Thoughtnami Classics | Quick Waves #2

Originally Posted 07/20/04 by Jeff Harris

Whatever Happened To Christmas In July?

It's funny, the one thing that never made sense to me when I was a kid was the whole Christmas In July concept. All the commercialized Christmas characters like Santa Claus, Rudolph, Frosty, and The Grinch selling everything from electronics to cars to, well, everything. Stores used to put the commercial side of the Christmas holiday in all of their ads, and cable networks used to show Christmas programming around the weekend of July 25. It was a whoot seeing The Grinch, Yogi's First Christmas, Twas The Night Before Christmas, and all of those kitschy-but-cool specials around this time. Heck, they even showed the ultimate Christmas crossover, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas In July (little known fact, although the stop-motion characters were made in the good ol' US, a lot of those Rankin-Bass specials were animated in Japan, kind of like their last major project, Thundercats, were).

This year . . . nothing. It's strange that this weird commercial concept that has been a part of our culture has disappeared all of sudden. Perhaps it's best that Christmas programming will only air in December, post-Thanksgiving at the earliest. Still, it seems as if another part of my childhood has gone away.

So, if you dare to comment, what was your favorite Christmas special?

Didn't They Do "I Love The 90s" A Little Too Soon?

Now that I've seen most of VH1's "I Love The 90s," I can officially answer a question that's been plaguing my mind since the thought of a 90s retrospective entered my thoughts.

Did we really need an "I Love The 90s" special now? No, we didn't.

Let me explain.

Half of the specials were very nostalgic for me. 1990 - 1995, maybe 1996 were probably the best of the series for me because it did seem like it took place a long time ago. The latter half were pretty dang recent to me and not really worth the trip back in time. By looking at the, ahem, celebrities and their reactions to the latter half, it did seem that they were almost forced to wax nostalgic about 1996 - 1999, considering it wasn't that long ago. I feel that maybe in another three or four years that they could have done an I Love The 90s (and yes, I'm aware that the BBC, who created the frnchise, did a 90s retrospective pretty recently as well). 2004 was just a little too soon to remember fondly about the 90s.

From a cultural perspective, they had pretty much everything covered. From an animated perspective, it lacked a lot (to be honest, aside from Pokemon, it seemed very Viacomy). The thing about the I Love The 70s and 80s specials were that the most of participants were actually kids and teens at the time and remember the good old days. In the 90s, most of the participants were adults. They wouldn't have remembered stuff like Pete and Pete, Salute Your Shorts, X-Men, Fox Kids, Animaniacs, Cartoon Network, Pinky and the Brain, Batman: The Animated Series, Rugrats, Rocko's Modern Life, Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, and countless others that we remember in our teenhood (and in most cases, childhood). Heck, where were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, the finest Disney movies to come out. They covered Toy Story, but that was it. In about four years, they really could have done a great I Love the 90s interviewing folks that actually watched those shows.

Instead, this trip back to the 90s was a little underwhelming. It's like the writers' minds were just trapped by adults of that era.

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