2022 Update: Earlier this year I digitized this tape and put it up on Internet Archive! So you can watch the tape yourself here. Another thing I did was upload the commercial breaks on YouTube, so I can embed those here and they’ll be from the actual tape.
Thirty
years ago, in December of 1989, when I was three years old, my mother recorded
some cartoons off the TV for me. Given the time of year, they were mostly
Christmas cartoons, and included the very campy He-Man and She-Ra - A
Christmas Special. I would watch this tape again and again, no matter the
time of year, sometimes more than once a day, for years to come; driving my
mother quite mad. I basically knew this whole three-hour tape word for word.
Eventually I got older and grew out of wanting to watch the same things over
and over, and I now only watch it yearly. It’s one of those things that I feel
like has always been there. I imprinted on this tape at a subconscious level,
and will remember things from it at random times whenever I’m reminded of
something from it. A constant companion throughout my life, and a reminder of
my beginnings. It is interesting to think that after everything I’ve been
through, all the moves, the different schools, graduating, getting married,
having my first kid, it’s still there. After thirty years the tape is still in
working order, despite the repeat viewings. The picture is as nice as the day
it was recorded. Being recorded in SP mode might account for it, but it was
also recorded on a Scotch cassette, which is very high quality. VHS tapes were
just built better back then. It has now survived into my own son’s lifetime;
and while he currently lacks the attention span to sit through it, being just
under a year old now, I hope that it will become a part of his childhood too.
For now, he’s driving me mad with repeat viewings of the same YouTube playlist
I made for him several times a day. Seems familiar. New technology, same basic
function. Perhaps this is what they call karma. What goes around comes around.
The shoe is on the other foot. If you choose to have kids, they’ll do the same
thing to you what you did to your parents.
But
in any event, it’s just not Yule time to me without watching this tape. Of
course, this being its thirtieth anniversary, this will be a special viewing.
One which I would like to finally, after all these years, write about. Let us
delve into every cartoon, and every commercial, looking at it through my modern
perspective. Whatever I can find on YouTube, I’ll embed for your viewing
pleasure, so you can watch along too if you like. Keep in mind that you never
know when YouTube is going to take something down, so if you’re reading this
long after I post it, the videos could be gone. But I’ll try to keep it
updated.
Duck Tales – The Money Vanishes
The first thing on the tape is an old episode of Duck Tales. I used to love this show as a kid. As a jaded adult, embittered by the years, who understands more about how the world works, with disdain for the super-rich, I just can’t look at it the same way. I just can’t see a multi-billionaire as a “good guy”. Every year that goes by makes it harder for me to watch Duck Tales. Scrooge McDuck isn’t even as redeemable as fellow fictional billionaire Bruce Wayne/Batman. Sure, Bruce Wayne dresses in bat costumes and fights mentally ill criminals instead of paying fair taxes, but at least that’s something! All Scrooge McDuck does is swim in his money hoard and go on adventures to look for more money than he could ever possibly spend. Aw, but he loves his nephews, right? So we’re supposed to forgive all that. I wonder how many in Duckburg are homeless? How many poor duck children starve while he swims in money? Where’s their billionaire uncle, hm? And how little does he pay his employees? How much more money does he have secretly stashed away in tax haven countries? What this show was trying to do was normalize economic inequality in the minds of children and make us see our rich overlords as protagonists, so that we would not question capitalism and be obedient little robots for them to exploit. Perhaps that’s what the original Carl Barks comics Duck Tales is based on were doing too, I don’t know because I haven’t read them. I know that in the comics, Scrooge apparently has some “rags to riches” backstory that would never happen in real life. Leave it to Disney though, to take the lesson of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which was supposed to be a lesson against greed, and completely subvert it to make it pro-rich by making their Scrooge greedy, money-hungry, AND the protagonist we’re supposed to sympathize with. It was only life experience that undid the brainwashing this show’s propaganda did to me as a kid. I’m not falling for that bollocks about a benevolent billionaire anymore.
Criminals, or freedom fighters?
