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July 15, 2024 • 72 mins

🎄 It’s 1988, the monsters under my bed are real, and they’re stealing Christmas.  

Follow us under the covers through a wormhole to the home of ’80s kids’ bedding sensation the Pillow People in a Christmas special so obscure, it’s not even listed on IMDb. But it’s real, and it’s ironically nightmarish.  

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🎙 Guest:  

Ethan (The Hungry Reader, A Special Presentation or ALF Will Not Be Seen Tonight, Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head)  

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💬 Topics & Tangents:  

1. Watch “Pillow People Save Christmas” on YouTube.  

2. Pillow People on the toy collectors’ website Ghost of the Doll.  

2. Toot Sweet Toys, or what’s left of it.  

3. TV listing in New York magazine, November 1988.  

4. Victor DiMattia (Billy) on filming “The Sandlot.”  

5. Window Rattler as seen on “Full House.”  

6. The Who Cares Bears.  

7. Today’s TV Trope: Introdump, example: the worst Rob Liefeld drawing.  

8. Cheryl Chase (Sweet Dreams) mentions working with Cree Summer (Rock-a-Bye Baby) on this special in a 2004 interview about the “Rugrats” spinoff “All Grown Up.”  

9. The Far Side: “…He’s taking it with him!”  

10. Nightmara looks like a cross between Mother Brain in “Captain N: The Game Master” and Madam Hecuba from the 1974 anime adaptation of “Jack and the Beanstalk.”  

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📼 Commercial Break:  

Pillow People: Pillow Valley Commercial (1988)  

Holidays After Dark, exploring the strange, unusual, and dark sides of the holidays.  

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“Pillow People Save Christmas” © 1988 TMS Entertainment, Inc.  

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

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