So do you all remember that weird electronic song from about twenty years ago about the singing and dancing gummy bear? No? Shit, this is going to be a lot harder to explain, then. In the mid 2000s, a German composer released a song in Hungary that became a pop culture phenomenon, lasting months on the charts and subsequently getting over 3 billion views on YouTube. Why does any of this matter? Aside from proving that “brain rot” isn’t a new thing, it matters because that gummy bear was a brief pop culture icon, and all pop culture icons deserve a terrible Christmas special, so please join me for Gummy Bear’s first (and thankfully only) movie, Gummibär: The Yummy Gummy Search for Santa.

Starting off in media res, we begin with Santa trying to make his way down Gummibär’s chimney, something made much more difficult by Santa’s rotund figure, which his reindeer mercilessly mock him about. After falling straight down the chimney and wrecking Gummibär’s entire living room (damn Santa, I thought you’ve been doing this for a while) he quickly vanishes into the night, and doesn’t reappear at the North Pole. Gummibär screams himself awake at the thought of Santa disappearing, but quickly assumes it must have been a dream – until he turns on the TV and learns that Santa has disappeared! Someone has to rescue Santa from whatever vague forces have kidnapped him, and it might as well be Gummibär and friends.

Oh yeah, Gummibär lives with his friends. His friends who we never really get introduced to but everyone acts like we’ve all hung out for years, same as any bad movie. I’ll try to introduce them now, firstly we have Harry, a nebbish chameleon, Vlad, the most cliched vampire bat you can think of who spends his time drinking juice and pestering Kala for dates, and Kala aka furry bait. This team lives in a house in the middle of nowhere, for some reason, they have a private jet which I assume Gummibär bought with his pop star money, and Gummibär never wears a damn shirt which I find unforgivable. After flying to the North Pole they meet a group of elves rioting about Santa being missing, but Gummibär manages to calm them down by doing donuts in the car he brought.

I’m not sure what the connection is between elves and donuts (maybe it’s a play on donuts being sweet and elves liking sugar? I’m probably reading too much into it) but this satisfies the elves who then tell Gummibär and friends that Santa probably went to his tropical vacation locale. Why the elves don’t decide to check his tropical vacation locale themselves or tell the news that he’s probably there, I can’t figure out, but that’s where Gummibär and his friends go next, finding the reindeer playing a high stakes game of poker. They must have been playing for a long time, because they’ve been sitting there since an alien showed up and used his magic wand to cheat and get a hand of 5 aces, winning the game and also Santa who for some reason the reindeer decided to bet in this game of poker. I feel so stupid writing that sentence, but it’s literally what happened.

With the reindeers’ help the team manages to track down Santa, who believes that the alien has stopped time in order to give him a vacation. Why Santa needs a vacation the day before Christmas, the one day a year he works, is never addressed, but managing the North Pole is probably stressful. The alien says he’ll never give back Santa so Gummibär naturally challenges him to a dance battle, which goes into overtime and Gummibär has to bring out the big guns to win. So he whips out his nuki.

Oh shit, not that Nukie, this Nuki.

Yes, Gummibar loves his nuki. This nuki is sweeter than a cookie. He never takes his nuki out of his mouth. But he will share it with you if you’re his friend. Jury’s still out on if he did it all for the nuki, but you can probably assume he did. I’m not touching this one any more than I have to. Thankfully, Gummibär’s nuki is stronger than the alien, defeating him in this contest and winning Santa’s freedom. Afterwards, it is revealed that this alien only wanted to share Christmas magic with his alien buddies, which Santa helpfully reminds him that he can still do that but without the kidnapping part.

So Santa returns to deliver everyone presents, Kala kisses Vlad ‘because it’s Christmas’, Gummibar gets lots of gifts, and everyone lives happily ever after….hey wait a second. If this was all supposed to be happening on Christmas Eve day, then why did Gummibar see Santa delivering presents in his vision? He was a day early! I did it! I found the one plot hole in Gummibär: The Yummy Gummy Search for Santa!

Seriously though, this is one of the worst Christmas specials I have ever seen. The animation and character designs are horrific, the story is stretched so thin that it would barely fit a 30 minute episode let alone the hour long runtime of this movie, and its lessons are just horrible. Gummibär teaches us that fat jokes are hysterical, Christmas is all about getting presents, and that if someone turns down your romantic advances, just keep pestering them until they say yes. Ugh. This one hurt. Thanks for reading and thanks to the five people who got the Nukie joke. You’re the best.