This is a great special. But with all the great-ness, there is a lot that I question:
1. Why must Mrs. Claus be so insistient that Santa be fat on Christmas? She says he'll disapoint the children... Why would the children be disapointed with a skinny Santa? Shouldn't they just be more disapointed if he didn't deliver presents? Besides, kids are supposed to be asleep when Santa delivers the presents. Being skinn would be more helpful in getting down the chimney. Another thing, which I can forgive because it wasn't in the original broadcast, is the fact that at the end, Santa doesn't actually go down into the homes. He just has the toys thrown off his sled (hopefully they land safely through the chimney and into the homes).
2. And I wonder how Santa can get so skinny. Does he actually work out throughout the year? Interesting that he can be so fat and yet lose a lot of weight by the Christmas season.
3. Yukon licks his shovel pick a few times. Considering their out in the cold, shouldn't his tongue get stuck to it?
4. When I first saw this, I assumed that the cliff Yukon and the Bumble was bottomless. I assumed that by the bumble supposedly "bouncing" he bounced up from the sides of the cliff.
5. While I can see why most of the toys are misfits, it doesn't seem like that big a deal (maybe kids thought differently back in 1964?). Why would a kid care if a jack-in-the-box was actually a charlie-in-the-box (okay, so I like to judge people by names, but still)? Just don't tell them his name is Charlie. The kids playing with the bird could have him fly by, you know, holding him in the air and playing. Having a water pistol that shoots jelly seems like something that'd appeal to brattier kids like Dennis the Menace and Bart Simpson. In today's day and age, with a lot of weird toys out there (and I also know some people who turn their toys into other things) it seems most of these toys problems don't seem like as big a deal. Hmm, I wonder if toys that don't sell go there.... Realistically not everything sells, whether it's a misfit or not (could explain the doll and the spotted elephant).
6. The toys are alive and move in front of those on the island. I wonder if the toys still move on their own around kids who are supposed to own them.
7. I noticed that most of the boy and girl elves who don't have names or distinctive personalities/roles all look identical, but then there is one tall, skinny elf with glasses who doesn't resemble any other elf and doesn't have a name or anything distinctive about his role. I wonder why they made one generic elf look distinctive. Last year I also started to notice that one of the boy elves looks a bit bigger and fatter than the rest, but otherwise looks idetnical to the average boy elf.
8. Back when I was a kid, I always felt that Yukon Cornelious and the foreman elf were kinda similar, and was always disapointed that they never shared the screen (even when Yukon came to the castle). Do they appear on-screen at the same time in "Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys"?
9. I've noticed that all of the bald elves are seen without their hats at some point (well, tecnically not ALL of them, but since most of them look the same we can assume that all the boy elves are bald), yet the ones who obviously have full heads of hair (Hermey and the girl elves) are never seen hatless (except for the action figures which have removable hats). Additionally, Yukon is never seen without his hat. I wonder if he's bald or if he has hair. As far as I know the action figure doesn't even have a removable hat.
10. The first time I saw this special the entire "We Are Santa's Elves" scene was cut, not just the scenes that had been cut for years (and have once again been cut). I wonder how many years that whole sequence was cut (was it just the one, which is the broadcast we recorded?).
11. Also interesting how in 1998 they restored the full "We Are Santa's Elves" scene and the "We're a Couple of Misfits" song for broadcasts (and the DVD releases), yet in the last few years went back to airing "We Are Santa's Elves" the shorter way and showed the Misfits song over visuals from the replaced "Fame and Fortune" sequence.
