Bumble Starts a Tradition

In last Tuesday’s post I gave Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer a pass on my list of failed paragons. Not content to leave a tradition unbashed, I decided to return to this claymation classic, and provide a brief sequel.

Bumble Starts a Tradition

by Headley Hauser

Since meeting Rudolph and Hermey, Bumble had a problem. Sure, it was fun to put the star on the top of the Christmas tree, and he enjoyed cheers and clapping he got for it, but Bumble couldn’t shake the impression that he was being applauded by a roomful of delicious steaks and roasts.

When an abominable snowman wants to make a day special, he (or she,) eats something special. For Bumble, nothing gave him that warm feeling of the holidays quite so much as a pair of elves or reindeer roasting on an open fire. Standing there in the workshop surrounded by his new, edible companions, Bumble started drooling. Drooling for a creature his size, and a member of his species was embarrassing and, as he was a frozen creature, dangerous. Bumble quickly wiped his mouth, knocking down a four-foot saliva icicle, which narrowly missed Mrs. Claus’ punch bowl and still peppered the elfin choir with ice shards as it shattered.

“Ewww,” said Noresta, a plump elf that Bumble thought looked particularly delicious, “we almost got frozen monster drool in our punch!”

“You know,” said Hermey, Bumble’s oldest friend, having known him for two days without gnawing on him, “saliva serves a number of useful purposes. It says so here in my Dentistry for Dummies book.”

“What this fellow needs,” said Yukon Cornelius, “is a new food source to drool over, and the quicker the better!”

“There’s that walrus outside,” said Rumbo the formerly misfit toy elephant in a clear case of tusk-envy.

“No-ho-ho!” said Santa, “We can’t have Bumble eating animals that can talk, and blow-ho-ho. He’s already eaten too many a buck and doe-ho-ho. We need to find him the perfect food and tie it with a bow-ho-ho. Otherwise, our Bumble will have to go-ho-ho.”

“Hey Santa,” said Rumbo, who was a bit of a wisenheimer for a stuffed animal, “what was that writer’s name, Edgar Allan…?”

“Poe-ho-ho!” said Santa.

“That’s what I thought,” said Rumbo.

“But Santa,” said Hermey, “we can’t kick Bumble out.” Hermey was quite sympathetic for an elf that wanted to pull out people’s teeth, root and all. Bumble thought that Hermey looked particularly appetizing when he was sympathetic.

“Then feed him some chow-ho-ho.”

“Now Santa,” said Mrs. Claus. “Chow doesn’t rhyme with ho-ho.”

“Give him food to grow-ho-ho!”

“To grow?” said Rumbo. “We’re already in danger of being beheaded by his toe nails!”

“Nap time, Santa,” said Mrs. Clause. “You always start stretching your ho-ho rhymes when you’re overtired.”

shameless product placement

“Ho-hos!” said Rudolph, as Santa obediently schlepped his bowl-full-of-jelly to the bedroom. “Ho-hos are sweet and delicious. Everybody likes ho-hos. I bet Bumble would like them.”

“Tried that,” said Hermey, “in spite of my better judgment regarding tooth decay. We also tried cookies, candies, sugarplums, and an asphalt shingle that fell off the roof.”

“Asphalt chewy,” said Bumble.

“But bad for your teeth,” scolded Hermey.

“Besides,” said Mrs. Claus, “we can’t have Bumble eating us out of house and home.”

“Better than eating us and home,” said Rumbo.

“But Bumble preferring the shingle to traditional treats gives us a lead,” said Yukon Cornelius. “We’ve been offering Bumble things that we like to eat, but monsters are different from us. After all, we don’t want to eat each other.”

obligatory Trump slam

There was a snort from the crowd that may have come from Horno, the elf.  Horno shook his head and pointed to the Hispanic elf next to him.

“So what you’re saying,” said Hermey “is that we need to find something that there’s a lot of, and that isn’t alive, and that nobody likes at all.”

“Fruitcake!” said too many people to list in this story.

“I have one here,” said Mrs. Claus, “but I don’t have anything to cut it with.”

“Don’t ruin a perfectly good knife trying to cut fruitcake,” said Yukon Cornelius. “It’s already bite-sized for our little friend.

“Catch, Bumble!” Yukon Cornelius threw the disgusting fruitcake into the air, and Bumble caught it in his mouth.

“He’ll probably lose half his incisors biting it,” said Hermey.

There was no rain of broken teeth as the giant monster chewed, and then swallowed. “Uutecake good!” said Bumble, “Better even that broiled elf.”

He probably would have gotten more of a cheer if he’d left out that last part.

So Bumble the abominable snowman began a new holiday tradition by eating a mound of fruitcake the size of Santa’s sleigh…

Unfortunately, his new tradition was short-lived as he got a job with the EPA eating hazardous waste sites. The sites generally tasted better than fruitcake, and, according to Hermey, were better for his teeth.

What's that your say?  There's no walrus in Rudolph?  Alright, I cheated.  Here's the 1986 claymation short the walrus comes from.