Warner Bros. Animation presents: Miser Brothers on ABC Family Dec. 13 at 8pm!

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Fans of the Rankin-Bass animated Christmas classic The Year Without a Santa Claus will remember the characters Heat Miser and Snow Miser. This holiday season, the quarreling siblings are back in ABC Family’s new original animated special A Miser Brothers’ Christmas, which premieres Saturday, Dec. 13 at 8 p.m. (ET/PT). Mickey Rooney returns as the voice of Santa Claus and George S. Irving reprises the role of Heat Miser. The debut is part of the network’s “25 Days of Christmas” programming event.

Santa’s new chief mechanic, Tinsel, has created a speedy, new high-tech sleigh for Christmas, but North Wind has sabotaged it in the hope of taking Santa’s place this year. When Santa takes it out for a spin, he gets caught in the cross fire between the feuding Miser Brothers and the sleigh comes crashing down. North Wind frames the Misers for the accident and, with Santa stuck in bed with a bad back, seems poised to be the heroic fill-in. But much to his chagrin, Mother Nature punishes the Miser Brothers by forcing them to put their differences aside and do Santa’s job. In between comedic squabbles, the Brothers rediscover what it means to be family and, along the way, save Christmas for everyone.

Written by Eddie Guzelian (Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch), and directed by Dave Barton Thomas, the special is produced by Warner Bros. Animation in association with Cuppa Coffee Studios and is presented by Warner Bros. Animation and ABC Family. Exec producers are Adam Shaheen, Howard Schwartz and Linda M. Steiner.




It's great that WBA is reviving something that isn't Hanna-Barbera or DC Comics related.
 
Nice to see something animation related on ABC Family. Been lacking that ever since Fox Family sold the network to Disney, and I don't think "Slacker Cats" is coming back anytime soon anyway.
 
Yep, "The Year Without A Santa Claus" had the Miser Bros., though the actual star was Mrs. Claus. That one is available on DVD (my copy also features "Rudolph's Shiny New Year" and "Nestor, the Long-Eared Donkey").

This special sounds interesting----and nice to see real stop-motion animation instead of CGI. The models for Santa and the elves look like they're more based on the original Rudolph special vs. the 70s Rankin-Bass ones (the 70s specials being where the elves had mostly-red suits on, and the elves/Santa didn't have dots-for-eyes).

-B.
 
can't tell ya how happy i am they're actually going back to stop motion for this special....and they really did a great job capturing the look and feel of the rakin bass characters. they even improved a bit on them.

if they could do this kind of quality for all the modern sequels to the old animagic specials i'm all for it....the cgi rudolph one was horrid beyond reason. i hope the guys responsible for that one aren't even allowed to watch any of the old specials ever again.
 
I'm glad to see that ABC Family will be having this special. A Year Without a Santa Claus is one of favorite holiday specials and this sounds interesting. I've always enjoyed their 25 Days of Christmas event every years. By the way, slightly off topic, but they're also premiering Aladdin this Tuesday if anyone wants to see it. I would watch it, but I don't think I'll be home early enough to do so.
 
I'll be checking this out tonight. Hopefully, this is better than the Frosty sequels. The pictures I've seen look pretty cool. The Year Without a Santa Claus airs right before it.
 
Snow Miser, actually. And the Miser Brothers' debut appearance, A Year Without a Santa Claus, wasn't their story, but rather a vehicle for Mrs. Claus, voiced by Shelley Winters.

That said, even though it's 34 years later, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Misers have gotten their own special, as they are instantly memorable and revered; fans who don't remember anything else about Year Without a Santa Claus tend to remember Snow Miser and Heat Miser.

I'm curious; I'll be watching. I finally have a reason to watch ABC Family.
 
Yeah, I always mess that up. I keep wanting to make their names more parallel than they actually are. :D



Who cares? The Ms. Claus aspects of the story are inoffensive but not half so memorable as... well, anything in the special that has to do with the Misers. Any reference to it I ever see is to the Miser sequences.
 
Guess I'm the only one here feeling pretty pessimistic about this. I don't know, I just think of "A Year Without A Santa Claus" as a classic that doesn't really need a revival. I saw a preview with one of the new songs, and it was pretty bad.

I might watch this anyway to give it a fair chance, but my expectations are low.
 
I'm trying to approach this neutrally, since the Misers were favorite holiday special characters in my household. I'm planning to see it even if it sucks, and in that event I'll be here tonight posting about badly it sucked.
 
So will this also double as the talkback thread?

At least they tried to connect it to the R-B specials by having Rooney do Santa, and went the extra mile to get Irving back to do Heat Miser(Keeping in mind that Irving is like in his 80s now. However, I've seen a clip from the new special singing the Heat Miser song and he's still got it singing wise)
 
Well, I enjoyed this special. I thought it kept pretty faithful to the spirit of the first special. It was nice that they got Rooney and Irving to do two of the voices again. Some of the new songs were iffy, but I enjoyed the overall story. It is definitely worthy of a yearly spot on the channel.
 
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