"Every now and then an animated program comes along that seems destined to become a classic. "The Rapsittie Street Kids" franchise is such a project. Featuring a one hour musical animated special entitled "Believe in Santa" it is the first of two holiday one hour specials that features the rambunctious, cool and cute "The Rapsittie Street Kids." The music sound track is being released to radio to coincide with the Christmas TV Syndication window."
— Promotional pitch for the movie.
Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa is a CGI musical Christmas special that aired during the 2002 holiday season through many syndication stations throughout the U.S. and on WB+ (a prepackaged channel for smaller markets) starting on November 22, 2002 and ending Christmas Day.
Since it was never shown again after 2002, it was considered to be lost for 13 years, until it finally resurfaced on the internet in 2015 to widespread mockery for its extremely poor quality, most notably its unfinished, stiff, dated (even for 2002) computer animation.
The plot of the special focuses on a spoiled rich girl named Nicole (Paige O'Hara) throwing away a teddy bear given by one of her classmates and later scrambling to find it after learning of its sentimental background. The movie can be found here.
Here's the link to Promark TV's official page.
Tropes used in this film include:
- Acrofatic: Smithy may be on the chubby side, but he's a surprisingly agile ice skater. So much so that he's able to humiliate the bullies by dragging Tug along while the latter holds onto his scarf.
- Adults Are Useless: When a girl being bullied by Zeke complains to Ms. Parmington, she does not do anything to stop him, telling her it means that Zeke likes her.
- Aerith and Bob: Looking at the cast credits reveals that the blonde bully boy's actual name is Tug. Lenee can also somewhat classify as a "weird" name.
- Alpha Bitch: Nicole in the first half of the movie. She throws away her best friend's gifts because they didn't come from the mall, brags about how she's the best kid in the world, and seems to constantly ignore Ricky, going as far as to take the bear that his mother gave him and throw it in the dumpster. To be fair, she didn't know how important it was to him, but that was still a pretty dick move.
- Ambiguous Situation: Is the pony Lenee's sister Jenna gets supposed to be real or not? The fact that it doesn't move and looks incredibly fake would normally point to the latter, but in this special...
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Smithy mentions his mom in one scene but at the end where everyone goes to Lenee's house, he shows up alone.
- Angry Guard Dog: In order to get Ricky's bear back, Smithy, Nicole and Lenee have to get past a pair of junkyard dogs.
- Award-Bait Song: The ending credits feature one sung by Paige O'Hara and Peabo Bryson called "Through a Child's Eyes".
- Berserk Button: Smithy absolutely destroys the bully who steals his sandwich.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Nicole is such a Spoiled Brat that she initially judges everything based on whether or not it came from the mall, to such a degree that Smithy calls her weird.
- Companion Food: Smithy's sandwich. He never eats it; he just carries it everywhere until the junkyard scene, where he uses it to make the guard dogs chase the bullies.
- Crappy Homemade Gift: Ricky really wants to give his classmate, Nicole, a special gift, but he has no money, so he gives her the teddy bear his mother gives him. She outright rejects it and throws it in the trash, breaking his heart. However, when she finds a letter he wrote to Santa, she realizes how much the bear meant to him and goes to retrieve it, not only to return it to him but also to thank him.
- Decoy Protagonist: At first the focus is on Ricky and his crush on Nicole, but the second half shifts to Nicole and her belief in Santa.
- Deranged Animation: The CGI animation in this movie is absolutely atrocious. Everyone looks very geometric and moves very robotically, often the characters look really creepy, there are obvious jpegs used for various props and the physics are downright bizarre. This is mainly because the software used to animate this movie, "3D Choreographer", was made for personal use on things like PowerPoint presentations and websites, not TV and film production.
- Didn't Think This Through: Ricky tries to win materialistic Alpha Bitch Nicole over by giving her his teddy bear. It doesn't work.
- Door-Closes Ending: The special ends with Nicole's dad yelling for someone to "Shut that door!"
- Duck!: When Nicole is hit by his toy, Smithy shouts: "Duck! I mean dinosaur."
- Dull Surprise: Due to the limitations of the animation technology, the character models really aren't expressive.
- Everyone Has Standards: Smithy rolls his eyes at Ms. Parmington's Loving Bully comment. It should be noted that while Smithy does constantly tease and rile Nicole and Lenee for no reason, the only time he does anything to them that could be considered physical assault is when he threw that toy Stegosaurus at Nicole's head.
