Welcome to Dino Drac’s 25 Days of Christmas! From now through December 25th, I’ll be posting a little something, every single day. Remember to check back, because I won’t be plugging this often!

12/10: Christmas Snow Punch! (1988)

I was pleased as punch to discover this ad in the back of one of my many old holiday magazines, instructing us on how to make “Christmas Snow Punch.”

It’s a mix of Sprite, vanilla ice cream, and Hi-C Hula Punch — a long-discontinued flavor that was basically Hi-C’s version of Hawaiian Punch. The ad hints that Minute Maid Fruit Punch would work just as well, and since that’s still in supermarkets, you can use it as a stand-in if you’re dying to try this.

Actually, the recipe was already a bit of an antique by 1988. These punches involving ice cream (or sometimes sherbet) are all over my even older cookbooks from the ’60s, when no amount of sugar was too much sugar. I’ve made a few in the past, and the results aren’t as milky as you might expect.

Course, I’m mostly showing you this because the image of Hi-C Hula Punch surrounded by holiday party supplies begged to be shared!

12/9: Holiday Junk Food Spread! (1988)

I pulled this page from one of my many old holiday magazines, and I just had to share it with you. What a spread!

As a kid, I was always the one pushing for there to be some “regular” junk food at Christmas. It wasn’t the norm in my very Italian family, where giant antipasto platters and breadsticks were (and remain) the standard. At best, there’d be a can of mixed nuts out.

Since my family went all-in on Christmas Eve, I frequently spent Christmas Day at my old best friend’s house. He lived right across the street, and his family’s ideas about appetizers were a lot closer to what you see in that photo. Like a grade school birthday party, with better china. I adored it!

12/8: Silent Night, Deadly Night 5! (1991)

You’re looking at an old rental copy of Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, which believe it or not is kind of a cult favorite. Some people like it for Mickey Rooney’s unlikely casting… others like it because if you look really close, you’ll spot some Pee-wee’s Playhouse action figures hiding in the background of a few shots.

Man, I know 39 cents was worth more in the ’90s, but this was still a dirt cheap rental. I used to love it when video stores ran specials like that. It’s how I ended up seeing so many goofy movies. Course, today, you don’t even need to invest that much. Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 streams for free on Tubi. If you’re looking to end your weekend with a dash of holiday horror, you could do a lot worse!

12/7: Hershey’s Holiday Chocolates! (1980s)

As a kid, bowlfuls of Hershey’s candies in holiday wrappers were a big part of my Christmas season. I don’t recall my parents having any particular affinity for Hershey’s Kisses or those tiny-sized chocolate bars, but during December, they bought them by the wheelbarrow.

The bowls were dotted across the house, upstairs and downstairs. In the weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, they were almost purely for decorative use. I was allowed to take some candy here and there, but it was really meant for company, and especially meant for our big party on Christmas Eve.

If I pushed my luck too far, my mother would notice, and for a woman who wasn’t much of a disciplinarian, this was one area where you didn’t want to mess with her. (It would’ve been even worse if she knew that I mainly wanted the candy so I could give cool foil capes to my action figures.)

Now, it made sense to put bowls of candy on the dining room table, and the coffee table in our living room. But I swear, these things were everywhere. You’d go downstairs, to what was theoretically our second living room but in practice was more just a place to store random shit, and there you’d find even more bowls of Hershey’s candy, tucked onto forgotten bookshelves.

Course, our Christmas Eve parties were huge, and it wasn’t uncommon for guests to spread all through the house. At one point or another, everyone sought refuge from being trapped next to dozens of screaming people. Come Christmas morning, all of those candy bowls, no matter how oddly-placed, would be almost empty, with rolled-up foil wrappers next to them.

If I was lucky, I’d find a few spare Krackels. They were my favorite.

12/6: Slimer Does Christmas! (1980s)

During Dino Drac’s Halloween coverage, I showed off one of my greatest acquisitions – this gorgeous Hi-C / Slimer store display from the late ‘80s.

It actually predates Ecto Cooler, and the pairing made more sense than it seems, since both Hi-C and Ghostbusters were at that point still under the same corporate umbrella.

Anyway, the reason I’m showing it to you again is because that display was shipped to stores with various hats for Slimer to wear on different holidays. Last month I had him dressed for Thanksgiving, and now, he’s ready for Christmas!

