Everything Action Theater: Santa vs The Snowman

Since it’s the holiday season and The Force Awakens is finally here, it seems like the perfect time to highlight the 1997 (the same year as the Special Editions started hitting theaters) Christmas special, Santa vs The Snowman, which has The Empire Strikes Back as one of it’s main nerdy influences.  Directed by Kung Pow’s Steve Oedekerk, the special finds a friendly but lonely snowman losing his beloved clarinet when he’s blindsided by Santa’s sleigh, which he follows to the North Pole.  At Santa’s workshop, he sees a beautiful new clarinet but he’s chased out by security elves.  Maddened by this, and all the love and adoration Santa gets, the Snowman raised an army of minions and launches an assault on the North Pole to take over Christmas, which basically turns into the Battle of Hoth but with hot chocolate pistols instead of blasters.  The voice cast of the specials includes Papa Smurf himself, Jonathan Winters, the great Don LaFontaine narrating, Ben Stein, Marc DeCarlo aka Jimmy Neutron and more.  The special actually hit IMAX theaters in 3D starting in 2002 and it also got released on DVD with old school red & white glasses.  You can check out the whole, non-3D version of the special below.

https://youtu.be/UaWv7JymMTY