Anyway,
in this episode the Beagle Boys are looking to escape jail; they’re in jail
because of course, anyone who tries to take a single dime of Scrooge’s zillions
of dollars is either a criminal or a super villain in this show. Their mother
gives them a shovel not-so-carefully hidden in a cake, and they use the shovel
to dig tunnels all over town in a montage, including digging back into their
very jail cell, hilariously. I root for them now when I watch this, by the way.
They end up at scientist Gyro de Gearloose’s house and see that he’s working on
a Furniture Mover Ray; a teleportation device, basically. They get rid of him
by posing as doctors and telling him he needs a jog, and swipe the ray for
themselves. Of course, they decide to use it to steal Scrooge’s money. Why not?
He stole his money from his employees and society at large anyway. They should
steal all his wealth and redistribute it. They convince Scrooge to spray his
money with this special gas that makes the Furniture Mover Ray work by doing a
funny commercial warning about “money moths”. I seem to have a bad case of
money moths myself, sigh. They give their phone number as 555-5555; this is
still an in-joke between my mom and I whenever a phone number comes up in
conversation.
Scrooge is greedier than he is smart, so he orders the spray and
sprays his money. The Beagle Boys teleport all Scrooge’s money into some
abandoned building, in a slummy part of town not far from his money bin which
exists because of economic inequality caused by Scrooge. Duckburg clearly isn’t
seeing a penny of Scrooge’s wealth. “Trickle-down economics”, my ass. Seeing
Scrooge squirm at the bottom of his empty money bin and look through newspaper
want ads is hilarious. “Uh oh, I don’t have any actual skills and my money’s
gone, now I’ll have to become a wage slave just like the employees I’ve
exploited! I’ll have to be on the other end of the oppression! Whatever shall I
do?”
That's: 555-5555.
Scrooge’s
bratty nephews want to save their inheritance and not have to get real jobs
when they grow up, and look down their beaks at poor people and act like they
actually earned their wealth when all they did was win the birth lottery, so
they go after the Beagle Boys and manage to swipe the Furniture Mover Ray. It’s
a big chase all over town where everyone gets teleported around, but they end
up teleporting the Beagle Boys back to jail, and returning the money to
Scrooge’s money bin, of course. How else would the plot go? Then when Gyro
shows up and mentions his next invention, the Furniture Flotation Ray, Scrooge
has a horrifying hallucination of his money floating away into the city for
people to grab freely, and actually having to share his wealth with the rest of
society. It’s every billionaire’s nightmare. He then chases Gyro around and the
episode ends. This end part is so over-the-top it must have been some writer
slipping social commentary under the radar. That’s really the only tolerable
way to watch this episode now that I’m an adult; assume it’s a piece of subtle
satire. It might just actually be.
An actual screenshot, as in a picture of my TV screen
Gods I hate Scrooge McDuck though. I’ll stick to Chip n Dale’s Rescue Rangers when
it comes to old Disney Afternoon cartoons from now on. At least I can get
through an episode of that show without becoming idealistically enraged. Duck
Tales is yet another example of how everything I was taught as a child was
a big lie. But, maybe it’s actually satire. Maybe you have to not take it at
face value to enjoy it.
Not
that three-year-old me cared about any of the socio-economic implications of
the media he consumed. Funny how time changes your perspective on things. I
wasn’t even thinking about this ten years ago.
