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🎄 How many Muppets can fit inside a farmhouse? We took a head count. It’s a lot.  🎙️ Carlin Trammel from Nerd Lunch stops by the Advent Calendar House to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of “A Muppet Family Christmas,” the shredded wheat and cranberry sauce of TV specials. Together, we try and piece together the various home video cuts over music rights, and wrap around heads around the dizzying continuity issues surrounding the Muppet Babies.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Can you say “OshKosh B’gosh”?  A milk PSA and the world’s most forward-thinking bullies.  Osvaldo el Gruñón, Oscar the Grouch’s Puerto Rican counterpart.  Parting words from the guy with the beard doing the dishes.  ****  “A Muppet Family Christmas” © 1987 Jim Henson Productions.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s1 #1980s #muppets

🎄 The taste of nuts and honey thaws Scrooge’s icy heart in this 30-second portrayal of Scrooge for a Christmastime cereal commercial.  🎙️ Joey O. stops by to share a sufficient helping of customary gruel as we squeeze every last drop of honey out of this commercial, officially titled “Ebenezer Scrooge Discovers Honey Nut Cheerios,” which ran from around 1987 through at least the end of the 20th century.  Addendum: Thanks to Guy Hutchinson for identifying our Scrooge as actor Bill Gavin!  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  A tale of two Buzz Bees: “It’s Christmas,” vs. “It’s the holidays.”  Arnold Stang, the original voice of the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee, Top Cat, and Nestlé’s Chunky candy bar.  A brief tangent questioning the lifespan and ancestral history of honeybees.  ****  Honey Nut Cheerios © General Mills.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s1 #1980s #commercials

🎄 Ho-ho-ho, I’m hu-hu-hungry! Fill your soul with season’s greetings and another batch of cereal commercials from Christmas past.  🎙️ Uh-oh, here comes Joey O. to revisit a collection of seasonal ads for Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles, starring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  The main attraction: This Fruity Pebbles Christmas commercial, circa 1986, and a redubbed version with Jim Cummings as Santa from the early ’90s.  An older Fruity Pebbles Christmas commercial, dated 1980.  A Newer Cocoa Pebbles “Christmas Carol” commercial.  “I’m the Master Rapper and I’m here to say, I love Fruity Pebbles in a major way!”  The theory I’m going with: Fred and Barney know about Christmas because they live in a post-apocalyptic future.  The Rock’s Fruity Pebbles promo on John Cena, 2011.  WWE’s Christmas in Baghdad opening from 2003, featuring “Stone Cold” Steve Austin disguised as Santa Claus.  ****  Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles cereal commercials © Post Consumer Brands / Warner Bros.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s1 #1980s #commercials #hannabarbera

🎆 We’re back for a surprise summertime episode on the 1986 animated movie, “The Adventures of the American Rabbit.”  🎙️ Chad Young from the Horror Movie BBQ joins our cross-country adventure through a star-spangled box-office bomb from Fred Wolf Films and Toei Animation, starring the voices of Donatello, Garfield, Baby Piggy, and King Triton.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  The late Stewart Moskowitz’s archived gallery and current website, operated by his family.  Too-Loose, the Chocolate Moose.  Ping Pong, the Gorilla who ate Garfield.  ****  “The Adventures of the American Rabbit” © 1985 Wolfkill Productions, Inc.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s1 #1980s #4thofjuly