Festive Tidbits: Vintage Christmas Food and Drink Ads

 Festive Tidbits: Vintage Christmas Food and Drink Ads

Christmas TV Yule-blogged with Christmas Carols, Ozzie and Harriet, Rudolph, Scooby-Doo, Pinocchio, Shirley Temple, Gumby, Keith Floyd and more...

 

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet - The Girl the Emporium (1960)

Nice little holiday adjacent episode of the classic sitcom.

Shirley Temple  Babes in Toyland (1960)

A terrific cast lead a fun adaptation of Victor  Herbert's Holiday favorite.

Pinocchio’s Christmas (1989)

Good looking Rankin Bass joint that I haven’t seen in ages. The songs are generally lackluster and the story doesn’t do much for me, in fact it’s pretty off putting,  but it is very well made.

The King of Queens - Better Camera (2000)

Pretty good and it’s got Lou Ferrigno, so that’s nice..

To Grandmother’s House We Go (1992)

Vintage Olsen Twins vehicle that wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. It’s better than a lot of the new stuff airing these days, but it’s still fairly dire. My kids might have tolerated it when they were that age.

Victorian Farm Christmas Special (2009)

Terrific short series following cast members of the original Victorian Farm as they spend months preparing to recreate a Victorian Christmas.

A Christmas Carol (1910)

Tremendous adaptation, for 1910. A mere curiosity in 2020.

A Christmas Carol (1982)

Aussie animated version. Not great but not terrible. 

A Christmas Carol (2012)

Overly ambitious, under funded adaptation unable to rise above its limitations. There are too many good adaptations o waste time with bad ones.

A Scooby-Doo Christmas (2002)

The gang takes on The Headless Snowman of Winter Hollow! Not great but even middling quality Scooby Doo is good enough for me.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1948)

Made by Max Fleischer  for Montgomery Ward and an early staple of holiday season TV this short has been relegated to bargain bin public domain collections and low-quality YouTube copies for a while now. Still, it’s one of the best early Christmas cartoons a and a good remastered copy of the original, pre popular song, version is a delight to behold.

Gumby -   "Sad King Ott's Daughter"   "Santa-Witch"  "Scrooge Loose" (1960)

"Sad King Ott's Daughter" A dopey prince sets off to find a partridge in a pear tree to give his love but ends up with a pigeon in a plum tree.An elf saves the day.

"Santa-Witch" Pokey calls in his friend the witch to drive Santa’s sleigh when jolly fatso gets sick.

“Scrooge Loose” opens with Scrooge trying to kill Gumby and Pokey with a bulldozer before heading off to get Santa. I kid you not. Gumby and Pokey, as Sherlock Holes and Watson, go after him. There’s also a, possibly, unintentional dick joke. Merry Christmas!

The Christmas Elves (1995)

Some effort must have gone into this but it’s still pretty bad.

Magic Gift of the Snowman (1995)

Another stinker.

Brer Rabbits Christmas Carol (1992)

The cavalcade of crappy Christmas cartoon continues.

Scoot & Kassie's Christmas Adventure (2013)

Below mediocre family drama with kids a dog and the late Luke Perry.

An Irish Christmas : A Musical Celebration (1988)

A lovely collection of carols and brief spoken word pieces from Dublin in the year of its millennium.

ITV’s A Christmas Cracker (2014)

All star Christmas variety show hosted by Bradley Walsh. Highlights include, Katherine Jenkins attempting to sing  a duet with Kermit the Frog, Aled Jones revisiting his big hit, a very surprising quiz question and a performance by the cast of the musical “White Christmas”

Lowlights include pop band The Vamps and some unnecessarily obnoxious standup

Capital Floyd Christmas / New Years (2000)

Solid instructional cooking programs from one of my favorite Brit-chefs.

Great British Christmas Menu  (2020)

Surprisingly dull, poorly edited, and lackluster competition series that sees previous Great British Menu competitors try to outdo each other preparing dishes to be served at a banquet for Covid heroes. I often criticize Food Network here in the States, while championing British cookery shows, but FN has done a much better job, production-wise, with their Covid era competitions. I gave up on this one.

