Yeah, there’s a lot they left out of the TV version.

Much like the last stand at the Alamo, Rudolph’s legendary trek through the frozen backwaters of the Arctic was less of a heroic triumph and more of a Quixotic, doomed fiasco. First, he fell out with Hermie when Rudolph overheard him and Yukon Cornelius discussing how they’d divide Rudolph’s belongings in the event of a tragic accident. After the paranoid young reindeer spent a sleepless night holding his terrified mates awake at knifepoint around the campfire, they managed to escape and fled for home.

Now travelling on his own, he was infested by rare snow fleas on his visit to the so-called Island of Misfit Toys, actually a near-forgotten medical quarantine colony originally built by Peter the Great and neglected by subsquent tsarist administrations. Finally, well, his encounter with the Abominable Snowman didn’t go nearly as well as the teleplay would have it.

Wear this shirt: to protest the continued poaching of red reindeer noses.

Don’t wear this shirt: one foggy Christmas Eve. It’s not warm enough.

This shirt tells the world: “You’ll go up on the wall of history.”

We call this color: As They Shouted Out Navy

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