For this Time Capsule, I’m taking you back to 1994 to check out TV Guide’s Holiday Viewing Guide. TV Guide used to put these extended articles in their magazines during the holiday season to highlight all of the holiday-themed offerings on television. They’s highlight upcoming movies, specials, and show episodes, along with giving their own thoughts on them. I always used to look forward to seeing this in the TV Guide, as I would use it kind of like a Sears catalog, in so much as I would go through it circling things I wanted to watch. So journey back to 1994 and see what all of the networks were offering viewers for Christmas that year.
(The flipbook below is easy to use. You can click on the expand button to blow it up to full-screen size for maximum enjoyment.)
In this Time Capsule, we’re going back to 1986 to see all of the listings in TV Guide for October 31st…Halloween! It’s a great look at all of the shows and movies that were available to enjoy on Halloween night that year. What do you see in the listings that you would be watching on that night?
This presentation may be the one I’m most excited about in the history of Retro Ramblings. What we’ve got here is a rip of a home-recorded VHS tape that features probably the two greatest Halloween cartoons of all time. It was recorded in 1985 and features the debut airing of Garfield’s Halloween Adventure. Not only that, but it has It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown right behind it. And if that wasn’t enough, it still has all of the original 1985 commercials intact as well. Everything is complete as presented by CBS as a special presentation that week in 1985! So settle in for this one and try to remember what it felt like all those years ago to view this magical night of television.
One of the things I miss most about the past is just how much info used to come packed in an issue of TV Guide. In the ’90s, that thing became quite a thick publication that was filled with the nightly TV grids so you’d know what was on TV when, and cool ads for various shows and movies each night.
But as good as normal issues of TV Guide were, their best issue of the year was always their fall preview issues where they’d run down all of the new series debuting on network television that fall. Every year was sure to bring hits and misses, and going back through those old issues now is a real trip back in time.
With that in mind, I present this Time Capsule and all of the fall preview pages for the fall of 1984. There were some epic shows that debuted in 1984, plus a few not so epic ones too. Give the pages a look and remember what it was like flipping through a TV Guide fall preview back then.
TBS was one of my favorite TV channels in the late ’80s and the early ’90s, so I like to go back in time and talk about the things that made me love it so much. I’ve even given this stuff its own category…TBS Time Machine!
Am I the only one who fondly remembers TBS back in the days before it was a self-branded comedy channel? The days before the two-hour binge blocks of semi-modern sitcoms dominated their time slots?
The good old days of TBS were filled with off-beat movies from the expansive Turner library, and the programmers behind the channel used to come up with any and all reasons to group movies together and put them on the air. Like this special day of programming for Christmas in 1992. All it took was a little alliteration combining the words “Christmas” and “Creatures” and they had a theme. Then, they just had to search their library for movies that fit that theme.
The movies featured on Christmas Day 1992 were At the Earth’s Core, The Last Dinosaur, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Three movies that probably haven’t been shown on television since. But that was the beauty of TBS back then. Where else would something like The Beastmaster get played at least once a month, and get promoted in bumpers as a “can’t miss” event?
If I could go back in time to 1992, my TV would certainly be tuned to TBS at 10:05 eastern, and that’s where the dial would have stayed until the end of the marathon. I actually looked into making this come to life this year for Christmas by purchasing the three movies, but I had two problems with that. One, I would have had to put out a little more money than I wanted to recreate this, and two, I realized that part of the magic would be missing, as my marathon wouldn’t be filled with those glorious old TBS bumpers for other movies coming throughout the week and would have felt flat as a result.
It wasn’t necessarily the movies themselves that made it special, it was the whole package. And that’s why I lament the loss of the old TBS.
In today’s Retro Ramblings, I’m supplying you with a full-length Christmas movie to watch. It’s a made-for-TV Christmas movie from 1987. And it stars Bo and Luke Duke (well, the actors anyway) driving a big rig full of presents to Alaska. Can you think of any Christmas movie that sounds cooler than this? Well, with the exception of Rocky IV.