Christmas TV 1980 Part 2 (Dec 10 - 16)

 

Christmas TV 1980 Part 2 (Dec 10 - 16)

December 10

Merry Christmas with Love Julie

Julie Andrews is joined by Jimmy Stewart, Rich Little, Joel Grey, Steve Lawrence and others in this renamed rerun of a 1972 episode of her  variety series.

December 13

For the kids, a couple of reruns - Bugs Bunny's Loony Christmas Tales, and Twas the Night Before Christmas. 

For the grownups Mel Torme hosted The Christmas Songs from a year earlier and the premier of Perry Como's Christmas in the Holy Land with special guest Richard Chamberlain.

December 14

A trio of repeats started off the evening...

The spirit of Julie Andrews past returned with a 1973 Christmas rerun

Another rerun, this time from Disney's Wonderful World competed for kids attention with Rudolph's Shiny New Year.

Dance Fever had it's first annual Christmas Show

December 14

Deepening which reality you resided in there may have been a repeat of The Berenstain Bears Christmas Tree special.

The Little Rascals also got a rerun in that reality.

Luckily every iteration of existence had a repeat airing of Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas

Next up you had a choice of sitcoms or variety

M*A*S*H* and House Calls versus The Osmond Family Christmas (with special guests Greg 'BJ and the Bear' Evigan and Doug Henning) and Highlights of the Ice Follies and Holidays on Ice.

December

Running throughout the month HBS had Christmas on Ice, of which I can find nothing online

The, at the time, seemingly eternal Bob Hope hosted yet another Christmas special (24 and counting), this one featuring Larry Gatlin, Loretta Swit and Loni Anderson.

This was followed by another all time variety great Dean Martin and his guests Beverly Sills, Erik Estrada and Andy Gibb.

Happy Days - White Christmas

Tonight's Laverne and Shirley sounds like it could have made a pretty good Christmas episode - the girls get jobs working at the gift wrap counter of a department store ad Laverne gets sloshed on boozy chocolates. Alas there was nothing particularly holiday-ish about it.

So, instead we turn to another beloved couple for our festive TV fix - Hart to Hart's "'Tis the Season to be Murdered"

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Do you hear? Quick Christmas music notes with Granville Elementary School, Sammy Kaye, Mario Lanza, Mel Tormé, Ronnie Aldrich and more...

 

A quick note on the album of Chinese Christmas Songs I mentioned in an earlier post. By sheer happenstance the original ripper / sharer, Lee at Music You (Probably) Won’t Hear Anyplace Else, has re-ripped and re-shared it. 

Bobby Vinton - Songs of Christmas 

I’m a Bobby Vinton fan but this collection isn’t doing it for me this year.

Christmas with Ronnie Aldrich

Pretty nice piano-driven easy listening album.

A Jazz Christmas: Hot Jazz for a Cold Night

Solid compilation featuring Dave Brubeck, Stanley Turrentine, Benny Carter, and many more. Good stuff.

Johnny Cunningham and Susan McKeown - A Winter Talisman

A Celtic holiday “program” featuring words and music of the season. A really enjoyable listen.

Jackie Evancho - O Holy Night

4 track EP from classical crossover vocal prodigy who gained national fame from her appearance on America’s Got Talent, championed by legendary executive/ producer/songwriter/performer David Foster.

It’s good for what it is.

Mel Tormé - Christmas Songs

Despite beginning his career more than 60 years earlier, It took until 1992 for Mel Torme to release a Christmas album, which is a shame. I’m extra fond of this collection though since I had the pleasure of seeing him live a handful of times in the years surrounding its release (Though I don’t think he played any Christmas songs during those sets).

The Barolk Folk - Come Let Us Be Merry

Exceedingly pleasant collection of period flavored Christmas tunes from the UK and France. I’m going show great restraint now and not make a painful Hammered Dulcimer joke here.

Simply the Best Christmas Album

Surprisingly good turn of the century classical compilation from Warner Classics. Most collections labeling themselves “the best” are flat-out lying but this is pretty much the real deal. A very impressive collection indeed.