The New Fred and Barney Show – Physical Fitness Fred
The
recording for this starts mid-episode, skipping any sort of a theme song and
opening credits, so for the longest time I never knew much about this episode
from a Flintstones revival on my He-Man She-Ra Christmas Special tape,
but Google and Wikipedia have at long last revealed all. It came from a 1979
revival called The New Fred and Barney Show, so it’s older than I
thought. I knew that it couldn’t be the original series because the animation
is a little better and the lines aren’t as thick. Not that I care all that
much. I’ve never really been a fan of The Flintstones, nor really any of
Hanna-Barbera’s post-Tom and Jerry output, except maybe Top Cat. The
Honeymooners, the show they were ripping off, is infinitely superior. Fred
Flintstone is thick-headed and unlikeable, with none of the humorous charm of
Jackie Gleason’s Ralph, who could still somehow get you to like him and
identify with him in spite of his negative traits. And if Fred is merely a
hollow echo of Ralph, Wilma doesn’t compare to Alice at all. While Alice is
snarky, sarcastic, strong, and at times harsh but deep-down loving, Wilma is
but a flat, boring housewife devoid of personality. The Honeymooners is
such a timeless show, 65 years later. The Flintstones is dated and
unfunny. You laugh with Ralph because you can imagine how you would react to
whatever situation he’s found himself in. Fred fails at this. Fred Flintstone
rarely if ever had to undergo economic woes like Ralph, making him even less
relatable. He’s backwards in his thinking, like the caveman he is. It’s
appropriate, actually, that the show is set in a stone age fantasy with
cavemen. It’s the past that conservatives long for which never actually
existed. Everyone’s white, middle class, lives in the suburbs, the men work
while the women stay home and raise the kids. An “American dream” lifestyle that
is only possible in a fantasy version of the distant past.
But, three-year-old me would happily sit
through this cartoon, and I suppose it’s mostly harmless, if rather dull.
In
this episode, Betty and Wilma get back from seeing a movie starring Clark
Gravel, and Fred gets jealous over them gushing over how muscular the actor
was. He decides to become a body builder to impress Wilma, while Barney
chuckles at Fred’s futile efforts. Fred is an out of shape weakling, and only
ends up hurting himself with everything he tries. Barney tries to talk him out
of it but Fred won’t listen. Yawn, I wish I were watching The Honeymooners. They decide to get some actual exercise
equipment at a store and buy a pair of enormous dumbbells, and to get it home
they have to roll it up a hill, which goes horribly wrong when it rolls down
the other side and crashes into a fire hydrant. The scene goes nowhere, they
just go back to the store for more equipment. Later they try to do yoga and get
their legs stuck in a knot. I’m sure the show’s creators did their research on
yoga before writing this episode. When they’re about to give up, they see that
there is a casting call for the next Clark Gravel movie. They apply hoping to
upstage Clark Gravel, but only manage to get a bit part wearing a dinosaur
costume. Betty and Wilma visit the set and find out their husbands are in a
dinosaur costume, and they’re humiliated. But then they see the real Clark
Gravel step out of his limo, and guess what. He’s short! HAHAHA! He needs extra
steps to get out of the limo, then they show him walk into his trailer to put
stilts on to look taller. The laugh track goes wild. Wilma and Betty can’t
believe they ever thought of this short man as attractive. Everyone points and
laughs at the short man and makes jokes like ”Our movie career was almost as
short as he is!” And all this time they thought he was someone worthy of respect!
Imagine anyone under 5’5 being subject to anything but ridicule! HAHAHAHA!!!
I’m
5’2 by the way. I got made fun of for being short all through school. And it’s
partly thanks to crap like this. You know what, screw The Flintstones. I hate
that show. Geez, for something I have such fond memories of growing up, this
tape is really pissing me off. Maybe this is the first time I ever really
stopped to analyze these shows. I normally just put this tape on in the
background while I do something else each year.
Commercials
And now for the best part of
any really old VHS recording, the commercials. Normally I hate ads. I’ll do anything
I can to ignore them. But old commercials are such time capsules. They’re
fascinating from a historical perspective. Kind of just takes you back to the
time it was made. I’d say a commercial has to be at least 15 years old before
it becomes fascinating in any way. These are the commercials seen during that Flintstones
episode.
A USA Cartoon Express bumper:
I loved this cartoon block on the USA Network.
Before Cartoon Network existed, this was the best place to watch cartoons if it
wasn’t Saturday morning. He-Man, She-Ra, Ninja Turtles, random cartoons like
The Flintstones and Pac-Man, it was all here.
Bouncin’ Babies:
Back when every commercial had to have a catchy jingle and the company
had to come up with it themselves instead of licensing the music from some
sellout musician. Although, from what I’ve seen of today’s kids commercials,
things haven’t changed all that much; anything aimed at girls is bright pink
and sickeningly sappy.
