Rudolph's Shiny New Talkback

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ric francis e

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Since somebody suggested it, I thought I'd start a thread on this. I actually haven't seen this special before. I thought it was interesting that they used the same Rudolph as before, but aside from that there was no real continuity. Heck, he was even working for a different Santa Claus. It's sort of disappointing that Rudolph's story was told in a cartoon version of what happened. They could have used flashbacks from the 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer' special. But I liked the idea anyway. The plot of both Baby New Year and Rudolph both having a distinguishing characteristic and wanting to be accepted because of it was interesting. Overall, I thought this was a good special.
 
Despite a few flaws, I still enjoyed "Rudolph's Shiny New Year", even if I seem to be one of six people who liked it, judging from disparaging online remarks about this special.

Think this was the first special to use Rudolph since they made the original "Rudolph" special, so guess they wanted a few design changes (to also match with the 70s Rankin-Bass version of Santa, the elves and the reindeer used in "Year WIthout a Santa Claus" and such).

Liked the "Happy New Year" song.

Oddity: the Isle of No-Name being "due North of the North Pole"... must be some geographic feat. Maybe it's like how to get to that hidden train station track for Hogwart's in "Harry Potter"...

Another oddity: Santa driving like, well, the old man he is, at about 10 miles per hour there in that ending scene where he's supposed to be, erm, getting back to Father Time's castle in a hurry. ;-)

Yep, they said "19-wonderful"... given this tale's told in flashback, don't think it dates it (too much)...

Slightly morbid premise to Eon's motivations (stealing the baby to prevent him from *dying*), which Rudolph managed to prevent. Though guess there's still the whole "terrorizing the Sands of Time" thing that I guess he's now free to do for eternity, unless laughing at Happy also cured him of *that* evil intent... :-p

The 1776-island of course probably was to tie into the bicentennial fever sweeping the nation at the time the special was made. Wonder if there's an 1867 island with an all-Canadian fervor... ;-)

-B.
 
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