Christmas with Mario Lanza

Not a huge Lanza fan but very nice, in small doses.

Noel (2005)

Compilation on VIA Records featuring a few names familiar to me like Brent Bourgeois,  Carolyn Arends and Buddy Miller & Julie Miller. Some nice rock/folk rock tunes here.

Anton Gregorio - Reflections on Christmas

Pan flute. Nah.

Christmas Treasures Beautiful Sounds of the Panflute and the Regency Orchestra

More, just slightly less awful, pan flute

Christmas Day with Sammy Kaye

Lovely old fashioned Christmas LP

Lump of Coal (1991)

Very mediocre Aussie alt-rock  compilation Things aren't going well when a Crash Test Dummies song is the highlight of the album.

Christmas with Don Ho

Actually not an album but a rather unnecessary single (and bside)

Bobby Hachey - Noel Christmas

French Canadian country Christmas album. Has its charms but not something I’m likely to want to listen to again.

Granville Elementary School 1961 Christmas Program

A wonderful time capsule to a more innocent time. My old school produced albums like this all the way up until 1979. I don’t have any of my own alma maters LPs anymore so neat shares like this will have to suffice to light that nostalgic fire.

College of Emporia Chorale and The Toppers - Did Mary Know…

Graduating directly from Elementary school to Collège we have this collection of seasonal songs from The College of Emporia. It’s a decent representation of the genre, though it doesn’t carry the same nostalgic heft of Granville’s entry.

Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

I was never a big Sesame Street kid but this is a cute album (and special that it's based on) that my kids always liked back in the day.

Christmas TV Yule-Logged with It's a Wonderful Life, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Worzel Gummidge and more....

Just me logging the Christmas stuff I watch as I watch it.... 

American Movies and TV

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

A classic that really puts you through the wringer. I can’t watch it every year, or in front of other family members - let alone strangers.

The Captain and the Kids - The Captain's Christmas (1938)

Decent vintage cartoon.

The Christmas Carol 1949

Bare budget ultra condensed version notable mostly for Vincent Price’s wonderful turn as narrator and a woefully miscast Scrooge.

A Christmas Cartoon (1942)

A Castle Films release of an earlier cartoon (Toyland) bookended with a live-action family who watch the cartoon on dad’s home movie setup.

British TV

Brainiac Test Tube Baby Christmas Special (2006)

Frenetic over the top extreeeeeme science show. I gave up.

Never Mind the Buzzcocks Xmas

I’ve long had a soft spot for NMtB ever since an old friend in the UK started sending me off the air VHS recordings. That said an edgy snark fest doesn’t necessarily make a heartwarming holiday experience.

Season 9

This not particularly festive episode welcomes guests Belinda Carlisle, Johnny Vegas and former Marillion frontman Fish. Team captains are Phil Jupitus and the late Sean Hughes (of one of my favorite Britcoms Sean’s Show).

Season 15

Noddy Holder, Bad Manners and The Wurzels are among the guests so it isn’t a total loss and there’s actually some Christmas content.

Season 17

Aled Jones is the only guest of note. Better than the first, not nearly as much fun as the second.

Quite a bit of politically incorrect humor coming from these generally very hard left comedians. Times have changed. My college-age son can’t believe the things coming out of the television as I watch these programs from the stone age of the nineties and early oughties.

Carols From Kings (2006)

A far cry from Never Mind the Buzzcock’s, but these days only marginally less politically incorrect. People gathered together in a Church, singing religious songs with no masks, social distancing, or unwelcome political commentary. 

These are obviously fairly similar every year, it’s part of what makes them an enduring tradition. The sound quality, video resolution, and hairstyles may change but the music and the message stay fairly consistent. 

Simply lovely.

Rainbow - Indoor Plants 1972

A, just, post Xmas installment of brit kids show Rainbow. Still, fairly festive in bits.

A Cup O’ Tea and a Slice O’ Cake 

A Worzel Gummidge Christmas special. Delightful! It’s a shame Worzel Gummidge never gained popularity in the States.