Honeycomb:
These commercials did everything right to appeal to 80’s kids. You got a robot,
a multi-ethnic group of kids hanging out in some clubhouse in the woods, a
monster truck, a catchy jingle. All of this effort to convince children to eat
your tasteless puffy cereal. I wonder if it was worth it or not. The one on
this tape features a big muscular guy named “Monster Mac” who looks like he’s
having roid rage or something, demanding honey cereal to satisfy his cravings.
This situation would go down a lot differently in real life, I’d imagine.
Beyond 2000 promo:
The next commercial was a promo for the show Beyond 2000 on
the Discovery Channel. Back when that channel was actually educational. I
tracked this show down many years later on YouTube out of curiosity, so the
promo did get me to watch this show, 20 something years later. It’s about
whatever was new technology in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and predicting
where that technology was going to go “beyond the year 2000”. Definitely
nostalgic. If you weren’t alive before 2000 then you weren’t around for all of
that futuristic optimism everyone had for “The Year 2000”. And yes, everyone
had to say “the year” before they said “2000” for dramatic effect. I want to do a blog on that soon. This show had
a great synthwave theme song too. Would fit right in on New Retro Wave. Is this
Timecop 1983? Here’s the full theme.
He-Man & She-Ra – A Christmas Special
Here it is, what we’ve all been waiting for. As I always called it, “The He-Man She-Ra Christmas Special”. The real meat of the tape. The recording on my tape started at about the 32 second mark if you’re watching this on YouTube, where it has an official upload in little danger of being taken down. I never got to see that very beginning until many years later. I loved both He-Man and She-Ra growing up, although this was the only episode I had recorded of either series back in my childhood. Once it was out of reruns, it was gone. I would get reacquainted with both shows after the advent of DVD. Throughout the 1990’s though, you really couldn’t find a trace of the show anywhere, this was all I had. That’s how things were before streaming. But if you’re only going to see one episode of either series, this is the one to see.
We
start with various characters decorating the castle in Eternia for Prince Adam
and Princess Adora’s birthday. They’re twins, you see, and the secret
identities of He-Man and She-Ra. The queen begins to wax nostalgic for
Christmas, a “very special Earth holiday”, because as one episode of He-Man
explained, she’s actually from Earth.
But this is basically foreshadowing. Meanwhile Prince Adam and Man-at-Arms are
checking out this rocket called the Sky Spy, and the comedy relief character
Orko sneaks into the Sky Spy and accidentally launches it. After that, my
favorite character, Skeletor, appears and attempts to intercept the Sky Spy.
Adam sees this by whatever magic surveillance camera is showing them all this,
and transforms into He-Man, instantly making it over to Skeletor’s ship.
Skeletor tries to use metal claws to catch He-man, but She-Ra appears and
throws a sword, somehow cutting them all. Yeah, throwing the sword always works. Skeletor is foiled, and they continue chasing the Sky Spy, but it goes
off into space. Despite He-Man and She-Ra’s apparent ability to survive the
vacuum of space, they give up chasing it. The Sky Spy somehow travels millions
of light years in mere seconds without destroying the time-space continuum,
ending up where else, but Earth. Einstein must have been wrong about
everything. Or maybe Eternia is Earth but in an alternate universe and the Sky
Spy somehow traveled through a portal between universes. The possibilities are
endless.
Orko
crash lands in a snowy area, and saves two kids from an avalanche. They’re in
the middle of a frozen tundra for some reason looking for a Christmas tree
without adult supervision. I’m convinced their parents were trying to abandon
them because they never shut up about Christmas. Back on Eternia, everyone
realizes Orko is missing. Instead of partying it up at this news, as one might
expect, they’re concerned. Back at the Sky Spy the two children tell Orko all
about Christmas, and it conveniently cuts away before they say anything too
religious. The scenes in this really jump around a lot faster than I remember.
I’m sure when I was a child this must have seemed like a three-hour epic, but
now at age 33 it just rushes by faster than I can write about it.