Somehow I went almost all of my life without knowledge of this movie’s existence. Then a couple of years ago I was browsing through a TV Guide from 1987 and saw an ad for it. That ad stopped me in my tracks. I immediately went on a hunt for the movie. IT wasn’t on YouTube or any streaming service, and I couldn’t even rent it from Amazon. So I turned to some pirate services and I found it. They say the best things in life are worth waiting for, and in this case, they may be right. I thoroughly enjoyed it when I finally got to watch it.
Here is the synopsis from Google:
Two feuding brothers and one’s teenage son spend four days in an 18-wheeler taking toys from California all the way to Alaska, facing blizzards and their own complicated history together.
Looking at the time this came out, it seems logical that this was the first project that either John Schneider or Tom Wopat worked on after wrapping up their hit TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. And it caught both of them at a great time. The dynamic of their characters in this is unique. While Tom Wopat’s character seems very much in line with his Luke Duke character, John Schneider’s character is a 180 degree flip from Bo Duke…at least at the beginning of the film. But that just adds to the allure of this movie. It may seem cheesy at times, but at the end of the day, I was certainly glad I discovered it and it has worked its way into my Christmas movie rotation. Not quite on a yearly basis yet, but every other year.
I thought I would share this with you this year in case you’ve never heard of it, or have heard of it but didn’t know how available it was now. So when you have some time on your hands this holiday season, give it a watch.
TBS was one of my favorite TV channels in the late ’80s and the early ’90s, so I like to go back in time and talk about the things that made me love it so much.
A Christmas Story hasn’t always aired as a 24-hour marathon on Christmas on TBS. That tradition didn’t begin until 1997. Before that though, TBS did show the movie at various times throughout the holiday season. The ad pictured above is from 1992 and was from the time that TBS was running the TBS Award Theater movie most days at 10:35 am. The criteria for the award feature was pretty simple I think, in that as long as a movie had won any kind of award, that was all the excuse they needed to run a movie in that block. Â
This ad in particular is one I come across advertising a TBS Award Theater showing of A Christmas Story from an issue of TV Guide from the week of Christmas in December of 1992. I can’t remember the date of the showing though, because I didn’t think to write it down or keep up with it, but it was almost certainly on a weekday. Being out of school on Christmas break that week every year means that I may have very well watched this exact airing in 1992.
The as is a good one as it features Ralphie in his cowboy get up from his dream sequence of ridding the neighborhood of Black Bart and his gang with his trusty Red Ryder B.B. Gun. While I’m a huge fan of the thought of this movie airing in its now traditional 24-hour marathon on Christmas Eve, I also like the idea of it being destination viewing on random days in the month of December.
Am I alone in missing the good old days of TV Guide? Not only for the listings that helped you know what to watch when but for the ads for new episodes or specials peppered throughout its pages. With that kind of thought in mind, in this edition of Retro Ramblings, I’d like to present a collection of old ads TV Guide featured for Christmas specials from through the years. I’m even going to limit my commentary and just let you enjoy all the nostalgic goodness. Here we go!
For this edition of Retro Ramblings, we’re gonna talk about what I refer to as the greatest holiday special of all time. You know, the one with the talking mice, ducks, and crickets. I’m talking about Mickey’s Christmas Carol, and the special place it holds in my memories.
Mickey’s Christmas Carol debuted on December 10, 1984, as a prime-time special on NBC. Maybe I actually watched it that year, but I can’t really say. I do know that if that wasn’t my first viewing, then it would have been the 1985 showing or 1986 at the latest. Checking the Google machine, I see that day was a Monday. I kind of distinctly remember watching it on a Sunday night. But maybe that’s just the eggnog talking.
None of those facts are really important to the story though. Let’s just all agree that I watched this near its infancy, and have watched it most years since then. It may be the oldest Christmas tradition I have. I’d have to think about that actually to confirm.
But let’s get into the meat and potatoes of why I love this special so darn much. The short answer is nostalgia. I have vivid and colorful memories of my whole family sitting down to watch this together. Most likely because I would have been in the 6-8-year-old range when I first saw it, so I’d say I was vocal about wanting to see it.
