The best holiday special of all time… brought to you by General Electric

You may not be aware that one of the best holiday specials of all time, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, is entering its 50th year of broadcast.  That’s fine.  You may also not be aware that the Christmas special was actually part of an anthology show called the General Electric Fantasy Hour – or that the characters in the Rankin-Bass production actually did commercials for General Electric, commercials that were interspersed throughout the show.

Well, thanks to YouTube, you can see these rare and classic commercials.

Just take a look here.

Yep, some of Santa’s Elves are promoting such wonderful products as toasters, hair dryers, vacuum cleaners and a combination can opener / knife sharpener. That’s because the Christmas special was sponsored by GE’s housewares division.

In this clip, you can see what was, in 1964, the original ending credits to the special. Notice that Santa’s elves are tossing packages off of Santa’s sleigh, with the packages containing the names of the people involved with the production of the Christmas special.

Something else from the original 1964 Christmas broadcast. Do you recall that in the show, there was a prospector named Yukon Cornelius, and that in the early part of the show he was digging his pickaxe in the snow, pulling it out of the snow and then licking the pickaxe tip? What did it mean? Well, in the original broadcast, we got to see what Yukon Cornelius was actually hunting for with the pickaxe, and why it was so important that he taste his pickaxe tip every time.  You need to fast-forward to 8:00 on this clip, but it’s worth it.

Yep. The man’s hunting for a peppermint mine.

I don’t know if you recall this scene from the TV special, it’s a short song called “We Are Santa’s Elves.” Over time, this song has been trimmed out of the broadcast, due to time constraints and the need to add more commercials.

After the original 1964 broadcast, the show underwent some other edits. This song, “Fame and Fortune,” was added to the TV special, and it remained part of the show until it was edited out in 1999.

One other edit to the holiday special resolved what was, at the time, a very concerning issue. See, in the original 1964 broadcast, Rudolph and his friends come across the Island of Misfit Toys.

There’s a musical number, and then Rudolph and his friends continue on their journey – and we never see the Island of Misfit Toys again in the program. That’s the 1964 broadcast clip that I embedded earlier.

Thousands of people wrote to NBC, asking why Santa Claus had forgotten the residents of the Island of Misfit Toys. So the ending to Rudolph was changed, and this scene was added – along with a change to the end credits.

Hope you enjoyed this overview of one of the season’s most beloved programs.

Oh wait… remember when I said that General Electric originally sponsored the show?

Well, look who the Island of Misfit Toys recently did a commercial for.

Hope you have the start of a great holiday season. Me, I’m going to find that clip of A Charlie Brown Christmas with the Coca-Cola advertisement in it.