There’s a bunch of exposition to explain the increasingly murky concept of time in the Rudolph-verse, but basically Happy has to be found before New Year’s Day or else the current year will go on forever. Easily the weirdest of the Rankin/Bass specials, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year is a mess: Taking place immediately after the first Rudolph, it features a time-traveling quest in which our favorite red-nosed reindeer travels across time periods (technically, time islands) to find Happy, the big-eared New Year’s baby that’s gone missing. If you watch the original Rudolph and think to yourself, “This is fun and all, but I really wish they found a way to work in a caveman, a camel-clock hybrid and Benjamin Franklin,” then this is the Christmas special for you. Thankfully, Paste is here to shepherd you through the world of Rankin/Bass, from worst to best. It can be difficult to know where to get one’s Yuletide on with such a massive catalogue. While there are Rankin/Bass entries for Easter and Thanksgiving, too, the company earned its reputation with a series of 19 Christmas specials-18 of which were created between 19-that dazzled and occasionally horrified small children. Yet the company is most famous for its holiday specials-often based on popular songs and existing properties-and its innovative use of “Animagic,” which combines stop-motion animation with puppets to create a unique visual style. and Jules Bass, Rankin/Bass created dozens of cartoons from the early 1960s through the 1980s, from ThunderCats to the animated version of J.R.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit. From Rudolph to Frosty, no production company has done more to flood the airwaves with Christmas specials than Rankin/Bass Productions.
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