Everything Messed Up About Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

King Moonracer actually rules

Since it’s called the Island of Misfit Toys, it stands to reason that the one in charge would be the most unwanted toy of all, like one of those weird generic wrestler toys they have at the Dollar Store, or Monopoly, or a Sega Genesis. The reality, though, is that he’s none of those things. Instead, we have King Moonracer, and he’s the coolest toy imaginable.

For one thing, he’s a lion with wings who wears a crown, which is the strongest look anyone has ever had. For another, he’s not only fast enough to circle the world in a single night, he does it every night, meaning that he’s at least 365 times more awesome than Santa Claus — 366x in a leap year. Sure, he might be going a little too quickly sometimes, and maybe he could, say, ask around a little bit to see if anyone dropped a doll before dragging her off to live out her days unloved on a frozen island in the Arctic, but his heart’s in the right place. Third, and we cannot stress this enough, his name is King Moonracer. That’s like the name RZA would choose for himself if he made a dance-pop album.

So what’s so messed up about him? Easy: He’s only in this thing for one minute of screen time. We have a super-fast flying lion who lives in a castle, owns an island, and wants to help unloved toys find new homes on Christmas Eve, and instead, we’re watching Santa have a panic attack about nose colors for an hour.

All of the other reindeer almost caused the end of time

With a story as well-known as Rudolph, it’s fun to play “what if,” and try to figure out what would happen if things had gone a little differently. If Rudolph had never bothered to come back to the North Pole, for instance, there would’ve been some pretty dire consequences. The obvious change, of course, is that Christmas just doesn’t happen that year, but in the grand scheme of things, that wouldn’t be so bad — Santa could always just deliver the presents on New Year’s or something, and in the meantime, all those greedy kids who abandoned their polka dot elephants could learn to appreciate the things they had.

The bigger problem, of course, is the complete collapse of the entire space-time continuum.

See, while it’s far less well known than the original special, the sequel, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, is infinitely more insane. In it, a cosmically powerful vulture called Eon the Terrible, who’s fated to disintegrate on January 1, sets his sights on kidnapping Happy, the Baby New Year, to stop time and therefore stave off his prophesied death. The good news is Happy is hiding out in the Archipelago of Last Years — which is basically what would happen if you mashed up Hawaii with the concept of time travel — and for some reason, Rudolph gets sent to bring him back. Apparently, Santa Claus, who can literally see every child no matter where they are, couldn’t be bothered to take a few minutes to save the universe from utter destruction.

Needless to say, Rudolph succeeds and the flow of time continues unabated. If he hadn’t been Santa’s go-to guy, however, it’s pretty clear that we’d all be spending an ageless eternity on December 31, ruled over by a giant vulture. No offense, but Comet and Cupid ain’t solving that one.

Credits: grunge.com

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