That nostalgia encompasses more than just the special though. It’s the whole experience. A fire going in the fireplace in the living room…me in my pajamas…my Dad cracking pecans and walnuts for us to snack on, followed by those Andes Toffee Thins that only come out at Christmas…maybe some snow falling outside…and Christmas themed commercials. All of it together is why I love Mickey’s Christmas Carol so much.
Besides all the warm fuzzy feelings I associate with it, the actual special itself is stupendous. And I’m talking about the entire special, not just the actual Mickey’s Christmas Carol feature. You’ve got to see the whole thing and breathe it all in. Donald’s Snow Fight, Pluto’s Christmas Tree, The Art of Skiing, and Mickey’s Christmas Carol. In later years, Disney and/or the networks would bastardize it by removing Goofy’s skiing feature and replacing it with looks at whatever new movie they had in the works. That was a horrible decision in my opinion. Give me Goofy falling off the ski lift any day over behind-the-scenes photos from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
To me, they were all heartwarming tales. Donald and his nephews waging all-out war in their snowball fight, Chip & Dale causing havoc with Pluto by hiding in the Christmas tree, Goofy being his silly self on the ski slopes, and then the main event of Disney’s re-telling of the quintessential Christmas fictional classic.
I’ll give you the fact that the extremely shortened version of A Christmas Carol left out a lot of parts, but damn, the art and the rich colors kinda make you forget those details. And at the end when Scrooge finds the Christmas spirit and is bouncing all around town…it just gets me right in the feels.
And I mentioned earlier the commercials…so much Christmas goodness just oozes from those commercials. They came across as necessary additions to the whole thing. Especially that McDonald’s one with the kid who gets left behind while everyone else is skating on the pond. A night of watching Mickey’s Christmas Carol just isn’t complete if that commercial isn’t in there somewhere.
So I put Mickey’s Christmas Carol right at the top of my list when it comes to Christmas viewing. Hell, I put it in my top ten of all-time things I’ve ever watched on TV. And I saw the twin referee angle in the Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant match. That shit was crazy at the time. This is above THAT!
Unfortunately, you’ll no longer find a version of the entire thing like it was originally presented. And it’s usually the Art of Skiing skit that continues to get dropped every time a new release drops. I was really hoping that Disney+ would somehow piece the whole original concept together and air it, but no luck so far. Actually, I can’t even find Donald’s Snow Fight on the service yet either.
But if you look around the ‘net enough, you’ll find all the pieces and can watch it kind of how it was originally intended. Hell, you can even find that McDonald’s commercial to throw in there too.
And for you trivia buffs out there, check out this little tidbit: Mickey’s Christmas Carol was adapted as a daily comic strip and ran daily in November and December leading up to the special. If you look below, you can check out the first part of it. Enjoy!
What a year it was for new Christmas specials! 1987 saw the debut of the much loved Garfield Christmas Special, AND the less heralded, but just as awesome, Claymation Christmas Celebration.
These two specials debuted on December 21st 1987. Compared to today, it’s really unique that they waited until that close to Christmas to air them. Like this year, the annual showings of Rudolph and Frosty were in November. I’m not a fan of that. Christmas specials shouldn’t start airing until late in the first week of December at the earliest. Unless we’re talking about the 25 Days of Christmas on Freeform. I love that shit.
I distinctly remember watching these debuting specials on that night. I was really into The California Raisins at the time, and always being a fan of the Garfield comic strips, this was appointment television for me. I even distinctly remember recording both shows on VHS. If I only still had that tape. Sigh.
This is a great example of what I miss about the old days of television…anticipation. With the modern world of streaming, it doesn’t quite feel the same. Seeing an ad like this in TV Guide, and keeping it on your brain until the day it aired is an art lost on children of today. And with so many fewer options back then, stuff like this was widely viewed by the public in general. That meant that you and your friends at school would get giddy together waiting for the day, and then after it aired you knew it was going to be the topic of conversation before school and at lunchtime. Stuff like this were shared experiences. I’m willing to bet that a whole lot of you reading this can relate stories about seeing this as an example of what I’m talking about.
