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.
“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.
