Frosty’s Winter Wonderland

Happy birthday! The Advent Calendar House kicks off a countdown to Christmas in July by setting the table for Rankin/Bass’s eventual epic crossover, starting with “Frosty’s Winter Wonderland,” a snowy sequel from 1976 starring a strange, tall goblin claiming to be Andy Griffith.

On This EpisodeMike Westfall (@fallwestmike), kind of round and plump and built to my spouse’s specifications.Brandon Medley (@brandmed), a preacher I built out of snow so I can legally marry my imaginary friend, and co-host of the Star Weirdos podcast.Topics and TangentsA brief guide to finding obsure things on Disney+, like “Melody Time,” starring Dennis Day, (the voice of Parson Brown) as Johnny Appleseed.Barbara Jo Ewing voiced one of the kids in her only known credit, but somehow IMDb knows her height.We do the math to figure out how far the wind carried a newspaper from Frosty’s hometown to the North Pole.Frosty beat “The Santa Clause 2” to the “gotta get a wife” plot point by more than 2 decades.Frosty’s “specifications” for his ideal woman are the same as Sir Mix-a-Lot’s.The disturbing suggestion that snow people are self-aware before coming to life and are stuck in a comatose state.Jack Frost’s “winter that almost didn’t end” foreshadowed the real-life Blizzard of 1977 by less than 2 weeks.Previous Podcast Episodes MentionedFrosty the Snowman (Season 1, Episode 1)The First Easter Rabbit (Season 1, Bonus)’Twas the Night Before Christmas (Season 2, Episode 3)Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (Season 2, Episode 12)Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Season 3, Episode 12)

“Frosty’s Winter Wonderland” © 1976 Rankin/Bass Productions.

Commercial Break: Freezy Freakies (1984).

The Advent Calendar House is on the web at adventcalendar.house, on Twitter @adventcalhouse, and part of the Christmas Podcast Network.