Hey guys! Welcome back to another Christmas review. Today I've got a double feature for you as I talk about Teddy's Winter Adventure, the twelfth entry in the The World of Teddy Ruxpin book and tape series, AND Teddy Ruxpin's Christmas which is the thirty-second installment of that series. I couldn't decide between the two of them which one I wanted to review, so I went with both since Teddy Ruxpin's Christmas is just the Grundo characters singing Christmas songs. So without further ado, let's get into it.
Teddy's Winter Adventure is the only Christmas story produced for the Teddy Ruxpin talking toy that actually has a story to talk about in it. It's also a really good story too. Originally I had planned on talking about the adaptation of the story done for the The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin TV series as well, but I didn't have a chance to watch it last night when I was listening to these stories. So we'll just be focusing on the original book and tape version this time around and who knows, maybe I'll throw in a bonus review of the TV show episode at another time.
I didn't own this book and tape set when I was a kid. I knew of it because of the book listing on the back of the early Teddy Ruxpin books like The Airship, but I didn't have it and I didn't hear it until I got the MP3 files of the entire original series from Crimson Raccoon (his Yahoo! screen name obviously) in 2011. There were no scans of the books to go with the MP3s though, but the Internet Archive has a digitized copy of the book, so I'm taking a look at the artwork so I can talk about it.
The first thing that struck me about this story is that it maintains a pretty good sense of continuity. Because they're meant for children and because not every child who got a Teddy Ruxpin would get all of the book and tape sets, the stories were written so that they could each be their own standalone story for those kids who couldn't get all of them. This story is one of the rare times that a previous story is referenced. In Teddy and the Mudblups, which is the story right before this one, Gimmick had left his wrench in a pot of Grubby's oatmeal, which basically ruined both the wrench and the oatmeal. In this story, Grubby gives Gimmick a brand new wrench as a Winter present and reminds him to not leave it in any oatmeal this time. Which kinda blew me away that they actually had a blatant reference to the story that immediately preceded this one. Usually the callbacks are to things in stories that came out long before the current one and are more general in nature, so as to not confuse the kids who maybe didn't have a particular story. Which brings me to my first (and only) nitpick.
In his narration, Teddy explained that for the Winter season him, Grubby and Gimmick made gifts for each other. Except, it seems like Teddy and Gimmick are the only ones who made their presents. Grubby doesn't have the skills to make the jacket that he gave to Teddy and he DEFINITELY does not have the skills or the equipment needed to make a wrench. So he went out and bought them most likely. It's not a big deal or anything, but it's just something interesting to note.
Even though they call it Winter in the story, we all know that it's actually Christmas. Sure, Teddy, Grubby and Gimmick don't have a Christmas/Winter tree, but they exchanged gifts in the morning, ate hot food, delivered presents to their other friends in Grundo, and then their friends dropped by for a visit to deliver presents to them. Yeah, I'd say that it's Christmas. I guess Ken Forsse, who wrote the story and the lyrics for the songs, wanted to be creative with holidays in the World of Teddy Ruxpin so that they aren't quite like the versions we have in the real world. Phil Baron, the voice of Teddy, would do the same thing later on with Halloween in Autumn Adventure. I say later on, but these stories were probably all written at or around the same time, because the book and tape sets all came out in close proximity to one another.
The artwork in this book is amazing. Apart from Julie Armstrong being absent, this is the same team that did the art for Grundo Springtime Singtime. It's basically the standard house style for these books, which didn't actually come into being until the latter part of the first batch of book and tape sets, and that would be around this one as this is the second to last set in the first batch of 13. While I like the style used in books like The Airship and The Story of the Faded Fobs, I love the style used in this, and most other books.
The songs in this story are pretty good. There's only two of them, "The Snowflakes Are Falling" and "This Gift is For You". They're good ones though. I don't have as much attachment to them as I do the songs in Grundo Springtime Singtime, just because I didn't grow up listening to this story since I didn't have it. But, like I said, they're still pretty good songs.
Teddy Ruxpin's Christmas is just Teddy and the gang singing Christmas songs. That's it. There's not even a wraparound story like there is with Grundo Springtime Singtime. There's also very little dialogue, and what there is, is basically being used as a transition from one song to another. Which is fine. Also, because this book was published in 1986 as one of the later books in the series, the entire script for the story, including the complete song lyrics, is included in the books. Which is cool because then you can sing along to all of the songs, which isn't that hard to do without the lyrics in front of you, but it's more like a sing-along this way.
Speaking of the songs, my favourite one is "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (Grundo Version). I mean I love "The Twelve Days of Christmas" anyway, but adding the Grundo flavour to it is pretty fun. Although some of it is weird because they actually use people and species from Grundo as "gifts" given to the person by their true love, and the first one is Wooly in a Boggleberry Tree. Luckily it's just a song because if someone actually tried to give that as a gift to Teddy, well there might be some damage if Wooly doesn't get out of the tree since Boggleberry Trees aren't really big enough to accomodate someone who is Wooly's size. Also, on the 6th Day of Christmas the Fobs said that Teddy gave them six magic crystals. I feel like that would be a very bad idea. At least in the TV show since M.A.V.O. is aware of the crystals and actively tries to obtain said crystals and the Fobs can't really protect themselves.
"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is the only song really worth talking about since all the other songs are traditional Christmas carols that don't have any Grundo flair to them. As such talking about them would be pointless, since I'm sure music critics, who are better qualified to talk about them, have done a better job at talking about them than I could.
The artwork is pretty good here too. The art team on this book is slightly different as Alchemy II was working on pretty much all of Worlds of Wonder talking toys at the same time they were working on the Teddy Ruxpin material, so the art team would get switched up except for the Art Director, Russell Hicks, and two others who had done the art for earlier books, Julie Armstrong, and Allyn Conley/Gorniak. Everyone else is completely different. Which is cool, but also weird considering they didn't actually change up the art team until much later in the series, like closer to the end of it.
Overall I enjoyed both of these stories. However, I think I like Teddy's Winter Adventure slightly better because it's the introduction of Christmas to Grundo, as it was something that Teddy and Grubby brought with them from Rillonia, and there's actually a story there. I love singing Christmas carols, but I feel like Teddy Ruxpin's Christmas doesn't have as much replay value on it like many of the Christmas albums I listen to at this time of year do. But if you removed the transition dialogue you could basically have a pretty good Teddy Ruxpin Christmas album as it works much better on that level than it does as a story.
Alright guys that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll have a blog update post for you either tomorrow or Friday, and then on Saturday, I'll have my season 2 review for The Mandalorian up as the season finale drops on Friday. For next week's final (for the year) non-Disney Christmas review, I'll be taking a look at another childhood favourite, Waiting for Santa, the fourth installment of the Barney & The Backyard Gang video series. So until then have a great day. So long for now! (cue Teddy Ruxpin end theme).
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