User Reviews

Title says it all. Sitting through the 22 minute run time of this poorly animated 90's cartoon was absolute agony, so much so that I had to take a break half way through and decided to stop my weekly bad movie binge entirely afterwards.

The film focuses around a "mischevious" elf Burton Lemon who tries to improve the old process of toy making in Santa's workshop (see sweatshop) which would save the other elves months of hard work and provide much better presents to all the children of the world.

Instead of encouraging this productivity and innovation, the other elves band together to torment and bully this elf; leaving him isolated in his own cold desolate laboratory.

Unfortunately for Burton he hasn't fixed all the kinks in his new printing machine and the toys have a habit of exploding for absolutely no reason.

After years of torment from other elves and Santa shutting down his project, Burton finally loses it. Unfortunately for him things go from bad to worse as he is involved in a terrible accident where he is disintegrated and reforms as the hero of the film 'The Snowman' in terminator esc fashion with the addition of a cool tophat.

What follows is a bewildering nosensical plot where Santa and Burton battle it out. Santa battles Burton using his spaceship which he uses to abuct a young girl called Jennifer along the way, who has something called 'The Christmas Light'. As far as I can tell this is the pure spirit of Christmas, something Santa weirdly doesn't possess.

It was lucky that Santa ran into this girl as she is able to talk down Santa from murdering Burton by using his spaceship's rockets in this KIDS film. Instead the child is able to sing Burton back to his original form. The fact that Santa had to think about this decision for a while shows what sort of person he is in this film!

Apparently the lesson Burton learnt from this experience was that he shouldn't show off and that Santa & Isaak the elf were really his friends, ya know the very people who bullied and tormented him. Terrible moral lesson for kids.

Overall bad writing, animation, sound design, terrible characters and incredibly boring. Also looks nothing like Toy Story!

If you are into very bad movies or for some reason have a soft spot for mid-90's animation then is film is highly recommended. For anyone else protect your own sanity.

An extremely amateurish, half-baked project that makers had the gall to compare to Toy Story. Seriously this bland undeveloped plot doesn't stay true to its title. In fact much of the dialogue doesn't make sense or help the plot along nor do the few characters express any real emotion. They seem so wooden or plastic. You get about as much expression as dolls. The Christmas Light spoken of is barely mentioned and never shown or described in depth. None of the characters have any development or backstory other than Santa and the named elves due what pop culture and lore has given. Examples include what about the reindeer, why Santa uses an aircraft, and why he enlists the aid of some random girl? (He practically kidnaps her.) Heck the North Pole where the workshop is supposed to be resembles a national monument rather than what we expect. The score and singing don't improve it either. The plot is basically about some disgruntled elf Burton (aka the Lemon) who becomes an evil snowman through some mishap during a demonstration and is causing a bad blizzard that is a threat to Christmas. And some unseen Christmas Light makes it better. Rudolph is such a better story. This isn't as bright or stylized numerous older vintage cartoons show. At least those are fun to watch and examine. The animation and design looks rather unfinished and unpolished. It feels like you're watching an animation project made by some students. If this was the case I wouldn't be so harsh since that would make it a learning experience. Seriously many of the old Pixar shorts and early computer animated shows like Reboot and Beast Wars looked better. It is like they didn't have enough time, computers, or animators to do a better job. Gosh these visuals look dated at best. No wonder this is forgotten. It is just made to cash in on Toy Story's success.