Advent Calendar House – Détails, épisodes et analyse

🎄It’s 1992, and there’s no such thing as Buster Bunny.  

The Advent Calendar House wraps up Christmas in July with the unofficial series finale of “Tiny Toon Adventures,” when Buster wishes he’d never been on the show, and the horrors within Montana Max’s Biff Tannen Pleasure Palace or whatever.  

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Adam Pope (Geekster, YouTube, Remember That Show?)  

William Bruce West (West Week Ever, Remember That Show?)  

Chad Young (The Horror Movie BBQ)  

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1. I found this special hiding in a 4-hour Christmas special compilation on the Internet Archive.  

2. “Meet the Tiny Toons” in the special edition magazine “Bugs Bunny: He’s 50, Folks” (1990).  

3. “The Chipmunks Go to the Movies.”  

4. Tony Pope (God) as Goofy in “Watch Out for Goofy” (the theme song for Adam’s 2 Goofs Podcast) and as the first voice heard in “Back to the Future.”  

5. John Kassir (who voices Buster in this episode) as the Crypt-Keeper in RD’s Retro Detention Halloween Specials in 2019 and 2023.  

6. Today’s TV Trope: Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal.  

7. Jacoby & Meyers and a 2-minute-long tangent about personal injury lawyer commercials.  

8. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s upcoming role as Santa in “The Man with the Bag.”  

9. American Express Commercials with Mel Blanc and Jim Davis.  

10. Bugs Bunny may have been voiced by an uncredited Noel Blanc, Mel’s son, for a single line at the end.  

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Godzilla: The Series Promo (1998)  

Toy Story: Holiday TV Spot (1995)  

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“Tiny Toon Adventures” and “It’s a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special” © 1992 Warner Bros.  

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

🎄It’s 1990… or 1962… and a quantum physicist forgot to powder his boss’s underwear.  

This Scrooge Sunday edition of the Advent Calendar House involves time travel of a different sort as we follow Dr. Sam Beckett on a mission to save a mission, and the soul of the man trying to tear it down.  

* CONTENT WARNING: This episode briefly discusses the death of actor Charles Rocket and the would-be death of his Scrooge-like character, Michael Blake.  

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Erin Evans (@mserinevans).  

Joey O. (Y-Not Radio, @imgonnadj24).  

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1. Episode guide on Al’s Place.  

2. A Christmas story from the Quantum Leap comic: “He Knows If You’ve Been Bad or Good.”  

3. Charles Rocket drops an F-bomb on “Saturday Night Live.”  

4. “Bringing in the Sheaves” on “The Simpsons” and “Batman” (1966).  

5. Polish Christmas desserts piernik and makowiec.  

6. Al’s Ghost of Christmas Future costume looks more like Jacob Marley mixed with the Ghost of Christmas Past from “Scrooged.”  

7. Goldie Wilson III from “Back to the Future Part II.”  

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Squarbles (circa 1987).  

Can’t Wait for Christmas Podcast.  

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“Quantum Leap” and “A Little Miracle” © 1990 Universal City Studios, Inc.  

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

🎄It’s 1979, and an evil king is having abandonment issues after his entire kingdom left, so he made an army of robots instead of going to therapy.  

The Advent Calendar House has once again emerged from hibernation after declaring 4 more months of winter to pretend it’s still winter. Join us as we encounter what might be the least Christmassy Rankin/Bass Christmas special, featuring a friendlier version of Jack Frost, a groundhog dressed like a pro wrestling manager, and the wintry weather neighbors of those angels your grandmother told you were bowling whenever there was a thunderstorm.  

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Gerry Davila (Totally Rad Christmas)  

Matt Spaulding (North Pole Radio)  

Jeff Loftin (Lost Christmas)  

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1. Watch “Jack Frost” on YouTube.   

