If you’re a fan of my blogs, you know I enjoy obscure Christmas specials from the 1980s. This week I’m reviewing a double gem courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection: The Cabbage Patch Kids’ First Christmas and The Little Troll Prince: A Christmas Parable. I enjoyed both of these in my youth, but how do they measure up to my more sophisticated adult tastes in 2013?

I’ll start by reviewing The Cabbage Patch Kids’ First Christmas. There was a time when it seemed the world just couldn’t get enough of the Cabbage Patch Kids. At the peak of their popularity in the early 1980s, they were a must-have item on just about every little girl’s Christmas wish list. I was born right around that time and my mom has told me stories about her attempts to get me my first Cabbage Patch doll. That quest does not sound like anything I’d wish upon even my worst enemy.

In 1984, television executives decided to capitalize upon the dolls’ popularity by airing a Christmas special. Directed by Charles August Nichols, who was also an animator for Disney’s Pinocchio as well as the co-director of Charlotte’s Web, this Christmas special was available on VHS and is now available on DVD thanks to the Warner Archive Collection. This is another Christmas special I remember having rented with my grandparents who recorded it for me to watch over and over.

The movie begins with Colonel Casey (the stork who delivers Cabbage Patch Kids) coming to help the kids celebrate the birth of a new baby. While decorating for Christmas, the kids listen as their caregiver Xavier Roberts tells stories about what Christmas is like in the “big city.” After he leaves to do something that must undoubtedly be important enough to leave the kids unattended, they decide they want to venture out into the “big city” for themselves to see what the “Christmas spirit” is really all about.

Those loveable, mischievous scamps always seem to get in trouble wherever they go. They seem to forget that Lavendar McDade and her henchmen Cabbage Jack and Beau Weasel are always lurking in the shadows waiting to abduct them and force them to work in her gold mines. They also don’t realize all the dangers the “big city” itself presents – busy holiday traffic, the mess that is snow, politically incorrect Christmas carolers, rude hotel employees and the occasional pickpocket.

They seek solace from a nice, childless husband and wife who are in town for the holidays. When the man drops his wallet, the kids make it their mission to return it to him, but they are thwarted at every twist and turn by a band of pickpockets who are similar to Lavendar and her gang. Actually, I must confess that as a kid, I thought the two groups of bandits were one and the same. I thought maybe they were just cleverly disguised, but upon viewing it for the first time in over 15 years, it turns out it was actually two separate groups of criminals. While attempting to reunite the man with his wallet, the kids also encounter an orphan named Jenny who was left alone in the orphanage for Christmas. What is with this special and unattended children? Were the ‘80s really a friendlier time when “stranger danger” wasn’t as widely thought of and something to be feared?

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