Best Rankin-Bass Christmas special

Snow Miser! Heat Miser! Bumbles don't Bounce! I'm TELLING you why! Poinsettias greenhouse! "She thinks I'm cute!"

Snow miser & Heat miser songs!

I'm too much!

Rudolph & Hermie,, the elf who wanted to be a dentist, are a couple of misfits.

Winter Warlock overcome by young Santa's goodness in song that sentimental me finds v inspiring! I though young Kris Kringle was super hot.

OMG how did I exclude the one I wanted to vote for? ;_;

(Santa Claus is Coming to Town)

Year w/o SC has no equal.

Yukon Cornelius pwns.

Not only do they look like shit now, they looked like cheap shit when they were first made.

also, the professor coldheart song from frikkin' CAREBEARS is better than any of the ones posted so far.

Hahaha I made my man watch "Land Without Feelings" the other day. But I am suspecting you are perhaps Associate Professor Coldheart or GA Coldheart if you hate on the Rankin-Bass!

I fear to know what someone who'd complain about the fine, fine quality of Rankin-Bass animation would consider "hi-quality". Certainly, no love for Davey & Goliath or Gumby or any of that cheap shit ultra-painstaking stop-motion animation, eh?

Not to mention Brothers Quay.

For real!

never saw davey. Gumby doesn't try for much and the simple look works well enough. Quay were intentionally creepy/shit looking, being partly based on early russian stop-motion.

So what's hi-quality animation for abanana?

rudolph was the best one by far.

but abbott you forgot that trippy one where rudolph and frosty are at some circus celebrating the fourth of july (!) and there's this weird backstory with an evil wizard or something...did i dream that up?

Probably not...those guys are nuts! I have no idea what it is tho.

I suppose Rankin Bass is inferior bcz it has only 26 cels per second.

Wait, R-B had more cps than film?

It was probably...only...24...I...am...sorry I lied.

Someone told me Akira had like 60/second tho so maybe that is abanana's standard? I have no idea.

I highly doubt Akira is 60 fps, since it's traditionally animated.

Maybe abanana thinks Cars is the be-all-end-all in semiphotorealistic animation, or perhaps some Tim Burton film.

we own year without xmas

:/

I have Year w/o SC on DVD and I enjoy it more than John Waters every xmastime.

More than John Waters enjoys it, that is to say. Although I enjoy John Waters independently of xmas, I don't enjoy him particular much at xmastime.

Maybe he thinks Mr. Bill fromSNL is the ultimate in stop motion.

THIS IS mysterious

Is Waters a Year Sans Santa fan?

Waters loves everything xmas, generally. LOVES. I would wager hard cash money that he can quote chapter and verse from Rankin-Bass.

Lovely!

WFMU uploaded R-B's early Halloween special, "Mad Monster Party," and I am scared to watch it. Not bcz I am scared of cheeky monsters; I am afraid it will suck.

turns out Akira has the standard cels/minute BUT "better than the anime of its time" according to...websites

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Which is the one where a witch is searching for "Christmas Gold?"

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Watching Year w/o Claus. You people are all kind of stupid I have to say. This is clear best.

watching these right now

I'm watching Rudolph's Shiney New Year for the third time this season because my son demanded it. It is clearly the most deranged and random of any of these.

there are also apparantly a number of these I managed to never see, like "nestor the long eared christmas donkey" and "pinnochio's christmas". what?

I got "Year Without a Santa Claus" from Netflix & was surprised to find the DVD also comes with "Nestor the Long-Eared xmas Donkey" and "Rudolph's Shiny New Year." It is kind of easy to see how these last two got forgotten.

"Nestor" is the weirdest of the bunch – a donkey who helps Santa with tasks at the North Pole sings about his ancestor Nestor – the donkey who carried a pregnant Mary to her manger. The songs are more '60s country/western than Christmas flavored. There's a scene where his mom freezes to death while on top of him. He uses his super-ears to "hear" the star that guides him to Bethlehem. His song says he is remembered "for his laughter and his ears," although he doesn't laugh once, I don't think, in the entire production. Overall, it's a very weird blurring of the Rankin-Bass cartoon secular Christmas world and the Lord Our Savior church world that doesn't include talking donkeys. Best scene: an evil Roman calling a bunch of cowering baby donkeys his "slaves."

"Rudolph's Shiny New Year" has a lot of Red Skelton content. It also has Rudolph riding around on a whale with a knight, a caveman, and Ben Franklin in order to save "Happy the Baby New Year" from an evil vulture. It also heavily rehashes Rudolph's origins without showing any footage from that special – conflicting copyright?

"The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold" is pretty bizarre

Is 'The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus' the one that has him as a teenager and stuff with the Burgermeister Meisterburger? That was a pretty good special. However, that Nestor one was just terrible and Happy New Year one made almost no sense at all.

That one is "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," which I did not include in the poll for ???? reason. I think if I had to vote for one today, that would be it.

I have a certain appreciation for shit that is obviously spat out on the fly ("Up," The Monk by Mg.G. Lewis) but the New Year cartoon was a little too dumb to have that sort of baffling charm.

"Rudolph's Shiny New Year" gave me nightmares as a kid. Eon scared the crap out of me.

Oh man looks like some DVD of the Grinch cartoon includes The Leprechauns' Christmas Gold, Pinocchio's Christmas and The Stingiest Man In Town. This shld make another guano loco evening.

I didn't make the connection until just now but Paulo Coker Jr. who is always credited for "design" in these things did a lot of great drawings for Mad, too...I think I have a new hero of drawing.

Would have voted "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"
Somehow I managed to not see "The Year Without a Santa Claus" until my freshman year of college, despite being a HUEG R-B fan growing up. I know what you are saying about "Rudolph's Shiny New Year" but I think it's just dumb enough to be charming.

Watched "Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July" last night – it is 97 minutes long and has three Ethel Merman songs.

I want to know if they aired it originally in December or July.

i was unaware of frosty and rudolph's xmas in july until i saw a couple minutes of it the other day. also, something about jack frost.

these things do not seem to be collected sensibly on dvd, they are scattered all over on comps with the Grinch and stuff. Why isn't there just a R&B only box set with everything?

rights sold willy nilly

Leprechaun's Christmas Gold is truly cuckoo bananas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBkWgoYZm1k

http://christmas-specials.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Yeah, I immediately noticed its absence from the poll options. Glad you drew attention to its madness (it's the one x-mas special I've been explicitly forbidden by my family from playing again).

I was half watching Shiny New Year with my GF the other day and I have no idea what was happening. Time travel and cavemen and some menacing vulture villain and I don't even know what.