Dino Drac’s 25 Days of Christmas!
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!
12/25: A Very Oily Christmas!
Merry Christmas to all! Thanks for reading Dino Drac’s 25 Days of Christmas, an old school, barely-plugged feature for the diehards who remember the halcyon days of blogging. I had fun with this, and I hope it added a little spice to your season!
I’m closing out my holiday in typical fashion: With an oily, congealed tin of leftovers from last night’s party. It might be my favorite part of Christmas. After spending half a day trapped in a tin, the various foods lose their individual properties and merge into some new greasy thing that all tastes the same. I love it, and it wouldn’t be December 25th if I wasn’t being useless on the couch with this tray and the last remnants of the Christmas Story marathon.
There are holiday seasons where you thrive, and there are holiday seasons that you barely survive. For me, this one’s run closer to the latter, but just accomplishing everything that needed accomplishing without completely losing my mind seems like a victory worth celebrating. (And I will, with the aforementioned leftovers, and at least three cans of Canada Dry Fruit Splash.)
I hope you’ve all had a wonderful season. Thanks for spending a bit of it with me. Some of us have been in each other’s orbit for over 20 years now, which is pretty incredible. Here’s to many more! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
12/24: Pepsi / Super Nintendo Display! (1991)
Merry Christmas Eve! Santa dropped by early with this Pepsi / Super Nintendo store display, from 1991. It was rolled super tight and almost impossible to set up for a photo, but after several failed attempts, I grabbed some removable tape and my heart grew three sizes.
So yeah, back in ‘91, Pepsi teamed with Super Nintendo for a pretty large holiday promotion. Aside from sneaking game tip cards into 12-packs of the cans, they also ran a sweepstakes where soda addicts could win a whole dang Super Nintendo.
This was neither the first nor last time Pepsi partnered with Nintendo, but it was the only promotion that gave us the blessed image of Santa Mario riding a reindeer-antlered Yoshi. This large cardboard display is gorgeous, and I look forward to framing it!
12/23: Target Holiday Circular! (1989)
We didn’t have Targets around here until around the turn of the century. When one would turn up in a movie like Career Opportunities, I thought it was just a Hollywood invention to get around partnering with Kmart. But nah, they were out there, selling toys!
This Sunday circular from 1989 packs a lot of nostalgia. Poke around that big pile of board games and you’ll spot a few beauties that never really caught on, like Acrobats and Silly Dillys.
Side note: I was a big fan of getting board games for Christmas. I was rarely inclined to play them immediately, but that was the point. They were like an insurance policy. I’d plow through my “good gifts” and absorb all they had to offer pretty quickly, but knowing that I had a whole board game to open, learn and play meant that I had a little bit of Christmas magic left in reserve.
Course, the star attraction on that cover was the spread of Real Ghostbusters toys. Fitting, since most of the stuff I had from that collection just happened to be gifts from Santa. (Well, Santa and Aunt Jen. She never let me down.)
12/22: Fruity Pebbles Animation Cels! (1987)
If you follow me on social media, you’ve already heard about my big score. I was fortunate enough to purchase several genuine animation cels from the 1980s Fruity Pebbles Christmas commercial!
It’s my all-time favorite Christmas commercial, which I’ve seen hundreds of times, and have been gushing about on the internet for over 20 years. One of the cels randomly popped up on eBay for the ridiculously low price of $35 shipped, and then I cleaned out the seller of three additional cels for the same price. An absolute bargain.
Shown here is the first one I got, and also my favorite. It’s Santa Claus midway through his classic line, “Tis the season to be sharing, Fred!” (I also grabbed two other Santa cels, plus one of Barney right when he lands down the chimney.)
I can’t overstate what these mean to me. It’s so wild to own literal parts of that commercial. As a kid, it was the first official sign of the Christmas season, and as an adult, it’s been a consistent part of my online nostalgia schtick from Day One. It’s just crazy to know that every time I see that commercial from here on out, I can pinpoint exact portions that are now literally five feet away from me, here at home.
12/21: He-Man & She-Ra’s Christmas Special! (1985)
I was just six years old when this baby debuted in prime time, but I remember that night with perfect clarity. My older brother watched it along with me, and he found Skeletor’s surprise face turn so hilarious that we still quote his best lines every Christmas.
While the internet suggests that the special debuted literally on Christmas Day, deeper research – which certainly lines up with my own memories – indicates that it actually premiered a few weeks prior.
The special came out at the height of He-Mania, before retailers realized that they were buying more stock than they could ever hope to sell. The bottom dropped out not long after, but what a glorious time it was, when toy stores were just flooded with Masters of the Universe stuff.
I received plenty of He-Man toys that Christmas, but none better than the Slime Pit — a torture device that let you goop your action figures. It was one of my favorite childhood toys, even if I immediately ruined the slime by bringing it over my friend’s house, which was perpetually blanketed in dog hair.
As for the Christmas special, the whole thing is on YouTube. It’s so much fun, and it remains my favorite episode of the series!
12/20: Atari at Kmart! (1982)
Here’s a Christmassy snippet from a 1982 Kmart newspaper ad, pushing the Atari as one of that year’s hottest gifts. (Fact check: True. The crash wasn’t until ‘83.)
I was born into a family that already had an Atari, so my first gaming experiences were on that system. I rarely had any idea how to play or what the goals were, but the ability to make things move on the television was all the magic I needed.
The game I had the most fun with also happened to be the one I was worst at. I had absolutely no clue what you were supposed to do in Adventure, but still loved the sense of exploration.
I pride myself on remembering every last trivial thing, but this ad still managed to unlock a memory. I’d completely forgotten about Atari’s old “paddle” controllers. I absolutely did not prefer them, but they did work nicely as Imperial boats for my Stormtrooper figures.
PS: That boy on the upper-left? He’s up to no good.
12/19: McD’s OG Holiday Pie! (2000)
The famous Holiday Pie is back at McDonald’s this season, delighting millions across the globe, or maybe just a few dozen hype accounts on Instagram.
I love the way the Holiday Pie looks, I love the way the Holiday Pie smells, and I even love how the Holiday Pie tastes. Unfortunately, I really don’t love the Holiday Pie’s consistency or temperature, which creates the sense that I’m eating a stranger’s sugared sneezes.
They’ve become something I admire from afar, and I’m fine with that.
This year actually marks the Holiday Pie’s 25th anniversary. What most folks have forgotten is that it was originally a Toy Story 2 tie-in. Indeed, the Holiday Pie – then known as the Holiday Custard-Style Pie – debuted in 1999, and was packed in neat Toy Story 2 boxes featuring characters from the film.
If you’re a fan of them, you can thank Woody and Buzz!