She-Ra needs some plot device to teleport the Sky Spy back to Eternia so she goes back to her home planet to get it as easily as one drives to the next town over. Her mermaid friend tells her the very creatively-named Beast Monster has it. “Beast Monster”, ha! She travels on her Pegasus, Swiftwind, to a polluted industrial era and confronts the Beast Monster, defeating it by making it walk into a hole. You’ll find that the villains in this special are nothing more than very minor nuisances to the heroes. There are no real threats. Her mermaid friend finds the crystal they need, but before they can head back, they are confronted by evil, transforming robots! Called the Monstroids, these robots are basically anti-Transformers propaganda. They have really lame transformations. One of them just extends their arms and legs and starts flying, that’s their whole transformation. They capture She-Ra, prompting her steed Swiftwind to remark “They’re changing into other forms! What evil robots!” Because transforming robots are evil. Buy He-Man and She-Ra toys kids, and stay away from those evil Transformers.
"Have we gushed over Christmas in the last two seconds?"
She-Ra needs some plot device to teleport the Sky Spy back to Eternia so she goes back to her home planet to get it as easily as one drives to the next town over. Her mermaid friend tells her the very creatively-named Beast Monster has it. “Beast Monster”, ha! She travels on her Pegasus, Swiftwind, to a polluted industrial era and confronts the Beast Monster, defeating it by making it walk into a hole. You’ll find that the villains in this special are nothing more than very minor nuisances to the heroes. There are no real threats. Her mermaid friend finds the crystal they need, but before they can head back, they are confronted by evil, transforming robots! Called the Monstroids, these robots are basically anti-Transformers propaganda. They have really lame transformations. One of them just extends their arms and legs and starts flying, that’s their whole transformation. They capture She-Ra, prompting her steed Swiftwind to remark “They’re changing into other forms! What evil robots!” Because transforming robots are evil. Buy He-Man and She-Ra toys kids, and stay away from those evil Transformers.
She-Ra
gets away pretty easily, and gets back to Eternia quickly. They teleport the
Sky Spy to Eternia with the Christmas-obsessed Earth children. The evil space lord Horde Prime commissions
Skeletor and Hordak (She-Ra’s main villain) to eliminate the Christmas spirit
brought by the Earth children, which he found out about somehow. Why this is
such a high priority for him I have no idea. Maybe he’s afraid it will devolve
into rampant consumerism. Both Skeletor and Hordak compete with one another
throughout the special, wanting to be the one to deliver the children to Horde
Prime.
Back on Eternia the children are hanging out with Bo and some other minor characters, and they sing this excruciatingly awful Christmas song that even as a kid caused me to either fast forward the tape or mute the TV. It’s really the most awful song you’ve ever heard. Be warned. However, the children are kidnapped by Hordak’s phallic spaceship. Shortly thereafter, a giant robotic hand grips the phallic ship in a most suggestive fashion (I swear the animators were doing this on purpose), and it turns out to be the Monstroids.
Ooh lala...
"Listen. I am not nice, I am not kind, and I am not, wonderful!"
Thank badness Christmas only comes once a year.
Maybe
all I need is a cute puppy and a couple sickeningly sweet kids and I won’t
despise Christmas so much anymore.
Anyway,
when watching this with my friends for the sole purpose of mocking it, we came
up with a drinking game, and it goes something like this. Take a sip every
time:
·
The
He-Man or She-Ra theme kicks in.
·
There’s
a time-consuming reusable transformation sequence.
·
Orko
does something stupid.
·
You
notice one of the show’s many reused stock animations.
·
There’s
a sexual innuendo (accidental or possibly otherwise).
·
Something
that could be interpreted as homoerotic happens.
·
Something
that could be interpreted as incestual happens.
·
Whenever
something has a horribly uncreative name (Sky Spy, Beast Monster, Snow Beast,
etc.)
·
Each
time Skeletor’s heart warms a little.
·
If
you really want to kill your liver, each time those insufferable children
mention Christmas.
