What ACTUALLY Happened to the Rudolph Puppets? - The Bizarre History Behind the Animagic

What ever happened to the puppets from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?" Well as it turns out, a lot!

MUSIC:

Christmas Cheer by Johnathon M. Horner (Beat Mekanik)
License: CC BY 4.0 Int'l.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

License code: TX3QRXM6CDJ98IJF

License code: VNBEJRFHUGQCZXKM

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Brioux, Bill. “‘Rudolph’ Christmas Special Endures for 50 Years despite Being Made on the Cheap.” Times Colonist, 4 Dec. 2014.

Clements, Jonathan. Anime: A History. Bloomsbury on Behalf of the British Film Institute, 2023.

Du, Daisy Yan. Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation, 1940s-1970s. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2019.

Goldschmidt, Rick. The Making of the Original Rankin/Bass Holiday Classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Miser Bros. Press, 2001.

Mochinaga, Tadahito. アニメーション日中交流記: 持永只仁自伝 (Sino-Japanese Cultural Exchange in Animated Filmmaking: Autobiography of Mochinaga Tadahito). 東方書店 (Toho Shoten), 2006.

Priebe, Ken A. The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation. Course Technology, 2011.

_____Video Contents_____
00:00 - Intro
01:23 - Why I love these dang puppets
03:22 - A baby boy is born
04:39 - The life and times of a wartime animator
07:56 - A return to Japan
08:53 - Rankin/Bass was an Anime studio
10:59 - The production of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
15:48 - So what happened to the puppets?
18:47 - An IMPOSTER!
20:55 - An addendum
21:45 - Conclusion

[SpenserLi]

As a Chinese person that understands the importance of thank you little kitty in Chinese movie history I would never have imagined it had this deep connection to rudolf.

[BallotBoxer]

Shoutout to all the underappreciated and underpaid animators that made this anime holiday classic. Mochinaga's group are stop-motion legends!

[shadowgirl]

18:48 I literally kept thinking "something's off, Santa isn't to scale"

[kennylauderdale_en]

Fantastic video. I especially liked your stop motion style Rig for your channel mascot. Very on theme. Really pulled it together.

[mcthetoonster]

1:58 I wish people would realize that there is a scene where everyone regrets how they treated Rudolph after he returns from his adventure and hears his story WELL BEFORE he proves his nose’s usefulness and become more accommodating of misfits, proving that the message is NOT so problematic.
It’s right there, but people refuse to pay attention to it. It’s honestly pretty frustrating.

[zenfrodo]

Rudolph's roots as a marketing campaign go back further than the special. Before the song, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was a small promotional booklet put out in 1939 by the Montgomery Ward department stores, as a freebie for kids to read (keeping them quiet) as their parents shopped. The Johnny Marks song didn't even come out until 1949, and the Rankin Bass/GE version in 1964.

[salcarreiro]

A few things; that other Santa could have very well also been used in shots where Santa didn't need to speak while another animator was working with the speaking puppet. In my short few years in Stop motion, we would always have multiple copies of the same puppet as things on them broke or just worn out from posing over and over. In 2019 or 2020 I was able to mess with some glasses made for a Santa puppet that was "going into a collection, likely not to been by the public again." wish I took some pics.

[nicholasdunlap]

Of all the things we could’ve guessed would be the topic of this video - I don’t think anyone was expecting “National Treasure but Christmas animation”.

Love the video! Something something engagement metrics.

[hope]

i LOVE your 3D model mascot guy, it’s so cute and i feel like it has so much character, especially because it swivels at the hips and kind of wiggles around. it’s so cute! id love if you kept using it, especially because it seems like it took a lot of time. you did a wonderful job on this video, i loved it!

[princesskristan]

"WHY WEREN'T YOU AT ELF PRACTICE?!" will never not be hilarious

[badgerdax]

It's quite heartbreaking to know that a lot of the things we enjoyed as children often end up the result of unpaid unenjoyed labour manipulated by others for the sake of easy profit

[Mylesdesu]

Wow I had no idea that even stop motion animations that I watched as child was also outsourced... I've been watching Asian crafted content even earlier than I thought :o

[andrewcb]

Great video! I’m glad to see that someone covered the topic of the misconceptions of the puppets and their whereabouts. It’s worth mentioning that Rick Goldschmidt’s books have updates on the puppets as he finds information.

If I recall, more puppets still exist in Japan than one would think, even including the Miser Brothers from Year Without a Santa.

[chloukscolor]

Incredible animation work!! And very interesting subject. I didn’t know about this movie, but I’m glad to finally know what “late for elf practice” meme was all about, aha.

[akganimationstudioproducti]

I don’t care if the ones on display weren’t the ones from the movie
Seeing them at the Center for Puppetry Arts is still one of the BEST moments of my life

[JustTheTeep]

Swamp you're quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite youtubers by the way, I can't believe how consistently you're able to put out high quality well edited content like this and I look forward to when you're a 500k subscriber channel some day and I can say I knew about you before it was cool. Been following since your first delicious in dungeon video, and gonna be around for a long time to come.

[FantaLain]

This is my favourite Christmas movie!! We actually have a bunch of the characters including both the Abominable & Humble Bumble versions. The angry one guards the front door and Humble is helping out in our Christmas village!
Thankyou for sharing this 😊

[Lovehandels]

My mother would have loved watching this! She was a huge Rankin Bass Rudolph fan and she was big into the History channel back when it went over historical events.

[yohannbiimu]

0:20 Actually, "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" was first a children's storybook by Robert L. May, about a decade before it was made into a song, which was used as a marketing campaign by Montgomery Ward in 1939. It was also made into an animated short in 1948, precisely following the book's narrative, and produced and directed by Max Fleischer (legendary animation pioneer) for the Jam Handy Corporation. Although it didn't contain the song (which hadn't been written yet), a 1951 reissue of this short included it. The 1951 reissue can be watched on YouTube.

The song "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" was penned by Johnny Marks (Robert L. May's brother-in-law) released on time for Christmas of 1949, and sung by Gene Autry. It sold 2.5 million copies the first year, eventually selling a total of 25 million, and it remained the second best-selling record of all time until the 1980s.

[pedrosampaio]

Two great things about Dandadan:
1) Dandadan
2) Finding this channel :3