Holiday TV Classics
Rhonda loves these 1960’s Christmas TV favorites.
Rhonda and her family traditionally have celebrated these two classic
60s animated holiday children’s movies. And we’ll bet your family
still enjoys them as much as hers!
The first of nearly 50 Peanuts television movies, “A Charlie Brown
Christmas” is the longest-running cartoon special in history, airing
every year since its debut in 1965. Whimsical, melancholy, and
ultimately full of wonder, it is a holiday favorite for countless
families. For Peanuts fans everywhere, it just wouldn’t be Christmas
without this classic holiday delight. Christmas lights may be
twinkling red and green, but Charlie Brown has the Yuletide blues. To
get in the holiday spirit, he takes Lucy’s advice and directs the
Christmas play. And what’s a Christmas play without a Christmas tree?
But everyone makes fun of the short, spindly evergreen Charlie Brown
brings back – until the real meaning of Christmas works its magic once
again.
In mid-1963, nearly 30 years after Montgomery Wards produced an
illustrated storybook, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as a marketing
giveaway to children, the movie version was officially in production.
Over the next 18 months, GE poured the equivalent of more than $4.5
million into the special’s innovative stop-motion animation also as a
marketing tool for homemakers. GE developed four accompanying
commercials featuring characters from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
These ads pushed new products like an electric toaster, an electric
can opener, and an electric blanket, and who could forget Santa riding
a Norelco Triple Header?
A Charlie Brown Christmas