Straight out of the Gene Autry song “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” from the 1940s, Rankin/Bass (originally known as Videocraft International) took the song number and created a 45ish minute cartoon named straight after the song title. Thanks to its’ stop motion animation style “Animagic” and famous song numbers, Rankin/Bass was able to immediately shell out an array of beloved Christmas cartoons ranging from Year Without a Santa Claus to Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey just to name a few of them.

Although not the first Christmas cartoon made for television, without Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, the majority of the Christmas cartoons and tv specials would likely never exist.

Shunned by the reindeer, Rudolph exiles himself from the others, joining up with Hermey the Elf, an elf who has more thoughts about dentistry and Yukon Cornelius, a miner. Some time later, the bumble (abominable snow man) kidnaps Rudolph’s parents and his girlfriend Clarice and is forced to save them.

Narrated by Burl Ives, previously sang songs from So Dear to my Heart (1949).

The bumble gave a bunch of viewers (such as myself and likely my mother when she first saw this way back in the mid 60s) quite a nightmare – which caused some viewers like myself to shut the movie off after Silver and Gold. Pretty odd considering the Wampa from Empire Strikes Back never scared me (which is very similar looking). A major part of this could be due to build-up (element associated with most old horror movies) since you hear about the bumble a few times.

Originally the misfit toys were ditched by Rudolph, which pissed off a lot of viewers. This was corrected in 1965 at a compromise of removing the scene when Yukon Cornelius declares that he found peppermint – which explained why he was putting his tongue on his tools a few times.

There was a different song number (Fame and Fortune) used after the original airing until around 1997/1998. You can hear this song number on Family Home Entertainment releases. The elf song was also shorter too until Freeform got the rights to play this on their channel; prior the song was missing an instrumental part involving some slapstick.

As of writing, only two people who worked on this (voice wise) are still living. Recently Paul Soles (voice of 60s Spiderman) died from natural causes. Unsurprising that most of the staff on this cartoon have passed away as this came out in the 60s.

Recently this cartoon’s gone under fire for some stupid shit.

The head elf’s appearance was probably used for Buddy’s suit in Elf.

Out of the four major Family Home Entertainment Christmas cartoons, this was the third-most I’ve seen. Used to have it recorded from CBS from 1994 or something though I’ve seen it occasionally at my paternal grandparents house in the 1990s.

As mentioned above I almost never got past the Silver and Gold song due to the bumble. Something about characters getting way too close to the screen might’ve had something to do with it and looking like they’re going to munch on me or pull me in – this same problem surfaced with some movies like the Rescuers Down Under and even simple bumpers from a Peter Pan tape – I’m dead serious.

The audio acts up at the end of Silver and Gold. No idea why. A little more notable on later releases.

The pringles guy looks like Sam the Snowman.