More Commercials
This was aired
on USA Network, and quite a few of the commercial breaks survived. Such as:
Fruity Pebbles
Oh no, not The Flintstones again! This is a commercial that if you
were alive at all in 1989 you probably remember. Barney is a rapper now, and he
wants to steal Fred’s cereal. Fred doesn’t fall for it because Barney’s plan is
right there in the lyrics. Ugh. There’s no way I’m buying anything sponsored by
these short-shamers. Was Flintstones seriously ever that popular? They slapped
their sponsorship on a bunch of products and did a crappy live action movie, so
they must have been. Why? What made this bland and annoying show so appealing? I
don’t understand.
Mega Force:
These were basically miniature army toys. I don’t know what secret
military base would allow children to enter and play with their toys, but in
commercial-land anything can happen. I wonder if the US military paid for this
toy line to be made. They do it with movies that glorify the military, so its
perfectly possible. If you’re not going to just draft people into the military you can brainwash people from childhood into fetishizing war and they’ll sign up to fight for your oil.
Robocop toy blaster:
Ah the 1980’s, when rated-R movies could still have toy lines
marketed to small children. If you’ve ever seen Robocop, you know that it is
NOT for children. Reminds me how I had a Terminator toy growing up, but wasn’t
shown the movies until I was a teen.
My First Sony
This infectious jingle is something I’ve never, ever forgotten. It
will be in my brain forever. “My First Sony” was basically a cassette recorder
for kids. I may have had something like it when I was very young, I don’t know
what happened to it though. I hate when commercials go out of their way to
brainwash children into brand loyalty, which is the reason this product
existed. Of course, when the console wars happened, I was on the side of Sega
thanks to this sort of insidious marketing. Sadly, I’d picked the losing team,
really. I’m no longer loyal to anyone who just sees me as a number or a dollar
sign.
And the second commercial break:
A trailer for The Wizard:
Now this really makes this tape feel like it’s
from the 80’s. I’ve only ever seen this movie once. To make a long story short,
these three kids go on a long journey to get to a video game tournament, and
there’s tons of Nintendo product placement that dates the movie and turns it
into an 80’s time capsule. And Super Mario Bros. 3 debuts in it; among
one of my all-time favorite video games.
Santa’s Helper 900 Number:
Santa’s going to leave a nice present on your parent’s phone
bill in January! What a scam these things were. You pay by the minute to talk
to “Santa”, and I’m sure they did every trick in the book to keep you on the
phone as long as possible. I’d really hate to work in that kind of call center.
Isn’t that just what Christmas truly is these days? A scam?
Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Yes,
after a very brief clip of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” that I have no
idea the history of, it’s the Rankin-Bass stop motion cartoon that basically
everyone has seen by now. I suppose at some point I liked this. The story may at first seem like it has a
good enough message, about misfits of society gaining acceptance. Until you really start thinking about it, and realize the moral is that nonconformity will be punished unless found to be exploitable. Santa watched Rudolph get mocked and ostracized as a child and did nothing to stop it, and didn’t give a single crap about Rudolph until he found him useful.
But
there is one thing that stood out to me as I rewatched it in spite of my
misgivings toward Christmas in general.
The
elf who wants to be a dentist, named Hermey, is someone I never identified with
at all until now. He’s an elf that doesn’t want to make toys. He’s been raised
his whole life in a society that encourages this sweatshop labor and he doesn’t
want to be a part of it. He wants to do his own thing. I was raised in a
society where I spent the first 18 years of my life training to be exploited by
the rich. We were taught to be obedient, to show up on time, to get work done
on a deadline. This would mold us into productive workers to maximize the
profits of CEOs. I want to be an artist and a writer, but that’s not what
society wants me to do. Society scoffs at the artist. There are rare instances
where an artist proves useful to the corporate class, if they are producing
something deemed “marketable”, but most of the time they aren’t, and they are
left with the choice of pursuing their passion while being broke and starving,
or throwing their dreams away and taking an awful minimum wage job toiling away
for mere pennies, selling precious hours and days of their finite lives away.
Even though I think dentists are sadistic con-artists, I find myself relating
to this elf. I want to be independent.
The commercials were edited out pretty expertly in this recording, somewhat unfortunately.