2. Toei Animation’s “The Little Mermaid” (1975).  

3. Gilbert Gottfried on his favorite death scene: Buddy Hackett as Lou Costello in “Bud and Lou.”  

4. Today’s TV Trope: Inevitable Waterfall.  

5. The Christmas tradition of “dream presents” is like the dinner scene from “Hook.”  

6. February 2 is Candlemas, the 40th day of Christmas.  

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Pennsylvania Lottery: Like Holiday Morning, starring Gus, the 2nd most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania (2018)  

Sonic the Hedgehog 3: Hedgehog Day (1992)  

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“Jack Frost” © 1979 Rankin/Bass Productions.  

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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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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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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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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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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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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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.

🎄 Hey, paisanos! Join us as we warp back to 1989 for a double dose of Christmas segments from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show — the live-action Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush, featuring Santa losing his “transportation” in Brooklyn; and the animated Koopa Klaus, featuring a plot to… freeze the North Pole.  

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Adam Pope (Retro-Daze, Retro Detention, The Retro Network, @hojukoolander).  

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1. Nintendo Power’s Preview of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, as tweeted by Adam, and preserved on the Internet Archive (for now) (it’s on page 93).  

2. I didn’t realize till recently the music in the Back to the Future Nintendo game is a sped up version of The Power of Love.  

3. King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons, a live-in-studio spinoff show local to Los Angeles and hosted by King Koopa, performed at one point by Christopher Collins, a.k.a. Chris Latta, the voice of Cobra Commander.  

4. Captain Lou Albano’s Wrestling Hotline 1-900 number.  

5. We map out where Mario and Luigi lived in Brooklyn.  

6. Stunt Dawgs, an obscure 1992 cartoon featuring Harvey Atkin playing another character with the same King Koopa voice.  

7. A brief discussion on the term “teeter-totter,” used by Mario here, versus “see-saw.”  

8. How tall is Mario? Captain Lou was 5-foot-10, though other sources range from 5-foot-1 to 3-foot-8.  

9. Preview of Super Nintendo World, coming to Universal theme parks.  

10. Finally, I get to talk at length about The Legend of Zelda!  

11. Adam’s SequelQuest episode on the Super Mario Bros. movie, featuring a parody of the Super Show theme song.  

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Pepsi Nintendo Holiday Game, 1989, preserved by Dinosaur Dracula.  

Nintendo Power Commercial, 1990, preserved by RobertDigitalGames.  

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“The Super Mario Bros. Super Show,” “Koopa Klaus,” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush” © 1989 DiC Entertainment.  
“Super Mario Bros.” © Nintendo Co. Ltd.  

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 the 13th of July, so it’s time for the Advent Calendar House to unearth one of our favorite Halloween haunts, 1979’s The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t, starring an exceptionally great Judd Hirsch as Count Dracula.  

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Tom Coombs (TPIF: Thank Pod It’s Funny, @ClassicTomedy).  

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1. This was renamed for its VHS release as The Night Dracula Saved the World, except no, he doesn’t.  

2. Lyndhurst Mansion plays the role of both Dracula’s castle and the Witch’s castle. It’s located in New York state, not far from Sleepy Hollow.  

3. The opening music, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, was never in a Dracula movie. Its first uses in sound film were in 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and 1934’s The Black Cat, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.  

4. My association of the music to Dracula probably stems from its use on Castle Dracula, a haunted boat ride on the Wildwood, New Jersey boardwalk that burned down in 2002.  

5. Jack Riley (Warren the Werewolf) was also the voice of Stu Pickles on Rugrats, and did a bunch of Country Crock spread commercials.  

6. Judd Hirsch as Dracula exaggeratedly disco dancing in a white Saturday Night Fever jumpsuit is the greatest way to end anything ever.

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McDonald’s Scared Silly Halloween commercial, starring Ronald McDonald and the Chicken McNuggets, circa 1986.  

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“The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t” © 1979 Concepts Unlimited.

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

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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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Cookie Crisp Cereal Christmas Commercial, 1992.  

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

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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.  

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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.

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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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Emily Rowley (@mlerowley).  

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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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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.