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Rankin-Bass

Rankin-Bass is an American production company founded by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass in the early 1960s. They produced a large number of stop motion and traditional animation movies, TV specials, and TV series from the 1960s through the late 1980s. Some of their most widely recognized pieces are their stop-motion Christmas specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Frosty the Snowman (1969), many of which are still shown on American TV stations in the present day (2004) around the holiday season. Rankin-Bass stop-motion features are recognizable by their visual style of doll-like characters with spheroid body parts, and ubiquitous powdery snow.

In 1977, Rankin-Bass produced an animated version of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. It was followed in 1980 by an animated version of The Return of the King, the final book of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. (The animation rights to the first two books in the series were held by Saul Zaentz, producer of Ralph Bakshi's cartoon adaptation of the first half of the trilogy. See The Lord of the Rings on film.)

Rankin-Bass also produced the popular cartoon series, ThunderCats (1985), a cartoon and related toy-line about battling cat-like people in a high-tech future. It was followed by two similar cartoons about animal-like people, Silverhawks (1986), and Tigersharks (as part of the series The Comic Strip in 1987) which never enjoyed the same commercial success.

Feature Films

• Willy McBean and his Magic Machine (1965)
• The Daydreamer (1966)
• The Wacky World of Mother Goose (1966)
• Mad Monster Party? (1967)
• King Kong Escapes (1968)
• Marco (1973)
• The Last Dinosaur (1976)
• The Bermuda Depths (1977)
• The Bushido Blade (1979)
• Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (1979)
• The Ivory Ape (1980)
• The Last Unicorn (1982)
• The Sins of Dorian Gray (1983)

Animated TV Specials

• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
• Return to Oz (1964)
• The Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy Show (1965)
• The Ballad of Smokey the Bear (1966)
• Cricket on the Hearth (1967)
• The Mouse on the Mayflower (1968)
• The Little Drummer Boy (1968)
• Frosty the Snowman (1969)
• The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians (1970)
• Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town (1970)
• Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971)
• Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters (1972)
• Willie Mays and the Say-Hey Kid (1972)
• Red Baron (1972)
• That Girl in Wonderland (1974)
• 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974)
• The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
• The First Christmas (1975)
• The First Easter Rabbit (1976)
• Frosty's Winter Wonderland (1976)
• Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976)
• The Little Drummer Boy, Book II (1976)
• The Easter Bunny is Comin' To Town (1977)
• The Hobbit (1977)
• Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (1977)
• The Stingiest Man in Town (1978)
• Jack Frost (1979)
• The Return of the King (1980)
• Pinocchio's Christmas (1980)
• The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold (1981)
• The Coneheads (1983)
• Wind in the Willows (1985)
• The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985)
• The Flight of the Dragons (1986)

Animated Series

• The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1960)
• Tales of the Wizard of Oz (1961)
• The King Kong Show (1966)
• The Smokey Bear Show (1969)
• The Tomfoolery Show (1970)
• The Reluctant Dragon and Mr. Toad Show (1970)
• The Jackson Five Show (1971)
• The Osmonds (1972)
• Kid Power (1972)
• Festival of Family Classics (1972)
• Thundercats (1985)
• Silverhawks (1986)
• Comic Strip (1987)

Outside Links

The Official Rank Bass Website - http://rankinbass.com/