Dino Drac’s Countdown to Xmas!
Welcome to Dino Drac’s Countdown to Christmas! This feature will be updated daily (or close to daily) through December 25th, with some kind of holiday-related thingamajig. You never know what might turn up!
This one’s really for the old schoolers who prefer blogs to algorithmic timelines full of ads for dicey hair products. I won’t be plugging it often off-site. If this is up your alley, remember to check back often! (And visit After Dark and the Xmas Jukebox, too!)
11/19: Ewok Adventure Magazine Ad! (1984)
Star Wars is very much a “holiday season” thing for me, for a variety of reasons seeded through the decades.
Some of my favorite childhood Christmas presents came from Kenner’s action figure collection. Then there’s The Empire Strikes Back and its snowy first half, which never feels inappropriate under the glow of string lights. And of course, there’s the fact that every chapter in the sequel trilogy was released in December.
Somewhere on that list is The Ewok Adventure, the made-for-television movie that premiered on ABC on November 25th, 1984. That was three days after Thanksgiving, and though I was just five years old, I absolutely remember watching it that night. (On our modest living room television, which I’d previously half-ruined because nobody told me that you shouldn’t put refrigerator magnets on a TV set.)
To me, The Ewok Adventure felt as big as any of the “real” Star Wars movies. I loved seeing how the Ewoks lived, I loved Burl Ives’s documentary-style narration, and I loved watching everyone fight a kaiju demon pirate. Through adult eyes, I can also admit that it’s very slow, often cheesy, and perhaps best served on a rainy afternoon when you’re trapped on the couch with an incapacitating flu.
Whenever I’m reminded of that film, I picture myself as a kid in the old living room, paging through the Sears Wish Book during the commercial breaks, plowing through a sleeve of Saltines. The tree wasn’t up yet, but it soon would be, and the holiday vibes were most definitely in the air.
11/18: Cranberry-Mayo Candles?! (1960)
I’m obsessed with this Hellman’s magazine ad from 1960, which taught the world how to make cranberry-mayo gelatin molds that doubled as functional candles. Back then, the world marched to a different beat.
The recipe (if we can call something that includes trimmed birthday candles a recipe) seems each enough, but I know what my limits are, and excavating a can-shaped Jell-O mold in one piece is most certainly beyond them. Instead, I’ll just sit, stare and wonder.
As far as actually eating this goes, I’d be torn between my boundless love for cranberries and my borderline-phobia of mayonnaise.
(Admittedly, my thing with mayo never made much sense, because it only has a few ingredients and I have no problem with any of them. Honestly, I think I’ve just seen residual mayo trapped in the corners of too many lips over the years. The experiences scarred me.)
11/18: Grinch Cereal!
This is new-for-2025, and I’m happy for the Grinch, man. Anything that keeps his name circulating during the holidays is okay by me. Do they even show his special on television anymore, or is it another one that got paywalled on some streaming network?
General Mills sent me a sample box a few weeks ago, and if you think that’s the only reason I’m covering it, I’ll have you know that my price for selling out is way higher than cereal. I would’ve bought it anyway.
It feels like a strange sequel to that Great Pumpkin Cereal we got a few years back, which was also green and vanilla-flavored. The new twist is the addition of heart-shaped marshmallows – a wink to the climactic scene where the Grinch enters cardiac arrest (complimentary) while trying to lift 3600 pounds’ worth of Flung-Floopers and Tar-Tinkers. Read More…