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It was, Rankin said, “just enough for them to grasp things” and not clutter the animation. You may notice that the figures have only three fingers and a thumb. Rudolph’s head, torso and hooves were carved wood, but his red nose was a custom-made 12V light bulb. Human puppets had mouth shapes drawn on Japanese paper that were pasted on and removed to match dialogue. The Japanese animators “were learning on the job,” and the puppets were generally composition rubber dolls that “would last about 16 months, tops,” recalled Arthur Rankin to Goldschmidt. The average height was eight inches (a notable exception was the comparatively huge Abominable Snowmonster, or Bumble), and most sets were no larger than six by eight feet. Scripts, pre-recorded voices and sounds made their way to Japan, and an estimated 82 puppet figures were created. Rankin/Bass, as Videocraft International, contracted with Tokyo’s pioneering Tad Mochinaga for the stop-motion “Animagic” animation. Three areas stand out, both from Goldschmidt’s writings and emails I exchanged with Golden Books Family Entertainment when Rudolph, Yukon Cornelius and Hermey leapt the VHS-to-DVD chasm in 1999 following its 35 th anniversary digital restoration.Īnimagic process.

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Yet as Rudolph evolved into the viewing equivalent of familiar holiday comforts like pumpkin pie, pine scent and post-relative-visit doctored egg nog, it’s easy to forget the technological achievements, challenges and environment it represented as a TV special. Subsequently, it became what’s described as the longest-running, highest-rated special in television history. It was “a smash hit” in its first airing, watched by 55% of television viewers. He points out that the television special, bankrolled by GE for its General Electric Fantasy Hour, took about 18 months to complete and cost more than $500,000 to produce, an amount that would exceed $4.5 million today.

Rick Goldschmidt is perhaps the ultimate Rudolph scholar and authored The Making of the Rankin/Bass Holiday Classic: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (yes, I have a hardcover first edition from 2001). It was an echo of how state-of-the-art Rudolph itself was when it aired. So when the #Rudolph hashtag flashed across the screen during this year’s golden jubilee broadcast on CBS, it wasn’t just a quaint attempt by nostalgia to be nerdy.