Question for old-timers on this list

[Sue Trowbridge]

Merry Christmas, everyone! I used to be an active participant here a long time ago -- I supplied the talk show lineups to Aaron's old Late Show News newsletter back in the day (and I still keep them updated at http://www.interbridge.com/lineups.html). Anyway, 10+ years ago, there was a really terrible syndicated animated Christmas special that aired on TV and it became the subject of much merriment on this list because it was so hilariously awful. I was thinking about it this morning and wanted to see if it was online. I seem to recall it was credited to the "Rap City Kids" or "Kidz" or something like that, but that turns up nothing in Google. (I've tried variations on the name, with no luck. There may have been a deliberate misspelling of "Rap City," but I can't remember what it was.) I was curious if any of the longtime members who date back to the TVBarn2 days remember what I'm talking about.

--Sue Trowbridge

[David Bruggeman]

I'm drawing a blank, but are there list archives going back that far?

David

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From: Sue Trowbridge <lou...@gmail.com>
To: tvor...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 25, 2013 1:51 PM
Subject: [TV orNotTV] Question for old-timers on this list

Merry Christmas, everyone! I used to be an active participant here a long time ago -- I supplied the talk show lineups to Aaron's old Late Show News newsletter back in the day (and I still keep them updated at http://www.interbridge.com/lineups.html). Anyway, 10+ years ago, there was a really terrible syndicated animated Christmas special that aired on TV and it became the subject of much merriment on this list because it was so hilariously awful. I was thinking about it this morning and wanted to see if it was online. I seem to recall it was credited to the "Rap City Kids" or "Kidz" or something like that, but that turns up nothing in Google. (I've tried variations on the name, with no luck. There may have been a deliberate misspelling of "Rap City," but I can't remember what it was.) I was curious if any of the longtime members who date back to the TVBarn2 days remember what I'm talking about.

--Sue Trowbridge

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[Doug Eastick]

Tvbarn2 was on yahoo groups. No idea if Aaron deleted the total group history or not.

Maybe I'll look after I'm in the turkey coma tonight.

Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[Ben Scripps]

> I was curious if any of the longtime members who date back to the
> TVBarn2 days remember what I'm talking about.

Definitely remember the discussion, but I can't come up with the title.
The best I could find on short notice was a Wikipedia list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Christmas_television_specials

I gave that a quick perusal, but nothing jumped out at me...

[Bob Jersey]

David Bruggeman, to Sue Trowbridge

I'm drawing a blank, but are there list archives going back that far?

Not anymore; Aaron closed them after the list was turned over to Sir Tom.

B

[jdi...@juno.com]

On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 1:51:18 PM UTC-5, Sue Trowbridge wrote:

Merry Christmas, everyone! I used to be an active participant here a long time ago -- I supplied the talk show lineups to Aaron's old Late Show News newsletter back in the day (and I still keep them updated at http://www.interbridge.com/lineups.html). Anyway, 10+ years ago, there was a really terrible syndicated animated Christmas special that aired on TV and it became the subject of much merriment on this list because it was so hilariously awful. I was thinking about it this morning and wanted to see if it was online. I seem to recall it was credited to the "Rap City Kids" or "Kidz" or something like that, but that turns up nothing in Google. (I've tried variations on the name, with no luck. There may have been a deliberate misspelling of "Rap City," but I can't remember what it was.) I was curious if any of the longtime members who date back to the TVBarn2 days remember what I'm talking about.

--Sue Trowbridge

 

It was called "Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa"

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0341543/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

 

Remember seeing this special at 2am while at work - as bad as advertised.  Going back to the TVBarn2 discussion back in the day, I seemingly remember that Nancy Cartwright had some sort of stake in the special outside of voicing a character (possibly financing the special or finding backers, etc.) and that there were plans to do an Easter special, but that was never produced.

 

JD

[Sue Trowbridge]

Hooray for you, JD!!! I guess I wasn't that far off with "Rap City." (I had also tried Googling "Rapsitty," but I guess "Rapsittie" didn't occur to me.) Thank you for digging up that info.

--Sue

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[djconner]

I found a site where your local station can apparently obtain "The Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa" for broadcast... assuming your local station is still in the year 2002:
http://promarktv.com/Family.html
http://promarktv.com/believe.htm

From the looks of it, they never even got their "Opening Trailer" up on the Interwebs, and it will be "Coming Soon" forever.

I also discovered that the special apparently had an alternate title for the British market(?): "Bash Street Kids Believe in Santa."  And/or "The Bash Street Kids" is what the kids actually called themselves in-universe.  This is also apparently the name of a long-running British comic book feature appearing in The Beano, though it seems like it was probably an adaptation in name only (and perhaps an inadvertent one, as the American "Rapsittie" people may not have ever heard of the British feature.)

http://ukanimation.blogspot.com/2010/03/general-nitt-and-thoughts-on-british.html

[Adam Bowie]

Regarding the British market version. It sounds to me that someone very illegally released a video, just dropping the much more familiar name on the cover and seeing what would happen. Maybe one of the special's original producers had read The Beano at some point and thought that "Bash Street Kids" was a good name.

Either way, they date back to the 50s are familiar to anyone who ever read The Beano comic from that day forward (The Beano is still going strong today - http://www.beano.com/characters/bash-street-kids. Dennis the Menace is the more famous Beano character. But shouldn't be confused with the US Dennis the Menace which seemingly began in the same month in both the US and UK!)

One way or another, the characters in that special look nothing like those of the UK comic, so I can imagine parents angrily returning tapes to video stores if they were ever foolish enough to rent or buy them. It seems highly unlikely that such an obvious copyright infringing title would ever have been broadcast on a UK TV channel.

Adam

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