Yes, that big cardboard Santa hat is an official part of this display, albeit a removable piece that slips on and off. Slimer will rock the red for the rest of the December, and then it’ll be onto the next hat.

I gotta say… I’m so glad I bought this thing. It was way outside my usual comfort zone, price-wise, but with all of these zany hats, it’s “the gift that keeps on givin’, the whole year.”

12/5: 26-Year-Old Holiday Sauce?

For the holiday season in 1998, McDonald’s included Apple Cinnamon Dipping Sauce with every pack of McNuggets. I happen to own what’s likely the last remaining tub of that short-lived sauce, which is remembered fondly by all who tried it.

While I didn’t partake back in 1998, I’ve used a similar dipping sauce for a modern taste test, and the results were stellar. Sugary sauces complement McNuggets well, which probably explains how chicken-and-waffles came to be so popular.

The whole campaign was a bit odd, because while the sauce was absolutely presented as a “holiday thing,” it was also tied to McDonald’s promotion for A Bug’s Life. I don’t necessarily want to think about ants and grasshoppers while eating McNuggets, but for the sake of an exclusive Christmas sauce, I’ll put up with it.

12/4: A Very Brady Christmas! (1988)

A Very Brady Christmas premiered on CBS in December of 1988, and brother, I was there. Lots of people were. It was a pretty big deal!

While The Brady Bunch was long out of production even before I was born, I still grew up with it, thanks to the endless syndicated reruns. Everyone my age did, but it was never something we talked about. The show had no schoolyard clout. We didn’t go around quoting it, and nobody my age went to class desperate to bring up Greg or Marcia.

Still, it was always there, so when word came out about A Very Brady Christmas, I was very curious to see how the show’s dynamic would work with the kids all grown up, and Mike and Carol firmly in their Grandparent Era.

As it turned out… still pretty good! It’s admittedly been a long while since my last viewing, but I thought A Very Brady Christmas did a nice job of working in that wholesome cheese without overdoing it. It was a pleasant coda for the original cast, or at least, it would’ve been had they not pushed their luck with The Bradys, a weekly series that was way too serious for that particular family.

I remember watching the movie on my rinky-dink bedroom TV, housed in one of those cheap particle board wall units, which I’d lined with tree garland and whatever other decorations I could pilfer from the family stock. (Mom’s red cardinals with the wires poking out of their feet were never safe from me.)

12/3: Merry Treat! (1989)

Meet Merry Treat, from the vintage My Little Pony collection. Hasbro officially christened her a “Christmas Pony,” which was a bit of a formality given her red-and-green mane and that giant Santa Claus tattoo on her ass.

While horsing around on the My Little Pony Wiki, I discovered that it was Merry Treat who remembered to leave milk and cookies out for Santa, thereby saving the other ponies from a terrible breach in holiday etiquette.

I admit that I don’t know much about the My Little Pony universe. I don’t know any of the other characters’ names, let alone their abilities or aspirations. Still, I’m convinced that even if I learned everything, Merry Treat would still be my favorite. She rules.

12/2: Christmas Evil! (1980)

I know it’s come up on the podcast once or twice, but I don’t think I’ve otherwise mentioned Christmas Evil on the site.

Released in 1980, it’s often billed as a slasher film, but I think it’s more of a psychological thriller. Christmas Evil is the story of a disturbed man who comes to believe that he’s the real Santa Claus – albeit one with a murderous streak, who isn’t afraid to strike the naughty down with a freakin’ pickaxe.

Brandon Maggart plays Harry, the would-be Santa, and is really impressive in the role. Harry is such a loser that you can’t help but feel some sympathy for him, even after he finally cracks.

I was introduced to Christmas Evil back in high school. It was one of those movies that made the rounds among the freaks, who couldn’t get over the film’s memorable bookends. (It starts with a flashback revealing that Harry’s Christmas-related trauma stems from seeing “Santa Claus” – his dad in a suit – sexin’ up his mother. And it ends with… well, I don’t want to spoil that part, but it’ll leave you with a few questions!)

Absolutely worth seeing, and it’s easy enough to find if you dig around.

12/1: Children’s Palace Circular! (1989)

Children’s Palace was a chain of castle-themed toy stores that only barely survived the ‘80s. Much like my old hamster, it died in 1992. (Pour one out for Children’s Palace, and another for Cyrano Magnus Maximillion.)

