids out of the pool for this one.  🎙 Zac Shipley dives in as we feast on a very festive, very inappropriate 2002 episode of the Adult Swim cartoon “Sealab 2021.”  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   “ Sealab 2020 ,” the very different, very boring original 1972 cartoon that serves as the butt...

🎄 It’s Glo! Join Hasbro’s hive of bioluminescent bugs, the Glo Friends, in their own Christmas special from 1985.  🎙️ Erin Evans and Joey O. join forces as we learn how to selectively melt only certain ice we’re radiating near to save Santa (Carroll O’Connor), who’s been locked in an icicle cage by Blanche, the Wicked Witch of the North Pole (Sally Struthers), who’s jealous of Santa’s publicity....

🎄 Everyone’s after the little guy for no reason.  🎙️ Chad Young joins us for a short-statured trip back to 1982 to explore “Ziggy’s Gift,” a one-off TV Christmas special starring no one’s favorite funny papers hero and featuring a beautifully animated puddle of dog pee.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   “Ziggy’s Gift” on Dinosaur Dracula After Dark .  “ The Point ,” a Harry Nilsson album turned...

🎄 For its first Christmas special after the success of “Rudolph,” Rankin/Bass presented us with a Dickens of a story, but not that one.  🎙️ Brian Earl from Christmas Past podcast visits the Advent Calendar House to experience 1967’s “Cricket on the Hearth,” as told by Danny Thomas, featuring a bizarre, burlesque performance of a song about Fish ’n’ Chips, and a clearly implied, off-camera murder....

🎄 Opus the Penguin fails to take off in his own TV Christmas special from 1991.  🎙️ Erin Evans and Joey O. parachute in to rewatch “A Wish for Wings That Work,” starring Opus and Bill from the comic strip series “Bloom County” and “Outland.”  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   This is based on a book version you can watch someone read to you on YouTube , if you’d like.  “Bloom County” creator Berk...

🎄 The Advent Calendar House gets overrun by earworms strong enough to burrow into wood.  🎙️ Michael DiGiovanni and Michael May drop in to help carve into a 1980 Rankin/Bass special starring that beloved Christmas icon… Pinocchio.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Two songs, “ Dancin’ ” and “ The Very Best Friend I Ever Had ,” were cut from and later restored to TV broadcasts.  “ Starstuff ,” a P...

🎄 Season 3 of the Advent Calendar House kicks off with a new regular feature: Scrooge Sunday, celebrating the many adaptations of “A Christmas Carol.”  🎙 Lizzie Twachtman and Adam Pope drop in as we begin with Disney’s 1983 featurette marking the big-screen debut of Scrooge McDuck playing his namesake.  📺 You can watch “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” on Disney+ .  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Be...

🎃 Put out the oars and surrender yourself to the mercy of the rivers of time as they take us back to Garfield’s terrifying 1985 Halloween special. 🎙️ Jeff Somogyi joins us to celebrate the special that turned a generation into scaredy cats.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Jim Davis wanted Garfield’s Halloween Adventure to “at least scare 4-year-olds” (The A.V. Club, 2014)  Samples of the comic...

💝 Love and dynamite are in the air as I introduce 2 guests to an early pilot of what would eventually become “The Muppet Show,” guest-starring a pregnant Mia Farrow.  🎙️ Joey O. and Brian Arnold drop by as we fall head over heels for “The Muppets Valentine Show,” a 1974 TV special that misinformed me about where babies come from.  📺 You can find “The Muppets Valentine Show” on YouTube .  **** ...

🎄 It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re celebrating with the first Christmas special I ever remember watching, from 1978.  🎙️ Erin Evans and Joey O. help bring Advent to a close as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Christmas Eve on Sesame Street,” in which Big Bird worries Santa’s unfit for skinny chimneys, Mr. Hooper spends his Hanukkah saving Christmas, and we get a possible clue into how to get to...

🎄 Remember ALF? He’s back, in podcast form!  🎙️ Jeff Somogyi drops by as we salute ALF’s two-part Christmas special from 1987, the single most depressing special starring a wisecracking alien puppet of all time.  🚨 Content Warning: In this Christmas special, the goofy alien with the jokes meets a terminally ill child and a man contemplating suicide.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   The heartbr...

🎄 We unearthed a Christmas special so low-quality, it happens in a sewer.  🎙️ Shawn Robare from the Cult Film Club and Jonathan Zelenak from The Sewer Den drop in for a radically recollection of “We Wish You a Turtle Christmas,” a 1994 cash-grab video starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… or at least some version of them.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   About the Sewer Den , Jonathan’s ma...

🎄 Tune in as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pee-wee Herman’s Christmas special the only way we know how: With lots of screaming, lots of fruitcake, and lots more screaming.  🎙️ Erin Evans , Lindy Kempe , and Joey O. call into the Podcast Phone to embrace the wackiest holiday party of 1988.  📺 The “Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special” is available for free on YouTube .  ****  💬 Topics &a...

🎄 In Part 2 of our Disney Christmas double feature, Mickey and the rest of the Fab Five — and Daisy, who’s somehow less important than the dog — enter the third-dimension.  🎙️ Drew Crowley and John Dedeke from The Hourchive return for “Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas,” the main mouse’s first 3D-animated special.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   If you haven’t been to a Disney theme park in the...