Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Merry Christmas everyone! We will have some of the family over and we all celebrate. My nephew has three children and one is only 3 years old so we will have a good time. This year my son is at home…he traveled last year to Germany to see his girlfriend. This year Maria and Bailey will be here so I’m looking forward to it.

Watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer every year is the same as setting up the tree. Every year I would look forward to seeing this along with the others but what a fantastic durable show this has been. When I hear Burl Ives in anything…I think of him as the narrator Sam the Snowman of this program.

I’ve marked out some time to watch this tonight during our Christmas Eve party.

The characters are wonderful. Well except those other young reindeer who really come down on Rudolph when his nose lights up.

Hermey the elf who wants to be a dentist
Clarice – The reindeer who likes Rudolph just as he is red nose and all.
Yukon Cornelius the prospector who loves silver and gold and has a tongue that can find his silver and gold.
Abominable Snowman – The bad guy of the show who only needs a dentist to make him a good guy.
Head Elf – He leans on Hermey to get his elf self-act together and discourages him from being a dentist…I never liked him too much.

Throughout the special, Yukon Cornelius is seen throwing his pickaxe into the ground, taking it out, and licking it. It turns out that he is checking for neither gold nor silver; Yukon was actually searching for an elusive peppermint mine. In a scene right at the end of the special’s original broadcast, deleted the next year to make room for the Misfit Toys’ new scene, Cornelius pulled his pick from the ground, licked it, and said, “Peppermint! What I’ve been searching for all my life! I’ve struck it rich! I’ve got me a peppermint mine! Wahoo!” The scene was restored in 1998 and has been reinstated in all the subsequent home video release except for the 2004 DVD release. However, this scene is still cut from recent televised airings.

The Island of Misplaced Toys got to me when I was a kid. I really felt sorry for these lonely toys. King Moonracer was over the island and tried to convince Rudolph to tell Santa about them so he could pick them up and find kids who would play with them.

Related image

The original 1964 airing did not include the closing scene where Santa picks up the misfit toys. That scene was added in 1965, in response to complaints that Santa was not shown fulfilling his promise to include them in his annual delivery.

The stop animation in this works really well.

The songs are really good. Silver and Gold, Holly Jolly Christmas, Jingle Jingle Jingle, We Are Santa’s Elves, There’s Always Tomorrow, We’re a Couple of Misfits, and The Most Wonderful Day of the Year.

I must say…I like stop motion more than computer animation.

https://christmas-specials.fandom.com/wiki/Rudolph_the_Red-Nosed_Reindeer_(Rankin/Bass)

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball fan, old movie and tv show fan... and a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

41 thoughts on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”

    1. Thank you Christian…I love this time of year because of my parents divorcing when I was a kid…it was the only day of the year we were all together.

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    1. Yea like I told Deke…I’m going to watch it…maybe tonight….the thing that gets me is that Rudolph’s girlfriend…or deerfriend’s name is Clarice…and that was my moms name…she used to watch it with me…it still means a lot to me.

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      1. Goodness! Your Mom is Clarice?! That is so COOL. Rudolph’s adorable girlfriend AND intrepid Clarice from “Silence…” I can hear Hopkins purring her name right now.

        Noble name! ❤❤❤

        Mine is Rita…as in Hayworth. My grandmother loved Hayworth.

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      2. That is right! I forgot about Silence of the Lambs. Rita is cool as well…you don’t hear that name as much anymore….the same with Clarice. Actually her name was Clarice Faye

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  8. a classic for sure! Still love it…those misfit toys (especially the elephant) and the Snowman! I bought the DVD this year but we’ve yet to watch it, I’ll look out for the Yukon Cornelius Sam peppermint find

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      1. your mom was Clarice? I guess you would like Rudolph’s little friend even more then. Not a common name, but I think the kind of clueless babysitter in ‘sleepless in Seattle’ was named that too.

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      2. Yes sir…Clarice Faye so we would watch it together and I would mention it…it is not a common name now or really when I was growing up. Oh ok…you are right!

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  10. This does take you back to being a kid. I’ve gotten a lot more cynical from those bright eyed days I must admit! Stop motion was the best you could get in those days, and it beats CGI because you see even great CGI and still DON’T buy into the fantasy. (Ray Harryhausens ‘Jason And The Argonauts’ left me breathless as a kid.)

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    1. I love Jason And The Argonauts! Those skeletons blew me away. It’s an art and I liked Wallace and Gromit more recently.

      The one CGI that I still like is Jurassic Park… that was the first time I think they got a dinosaur right….well as far as we know lol. Other than that I would take stop motion.

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      1. I agree with some CGI that is seamless and integrates well enough, but I guess that childlike innocence doesn’t work any more past, say 50? I liked LOTR- mostly- for its CGI but, good grief, those talking walking trees were preposterous. And I yawn my way through whatever Marvel/comic pap happens to be on the channel and I’ve lost the remote, and the Flash or Hulk or whoever throttle a Dragoferious mutant or whatever… Call me jaded, but I don’t believe it, I don’t care, much less buy into it.
        Wow, what a bummer I can be at times! And its almost Christmas! How jolly will I be then!

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      2. No….I get it. The problem is they have over used CGI. In those Marvel movies, most or ALL are shot with a green screen. Nothing is real anymore…nothing is tangible…and it’s so damn obvious.
        It works in spots…to enhance but not the entire damn movie…. Whoa…the Christmas Police are going to get me. Two Damns in one comment.

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  12. Do you remember a few years back, when they replaced Sam (Burl Ives) singing “Rudolph” with stop-action Destiny’s Child characters? That really pissed me off, and evidently CBS got an earful because it was back to Burl the following year.

    They should extend it to 90 minutes so they can include all the scenes that have been dropped or never made it to the final cut in the first place. I’ve heard there’s more of a backstory to the Island of Misfit Toys.

    Mary thinks I look like the Abominable Snowman with my white beard…

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    1. Oh yes! I remember that John! What a stupid thing to do. It’s like rebooting all of the old shows and movies…most of the time….most people want the original…you don’t touch this one. I just watched it tonight.

      Yes I would like to see the entire show with everything in it. I have a short doc of it somewhere that I need to drag out

      LOL…. yea I get Santa when I grow my beard…

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  14. This one is one of my very favorite Christmas shows out there. I love Hermie and Yukon
    Cornelius best. And Sam/Burl as snowman/narrator ❤ I'll be re-posting my Yukon Cornelius ballad in the next few days.

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  15. Pingback: The Ballad of Yukon Cornelius — edited and reposted from 2017 – Tao Talk

  16. One of the founders of Rankin/Bass passed this last fall, the other having passed in 2014. I wish more people had acknowledged it – especially on the news. Those two men and their stop motion projects were a major part in so many people’s childhoods..m

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    1. I didn’t even know that and I’m a fan. Thanks for telling me. They were so much a part of my childhood. I would take their work over CGI any day

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