so fucking special

I hope this makes my fellow Gen Xers as happy as it made me.

Damn kids today: When we saw this during October, it usually meant that something wonderful, like a It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was about to start. When we saw it in December, it usually meant a Rankin/Bass special was about to transport us to a land where Bumbles Bounce. If your parents didn’t get the TV guide, seeing this was like finding a treasure map, and the few seconds of darkness between its ending and whatever came next, always felt like an eternity.

Like the sound of a 56K modem connecting, it’s a familiar and visceral reminder of a time that’s long gone. I don’t know about the rest of you, but it makes me incredibly happy, like finding an old friend.

Ohh! I had to edit and add this comment from reader Magic_Al:

“To a kid, this was the television equivalent of gift-wrap. You hope it’s going to be a toy but it could turn out to be a sweater.”

Absolutely, Magic_Al. That is the perfect way to describe it. I wish I’d thought of that!

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71 thoughts on “so fucking special”

  1. When I played that video I found myself automatically excited to see what was coming on next. These damn kids today just don’t know! 🙂

  2. That was awesome! Thank you, Wil. So many memories. So much sadness that my son will never understand or have that same reaction. After all, if he wants to see Charlie Brown or Rudolph or even Frosty, he just has to pop in a DVD anytime he pleases. He will never understand the sweet anticipation of a moment like this.
    And count me in as another who automatically thinks of Episode IV (although for me it will always be the first and foremost) when I hear the 20th Century Fox trumpets.

  4. I still miss the Dolly Madison commercials. We didn’t even get the snacks in my small town in Alabama, but I knew what they were because they always advertised them during Peanuts specials.

  5. When that CBS Special logo appeared, I think 9 times out of ten it was always episodes of “Colombo” stitched together into feature length. That was some lame TV viewing for an 8 year old…

  7. Funny you found this now. I was just going through my old VHS tapes, deciding which to throw out, and found an old tape my grandma made of Christmas specials. She didn’t know how to get it to pause during recording, so I have on this old tape The Special intro, the Chipmunk’s Christmas Special, old Snicker’s commercials with they guy in the fishermnan’s outfit closing his hand around peanuts and opening it with a Snicker’s bar, the Cheerio’s chalk stick figure guy, the Smurf’s Christmas Special and some ads for Circus of the Stars. I need to put that on DVD before I can no longer play the tape.

  8. PS If anyone was wondering if the reruns of those shows are edited…they are. Big chunks missing that I forgot were even there. How disappointing. Our kids are missing out on a lot.

  9. I’m pretty jealous right now, we didn’t have this on the tv here in upside-down land. And I was a bit confused until the modem reference… ah, the excitement when we upgraded to the 28.8k, now the intarweb would be FAST!
    Hey Wil, as an aside, is your blog missing an obvious idiot-proof RSS linky? I can probably set it up manually, but at times I alternate between genius and tard, and I suspect there might be a few more of the latter around here that could learn geek appreciation from your blog 🙂

  10. I sent the 56K modem link to the people in my IT department, to help them take a trip down memory lane. One of them responded to me that somewhere in this building, we are still using that very same modem.
    Yikes.

  11. When ever I see a Peanuts special, I always think that into should be in front. Not having it there is like not having the 20th Century Fox Fanfare at the start of a Star Wars movie.

  13. Remember when networks had Special shows to showcase their fall line up? Like what was going to be on Saturday morning.
    I’d mostly forgotten until I looked at some of my old comic books and saw full back cover ads for the Saturday Morning cartoon line up. It built such a wonderful sense of anticipation for the Fall.

  18. Definitely takes me back, and makes me happy. If you allow links here, Wil, here’s the HBO intro from 1983. Remember when it was such a HUGE deal that you could watch movies at home, and how awesome it was to turn out all the lights, close all the blinds and watch a movie in the middle of the day?

  19. That was awesome. The only thing missing? A York Peppermint Patty commercial. I think they bought every single commercial break during those Charlie Brown specials. Talk about a successful marketing campaign–I’m actually nostalgic for it.

  20. It’s not just you Gen X’ers ;>. Us Baby Boomers have exactly the same visceral reaction to that. I remember that vividly as a kid. And the Mating Call of the High Speed Modem (56K) was somewhere in the future when I ran my first BBS on a 1200bd modem — ’cause I had the fancy new *fast* modem ;>.

  21. “Brought to you by McDonalds… and Dolly Madison!”
    I’ve tried to explain the significance of this to so many young’uns. You just had to be there.

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