Favorite Fictional Character --- Rugby The Christmas Toy

Can I just say how fricking excited that it's finally December!  I mean come on, how can you not get excited when Christmas is only a few weeks away?  If you can't, I feel bad for you.  Christmas is that time of year when no matter what else is going on in your life, the joy and happiness that the day brings helps lift it off your shoulders, even if for only a little while.

For the rest of the month, I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite characters from some great Christmas movies.  Some of them you will know, others you may not, but all of them are worth the introduction.

One of my favorite TV specials of all time was Jim Henson's The Christmas Toy.  I can only remember seeing it one time as a kid and that was the year it first aired, 1986.  I remember sitting on the floor, in front of the TV lost in a world where toys come to life when the humans leave.  After all, toys are made for playing and that doesn't stop when the people leave.

The hero of the movie, you could even call him an antihero of sorts, is Rugby.  Now you may be asking yourself, who the heck is Rugby?  Well I'm glad you asked!  Rugby the tiger was the adorable stuffed animal that one of the kids received for Christmas the year before and now that it's Christmas Eve once again, Rugby is convinced he has to get downstairs and get in the box all over again.  He is the star of Christmas after all, who could replace him?

Rugby, bless his cottony heart, doesn't understand that every Christmas brings new toys into the playroom and that even though he won't be the new toy anymore, he will still be loved.  Well Ruby sets out on his own, despite the warnings from the others that he could get caught.  By the way, that would be a horrible thing.  Because, you see, if a toy gets caught by a human in motion or somewhere they should not be, they are frozen forever.  In other words, they are dead.

The only toy willing to help him is Mew, the cat toy the others make fun of all the time for smelling like catnip.  They set out on their perilous journey and encounter many dangers on the way downstairs to the tree.  Eventually the others start to get worried about them and Apple, the rosy cheeked doll that Rugby replaced as the Christmas toy, sets out to find them and bring them back to the playroom.

I'm not going to go into any more details of the action, because I want you to watch this for yourself, but I will say tragedies and triumphs follow and Rugby can make me mad, sad, and happy all in the same movie.  He is a terrifically dynamic character that grows so much within that single evening.  I can never get enough of him or his friends and I know he'll always be my Christmas toy.