A Cosmic Christmas...

Many years ago, I saw a cartoon about aliens that come to Earth looking for the meaning of Christmas. But, for many years, I couldn't remember the title. In 2005, just before Rock and Rule came out on DVD, I came across an entry on a Rock and Rule forum regarding other Nelvana releases -- among the titles mentioned was "A Cosmic Christmas". I saved that forum entry for future reference...

In Cosmic Christmas a town rediscovers the real spirit of Christmas, thanks to three visitors from outer space and a little boy named Peter. Commercialism and greed seem to contradict the meaning of Christmas, and when Peter's pet goose is kidnapped, things look even worse. An exciting rescue results in a new sense of caring and sharing.

After 5 years, I decided to revisit the Rock and Rule DVD Release forum (it seems to be inactive at this time) entry and see if the title was available.

Message: 1 [Digest Number 502]
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:23:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: M P
Subject: other nelvana shorts?

Since Devil and Daniel Mouse was being released with R&R, I was wondering if Unearthed may have any interest in releasing any of the other Nelvana shorts? Examples include A Cosmic Christmas, Take Me Up to the Ballgame, Rome-0 and Julie-8, [Intergalactic Thanksgiving, or Please Don't Eat The Planet], etc...

I found that the title had been released on VHS at one time, but, it is currently unavailable. Sadly, it doesn't appear that the title was ever released on DVD. I did, however, manage to locate a web quality version on YouTube. With my recent adventures in transferring a one-minute web-quality commercial to DVD, I decided to try my hand at transferring a 25-minute web-quality video to DVD.

With the files downloaded, the DVD authoring process was fairly straightforward. The resulting DVD does exhibit some artifacts associated with the low quality of the source content (blocks are visible in some scenes and fine details, like the small print in the end credits, are somewhat fuzzy), but, even with the poor quality of the transfer it's good enough for me. Some day, if this title ever becomes available on DVD, I would certainly replace my web-quality transfer with an official release. But, sadly, it doesn't appear likely to happen anytime soon. According to a post titled "Correspondence from Nelvana, October 15, 2009" by anvilscepe (Los Angeles, CA) on Amazon...

I can't believe that this still hasn't been released on DVD. I was ecstatic that "The Devil and Daniel Mouse" was released as a supplement of the "Rock and Rule" DVD - even in its truncated form - but it's still pretty painful to see this release doomed to exist only on VHS.

Anyway, the reason I am writing now is to share some not so great news about this title. I reached out to Nelvana and asked if they had any plans on releasing this and this is the email I received in response:

"Hi anvilscepe,

I'm terribly sorry for the lateness of my reply. I have been looking into this for you and it's not looking promising. It doesn't appear that any of the titles you are interested will be released anytime soon.

Thank you for your interest in these properties, and thank you for letting us know that there is interest out there for these... I'm going to pass this on to our sales team to see if we can't sell these to a distributor in the States.

Take Care,

Sarah"

So there's that update. Sad but true. Maybe I'll contact Warner.

Thanks for reading.

It's sad to hear such unhappy news, but, thanks to YouTube, I was able to relive a small part of my childhood.