This old Christmas circular might seem like everyday nostalgia bait, but I have a specific reason for mentioning it. On the upper left, you’ll notice the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Footcruiser, a flying car that was meant for the bad guys. (It was a bit of a faux pas for Children’s Palace to put Mikey behind the driver’s seat, but in their defense, that old Shredder figure was a bitch to pose.)

I actually received the Footcruiser for Christmas, a year after this circular was, uh, circulated. At my family’s big Christmas Eve party in 1990, it wasn’t long before me and my cousin found ourselves downstairs, gleefully plucking our gifts out from the giant piles, while the adults devoured crab legs upstairs.

She was younger than me and we rarely got along, but with Christmas came camaraderie. We were the only kids at the party, and this whole inspecting-our-gifts-before-midnight thing had become an annual tradition for us.

Looking back, we could’ve gotten away with opening them early. When the clock struck midnight, it was always total chaos down there. Nobody would’ve noticed. Still, we abided by the unspoken rules, and would only let ourselves shake the wrapped boxes, desperate for hints.

What would turn out to be the Footcruiser – which, ironically, was a gift from that same cousin’s parents – was wrapped in paper that was kinda/sorta semi-translucent. Held to the light, I was at least able to make out a Ninja Turtles logo.

I spent hours agonizing over what might be inside, and when the clock finally struck midnight, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to see the Footcruiser.

See, I’d convinced myself that the gift was actually Killer Bee, one of the TMNT “Mega Mutants,” which I’d been openly begging for. Besides, the Footcruiser was pretty old news by 1990. Anything tied to the Ninja Turtles was a win, but in the immediate aftermath, the car didn’t seem like such a great payoff to six straight hours of Gift Inspecting.

Oh, how wrong I was. When I opened the box an hour or so later, sacrificing sleep for toys, I immediately fell in love. The Footcruiser RULED. I’d still probably rank it as my favorite vehicle from the entire vintage TMNT collection. It was like the Mad Max version of the flying DeLorean, but somehow from the 1960s.

I spent much of the subsequent winter break making that thing fly around my bedroom, complete with whistling sounds provided by yours truly. As I recall, Scumbug was its most frequent driver. Or pilot, I guess? Either way, thanks for the memory jolt, Children’s Palace.

Posted by Matt on 12/01/24
Permalink | 109 Comments

Well, it’s finally time for The Purple Stuff Podcast’s annual review of an old Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! And we’ve picked a truly stellar example. Let’s head back to 1984!

Yes, it’s the 58th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which aired live on November 22nd, 1984. This year marks that parade’s 40th anniversary, so it was only fitting that we’d spend an hour going completely berserk about it.

This is the oldest parade we’ve covered on the show, and it was a reminder of how much looser the event used to be. They run a tight ship nowadays, but back then, things could get a little wonky – but usually in a good way!

Join me and Jay from Sludge Central as we marvel at everything and everyone from Scooby-Doo to the Care Bears to evil space alien lizard people. Even John Ratzenberger makes the cut!

Click here to listen to this month’s show!

….which you can also find on Apple, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

It’s honestly one of the most jam-packed Macy’s Parades I’ve seen. Even with this jumbo-sized episode, we barely scratched the surface! If you want to see the whole thing, it’s on YouTube in all of its grainy 480p glory. (Well, maybe more like 360p, but it’ll get the job done.)

PS: For those who subscribe to our Patreon, we’re going to be dropping a special bonus episode where we gush about a bunch of the TV commercials that aired during this broadcast. Look for it tomorrow!

Thanks so much to everyone who listens to the show, and especially to those who share it around! This is our seventh annual Macy’s Parade review, and it’s one of our favorite podcast traditions. Here’s to many more! Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

Posted by Matt on 11/25/24
Permalink | 23 Comments

Dino Drac’s November Funpack is here, and actually, if you’re a subscriber, you might already have it! All subscriber boxes have been shipped, because this month’s box is time-sensitive and I wanted to make sure they all got there before the parade!

As is tradition, the November Funpack is all about the holidays. If you’re not a subscriber and you still want this box, I have a *very* limited number of spares that I can offer on an individual basis. They’re $25, and that includes shipping to anywhere in the United States. Jump to the bottom to order, or keep reading to learn about everything in this month’s box! Read More…

Posted by Matt on 11/19/24
Permalink | 10 Comments