Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town Produced by: Rankin/Bass First Airdate: December 14, 1970 Stars: Fred Astaire (Postman), Mickey Rooney (Santa Claus), Keenan Wynn (Winter Warlock), Paul Frees (Burgermeister Meisterburger) Sequels: The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ To Town (1977), Rudolph & Frosty’s Christmas In July (1979) Videogames: Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town (Wii & DS, 2011) Plot: After a newsreel announces how children all over the world are trying very hard to be good, Santa Claus’s secular origin story is told. Review: I caught part of this on WXYZ ABC-Detroit last night, and then watched the full special on DVD today. Of course this tells a secular origin story of Santa, with only a few mentions of the religious reasons for Christmas. But it reminded me that 2020 is this special’s 50th anniversary! I can’t think of too many other 1970’s or 1960’s era Christmas specials that are still aired 50 years later. In a way, this is kind of the final special of those “Classic” Christmas Specials that ran from 1964 with Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (also by Rankin/Bass), 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966), The Little Drummer Boy (1968) & Frosty The Snowman (1969). I always find it interesting and funny how, at the beginning of the special, when the Postman is reading the children’s letters, which have children’s voices narrating the letters, the second letter always starts with the kid saying “My Turn!”, and I have to wonder if the kids were rowdy in the recording studio that day and in order to get his line in the kid said “My turn” before saying his line and then it was to be edited out later, but for some reason it was left in. It sounds like a blooper, or was it suppose to imply that one of the letters in the Postman’s hand was impatient to be read! Another interesting thing with this special is Jessica’s song (My World Is Beginning To Change). In most post-1995 airings, this song is cut to allow for more commercial time, but it also gets rid of the “flower power” animation that seems to put the song right in the 60’s! The video features the Jessica stop-motion doll on top of green screen, to watch an animated version of her going through life is played in behind. And some of that animation has her head over a background of flowers that seem very 60-ish. Really that’s the only part of the special that really dates it to the end of the hippy 60’s era! I’ve got the special’s 2009 Blu-Ray, and on there you can see the various wires and strings that were being used to move the puppets. Plus you can also make out the back of Grimsley’s clipboard in the No More Toymaker’s To The King song has the word “LOTTE” in it numerous times, belying it’s origins as a candy wrapper. Also, in the 90’s Disney licensed part of this special for the Season 6 Thanksgiving episode of Home Improvement (“The Wood, The Bad and the Hungry”, specifically the toy shop scene) for Tim to fall asleep to and dream the Home Improvement cast and world in a Rankin/Bass stop-Motion style.