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🎄 It’s another Scrooge Sunday in the Advent Calendar House as we’re swept through a rip in the space-time continuum back to 1986 for a Christmas Carol-themed episode of “The Real Ghostbusters.”🎙 Tommy Coombs and Chad Young join the adventure after our heroes accidentally save Scrooge from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Hey, grown-ups! Remember getting lost while driving when we didn’t all have maps of the entire planet in our pockets?  Scrooge pays the Ghostbusters a mint-condition shilling from 1837, so we looked up its actual value.  You can actually buy Christmas Carol View Master reels from the 1950s online.  Rick and Morty talking about Bill Murray and Lorenzo Music comes up and goes… somewhere.  Egon entering the ghost containment unit looks like the warp tunnel on Space Mountain.  The other ghosts in the containment unit are callbacks to previous episodes, including Sandman, who bears a passing resemblance to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.  Santa should not laugh like Megatron.  ****  📼 Commercials:  The Real Ghostbusters Firehouse Playset, Tombstone Tackle, and X-Cop (1986)  Tis the Podcast.  ****  “The Real Ghostbusters” and “Xmas Marks the Spot” © 1986 Columbia Pictures Television.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s4 #1980s #scroogesunday #dic

🎄 Go-go Gadget podcast! It’s time to spring back to 1992 to take “Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas” in for questioning.  🎙 Chad Young accepts our assignment to investigate the time Dr. Claw took over Santa’s workshop for some reason.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Nick Knacks, a show-by-show video history of Nickelodeon.  Halloween 1992 was the year of white kids dressing like Steve Urkel.  Inspector Gadget’s run on Nickelodeon got me into “Get Smart” on Nick at Nite.  The time Chad got a crew jacket from the set of the “Inspector Gadget” movie.  The action figure that revealed Dr. Claw’s goofy face.  The Inspector Gadget Super Nintendo game, featuring the same alternate theme song as this special.  Maurice LaMarche subbing for Don Adams for Gadget’s weird version of “The 12 Days of Christmas” is similar to Jim Cummings finishing “Be Prepared” for Jeremy Irons in “The Lion King.”  Where’s the camera Penny’s Not Apple Watch uses to see Brain?  Jerry “The King” Lawler entering the 1997 Royal Rumble Match in the middle of a sentence, then finishing it after being eliminated in 4 seconds.  “Disney’s Christmas All-Time Favorites.”  ****  📼 Commercials:  Cookie Crisp Cereal Christmas Commercial (1992)  Tinsel Tunes.  ****  “Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas” © 1992 DiC Entertainment.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s4 #1990s #dic

🎄 Hey, paisanos! Join us as we warp back to 1989 for a double dose of Christmas segments from “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show.”  🎙 Adam Pope joins us to watch Mario and Luigi save Santa in 2 different dimensions: The live-action “Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush,” featuring Santa losing his “transportation” in Brooklyn; and the animated “Koopa Klaus,” featuring a plot to… freeze the North Pole.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Nintendo Power’s preview of “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show.”  I didn’t realize till recently the music in the “Back to the Future” Nintendo game is just “The Power of Love” sped up.  “King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons,” a live-in-studio spinoff show local to Los Angeles and hosted by King Koopa, performed at one point by Chris Latta, a.k.a. Christopher Collins.  Captain Lou Albano’s Wrestling Hotline 1-900 number.  We map out where Mario and Luigi lived in Brooklyn.  “Stunt Dawgs,” an obscure 1992 cartoon featuring Harvey Atkin playing another character with the same King Koopa voice.  “Teeter-totter” vs. “see-saw.”  How tall is Mario? Captain Lou was 5-foot-10, though other sources range from 5-foot-1 to 3-foot-8.  Preview of Super Nintendo World, coming to Universal theme parks.  Finally, I get to talk at length about The Legend of Zelda!  Adam’s SequelQuest episode on the Super Mario Bros. movie, featuring a parody of the Super Show theme song.  ****  📼 Commercials:  Pepsi Nintendo Holiday Game (1989), preserved by Dinosaur Dracula.  Nintendo Power Commercial (1990), preserved by RobertDigitalGames.  Christmas Clatter.  ****  “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show,” “Koopa Klaus,” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush” © 1989 DiC Entertainment.  “Super Mario Bros.” © Nintendo Co. Ltd.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s4 #1980s #dic #videogames

🎄 Previously on the Advent Calendar House, our hearts and golden harmonicas went out to “A Chipmunk Christmas.”  This time, it’s Scrooge Sunday, so get set to have some fun in this Dickens of an episode of “Alvin and the Chipmunks.”  🎙️ Tommy Coombs and Sean Sotka joins us in Hollywood — or at least a nearby cartoon suburb where Alvin turns his greed up to 11 and blames it on his lonely old neighbor who doesn’t know how to plant a garden.  📺 You can watch “Merry Christmas, Mr. Carroll” on Internet Archive.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Carroll” on Munkapedia.  Pee-wee Herman’s breakfast machine.  “Paperboy,” the video game.  “Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.”  Dads with trash bags on Christmas morning.  “A Chipmunk Reunion.”  A Seville family portrait featuring Dave’s abnormally large head.  Mickey Mouse’s 1980s Epcot spacesuit.  Today’s TV Trope: Sounding It Out.  Southern California’s Blizzard of 2023.  “Here Comes Christmas,” the TV version, and the album version.  ****  📼 Commercials:  The Chipmunks are Coming to Target (1990)  Cool Kids Club.  ****  “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Merry Christmas, Mr. Carroll” © 1989 Bagdasarian Productions.  Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  #s10 #1980s #scroogesunday #dic

🎄 If you thought Christmas was fast approaching, hang onto something as we zip back to 1996 and do our best to keep up with Sonic the Hedgehog on a mission to save Christmas.  🎙️ Mike (Bitter Karella) and Ethan (The Hungry Reader) from A Special Presentation, or ALF Will Not Be Seen Tonight join the quest to rescue Santa from the evil Robotnik Claus, obtain the Secret to Ultimate Velocity, and find a gift for Sonic’s girlfriend from another universe.  📺 You can watch “Sonic Christmas Blast” for free on YouTube.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  How Sonic scored two different animated series at the same time (Polygon, 2020)  This specially was originally called “An X-tremely Sonic Christmas” to promote a Sega Saturn game that ended up getting canceled.  Jay Brazeau (Santa) as the referee in “Air Bud” who says the line.  The robot queen in “The Great Mouse Detective.”  “Let the Heartaches Begin” by Long John Baldry (Robotnik).  The original “Ugly Sonic” movie trailer.  Dr. Robotnik’s in-game design looks like both an Eggman and a walrus.  The other cartoon’s theme song.  ****  📼 Commercials:  Sonic & Knuckles Christmas Elves Commercial (1994)  ****  “Sonic Christmas Blast” © 1996 DIC Productions, L.P.  Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.  Hosted by The Retro Network.  #s15 #1990s #videogames #dic