Julia Colburn

🎄 Put on your cute little helmet and join us on a journey back to 1984 for a Christmas special based on the toy craze that turned holiday shopping from a winter wonderland to a warzone.  🎙️ Julia (Tis the Podcast) and Steven (The Bigfoot Club) join the adventure from the hidden home of the Cabbage Patch Kids to the unnamed but totally identifiable big city in search of the Christmas spirit, while we evade 2 nearly identical but probably not related trios trying to kidnap us. It’ll all make sense.  Actually, no. It will not.  📺 “The Cabbage Patch Kids’ First Christmas” is well preserved on YouTube. Here’s an upscaled version.  Watch Steven’s film, “The Bigfoot Club,” on Prime Video.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  The totally official, extremely bonkers Legend of the Cabbage Patch Kids.  Babyland General Hospital.  ‘Custody’ fight over Cabbage Patch dolls (Christian Science Monitor, 1983)  Josh Rodine (Dawson Glenn) in “Sparky’s Magic Piano” (1987)  Sparky Marcus (Xavier) as Banjo the Woodpile Cat (1979)  “Kudzu: The Invasive Vine that Ate the South.”  Piedmont Park.  What idiot took the gay out of “Don we now our gay apparel”?  ****  📼 Commercials:  Cabbage Patch Kids Talking Phone (1984)  Cabbage Patch Kids Hide and Seek Game (1984)  ****  “The Cabbage Patch Kids’ First Christmas” © 1984 Ruby-Spears Enterprises, Inc.  Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  Hosted by The Retro Network.

🎄 Of all the animated Christmas specials we have covered and will cover, this is the nearsighted granddaddy of them all.  🎙 Anthony Caruso and Julia Colburn from Tis the Podcast visit the Advent Calendar House for a very special Scrooge Sunday episode as we nearly-blindly fumble back to 1962 to celebrate “Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” TV’s first ever animated Christmas special.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Jim Backus (Mister Magoo) based his portrayal of Thurston Howell III from “Gilligan’s Island” on another character he played on a radio show hosted by another famous future Scrooge, Alan Young.  Scrooge’s nephew is cut entirely to make room for a song about Broadway that sometimes also gets cut entirely.  The ghosts of Christmas Present and Past show up out of order for no clear reason, but an A.V. Club article from 2012 tried to find one.  Tiny Tim is an English-speaking Gerald McBoing-Boing.  This special invented a flavor! Razzleberry pie is now a thing that exists, made with raspberries and blackberries.  The Ghost of Christmas Past looks like Toon Link.  The last surviving member of the cast, Marie Matthews (Young Scrooge), was on a 2009 panel revisiting the special.  Is Belle’s hair supposed to look like an actual bell?  ****  “Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol” © 1962 UPA Pictures, Inc.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 It’s time to dust off the cobwebs and get the Advent Calendar House ready for Season 2, featuring a new episode every day from December 1 through Christmas Eve, 2018.  In between commercial teasers for all 24 episodes coming in Season 2 (though not necessarily in order) the members of the all-new Christmas Podcast Network share stories of Christmas music traditions:  ****  🎙 Guests:  Brian Earl (Christmas Past)  Tim Babb (Can’t Wait for Christmas)  Craig Kringle (Weird Christmas)  Duane Bailey (Tinsel Tunes)  Joseph Wade (Christmas Creeps), with Libby Cudmore  Anthony Caruso, Julia Colburn, and Thom Crowe (Tis the Podcast)  ****  Find us at adventcalendar.house.