Mickey’s Christmas Carol
This starts with that classic Wonderful World of Disney intro that fills you with nostalgia and makes you forget what an evil monopolistic conglomerate Disney is. But really, by this point in the tape, maybe I’m starting to feel a bit like Skeletor holding that puppy. Maybe my heartstrings are being tugged a little bit. Maybe the magic of Christmas isn’t 100% dead to me. But I am not nice, and I am not kind, and I am not wonderful! And I’m still a jaded and disillusioned 33-year-old!
We
start with Mickey narrating a collection of classic Disney shorts, my first
exposure to them in fact. This was probably done to pad out the timeslot. The
first short is “Donald’s Snow Fight”, where Donald Duck provokes his nephews
into a snowball fight and it turns into an escalating war where they build
themselves ice fortresses and start attacking one another. You can’t go wrong
with this short. Watch it while it’s still up on YouTube, who knows when Disney
will finally clamp down on their old shorts being on there.
The
next short is “Pluto’s Christmas Tree”, another classic, where Mickey cuts down
a tree that had been the home of Chip and Dale, and the two chipmunks have a
war with Pluto in Mickey’s home. There’s not that much to it, but it’s just
something that’s always going to be a part of my distant past, this short. It’s
full of color and pure nostalgia.
Here’s the second commercial break on the tape, featuring this old 7-Up commercial. Aw, isn’t
this commercial heartwarming? Now buy our sugar acid that will dissolve your
teeth and give you diabetes.
Then
we have the Christmas Carol proper. Very well-animated, probably among the best
adaptations. Although billed as “Mickey’s” Christmas Carol, he’s barely in it,
playing the part of Bob Cratchit. They should have just taken the leap and had
Mickey play Ebenezer Scrooge. I could totally see it working these days; a
corporate mascot consumed with greed who must come to grips with their past and
remember who they truly are. But no, instead we have Scrooge McDuck’s
prototype. This Scrooge isn’t quite Scrooge McDuck from Duck Tales. Same
voice actor, similar design, but he’s more, shall we say, “human”, though a
duck. This is one of thousands of adaptations of A Christmas Carol of
course, everyone knows the story by now. It’s funny how many big corporations
sponsor these kinds of productions yet ignore the very lessons of the story
they’re producing. Which is, I suppose, that the rich need to be terrorized by the
supernatural before they’ll give away any of their money, merely out of guilt,
regret, and a fear of going to Hell.
You don't get to take your wealth with you to the grave...
Different,
seemingly random Disney characters play all the parts. Goofy as Jacob
Marley might seem to be a strange fit until you’ve seen some of Goofy’s shorts
from the 1950’s. He can play a lot of different characters, good, dumb, or
evil. At the end of it, Scrooge seems to have had less of an epiphany and more
of a nervous breakdown, as he runs through the streets like a crazed man
throwing his money everywhere. How much do you want to bet he reverts back to
his old self in a couple days, shocked and appalled at his own behavior? That’s
what I think probably happens. But I’m just being negative. Or am I being
realistic?
Conclusion
After
this, we have the first five minutes of the first episode of The Simpsons,
the Christmas episode, before the tape ends. Sadly, there’s not a whole lot of
the episode to talk about. I suppose this is the price paid for those
commercials earlier on the tape. I would have gladly traded that Flintstones
episode for The Simpsons though.
And that’s it! Thirty years, and it’s still going strong. I have changed a lot, my perceptions of the shows on this tape have changed a lot, but the tape itself hasn’t changed a bit. Will I still be watching it thirty years from now? If so, what will I think of it then? Thanks for sticking around to read about a 30-year-old VHS tape, and thanks mom for recording it for me back then!
And that’s it! Thirty years, and it’s still going strong. I have changed a lot, my perceptions of the shows on this tape have changed a lot, but the tape itself hasn’t changed a bit. Will I still be watching it thirty years from now? If so, what will I think of it then? Thanks for sticking around to read about a 30-year-old VHS tape, and thanks mom for recording it for me back then!
If you want to read more about my way-too-big VHS collection, check out Five VHS Tapes from the Vault.
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