In anticipation Christmas in two weeks, it’s officially time for the Christmas Countdown, a daily posting of a brief review of a strange Christmas movie, short, cartoon, whatever, that deserves a bit of attention. Today we’ll start off with a pop culture relic that will leave you with many more questions than answers, We Wish You A Turtle Christmas! In case it wasn’t clear, this is a live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Christmas Special from waaaaaay back in 1993. There’s not a lot here, considering this is only a 22 minute special, but there are a couple Christmas carols with a ‘unique’ spin on their lyrics. For reasons unknown to me, people kept trying to jam songs into the TMNT, like with the Coming Out of Our Shells live theatrical production, which I swear is real and not a fever dream I had. I blame Vanilla Ice and that catchy Go Ninja Go song.

Some of the choice moments here include the opening number having the turtles inexplicably put on ‘Jamaican’ accents, which even they call out as dumb in the credits, as well as a singular scene of them all on the streets of New York looking for a gift for Master Splinter. While looking around they run into a group of children hanging out in the back-alleys in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, and I’m not sure if they’re implying the kids are homeless or just have no families, but either way that’s messed up. Also there’s a scene where they wrap presents while wrapping. They call it the wrap rap. I refuse to dignify that with any further commentary.

The crowning moment comes with Splinter himself singing the 12 Days of Christmas, with the lyrics changed to reflect the turtles, of course, a song that takes up nearly half the runtime of the special while the group stands in one spot and sings one song. I do appreciate how even they seemed to know that the song was overstaying its welcome and they completely gave up on the lyrics in the last verse. Everyone seemed to be trying to get this over with as quickly as possible and I can’t blame anyone involved, especially not the actors who had to wear these monstrosities. Guess they couldn’t get their hands on the movie costumes, but maybe they should have chosen something that didn’t look like they’re about to reach out of the screen and bite you at any moment?

This is a thankfully brief special, but it’s so weird in execution that I kind of enjoy it for being such a bizarre piece of pop culture. If you’re curious and have twenty minutes to kill, it’s available on YouTube in full, with a link below. Thanks for reading!