- Exposed to the Elements: For some reason, Nicole wears a midriff-baring pink top despite it being winter.
- Fat Best Friend: Smithy is to Ricky.
- Gang of Bullies: Todd runs one of these, with himself being the ringleader.
- Girls Have Cooties: Smithy is an enthusiastic misogynist. It’s never really explained why he dislikes girls so much.
- GIS Syndrome: Many of the background objects are clearly stock clipart, some of which isn't even photoshopped correctly, as you can see some white on some of the edges.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Nicole at the very end.
- Hypocrite: Nicole makes fun of Lenee for believing in Santa Claus, despite her song showing her to be a believer herself. Although she could be just covering this up when in public, given how she's by herself while singing her song.
- Hypocritical Humor: Zeke calls Smithy, Nicole and Lenee "babies" for running away from the junkyard dogs... but when the dogs start threatening him, he's quick to turn tail and run himself.
- "I Am Great!" Song: "Look At Me" serves as this for Nicole.
- Informed Ability: Ricky describes Nicole as "smart with books", and she claims to be a straight-A student in her song. However, we never see any evidence of her being skilled academically.
- Insane Troll Logic: According to Nicole, your gift for Christmas is only good if you brought it from the mall. And the fact that she says "Cheap is not cool!" makes even less sense as many cheap goods can be found at malls.
- Informed Attractiveness: Nicole is meant to be beautiful, at least according to Ricky, but her character model is as poorly rendered as all the others.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Ricky can always understand exactly what his great-grandma is saying. The same can't be said of the audience.Ricky: Great grandma, you always know just what to say.Great Grandma: DohuhohohwhehelghuhohokesynohehCHRISTMAShuahhahohoho!
- It's All About Me: Nicole has an entire song about boasting her ego as "The Best Kid in the World".
- It Was a Gift: Ricky’s bear that he gives to Nicole was a gift from his late mother. Although it’s strange that he would give up something with mostly sentimental value to Nicole, who is quite snobbish and materialistic and probably wouldn’t appreciate it much.
- I Want My Mommy!: Tug yells this when he gets chased by the junkyard dogs.
- Jerkass:
- Todd, Zeke, and Tug. They're a Gang of Bullies always picking on Ricky and Smithy, and they go as far as to laugh at Nicole and co. being chased by guard dogs.
- Nicole's a pretty big jerk for the first half of the movie, yelling at Ricky when he gives her a gift and mocking Lenee for believing in Santa Claus despite believing in Santa herself.
- The teacher, Ms. Parmington, openly insults her students, refuses to do anything about a girl being bullied and brags about how she's going to be spoiled rotten by her family once vacation comes.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Smithy definitely won't be winning any nice guy awards, but he's a loyal friend to Ricky.
- Karma Houdini: Ms. Parmington, who faces no comeuppance for neglecting her students.
- Kick the Dog: Nicole throwing away Ricky's gift serves as this, as Smithy calls her out for it.
- Kids Love Dinosaurs: Smithy has a toy dinosaur. (A Stegosaurus to be exact)
- Limited Animation: The animation looks really stiff and unnatural. Notably, many characters walk by just dipping their feet up and down. In some scenes, you don't even get that, so the character's whole body, as a still image, bobs up and down to represent walking (while their legs are off-screen).
- Loving Bully: When a girl who's getting bothered by Zeke complains to Ms. Parmington, she says it just means he likes her.
- The Mall: Discussed. Nicole judges everything based on whether or not it came from the mall.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The plot is kicked off when a random gust of wind blows Ricky's letter to Santa Claus out of his hand without him noticing, and it lands on Nicole's front yard. Given that this leads to Nicole becoming a nicer person and Ricky getting the gift he wanted, along with the movie's Aesop, it's probably not meant to be a random Contrived Coincidence, but rather a miracle from Santa Claus himself.
- Memento MacGuffin: Ricky’s teddy bear, which was a gift from his deceased mother. He tries to give it to Nicole, but she, without knowing the bear’s backstory, thinks it is old and gross. She yells at Ricky and throws it away. She only finds out about what the bear meant to Ricky when she accidentally finds and reads his letter to Santa, prompting Nicole, Lenee, and Smithy to try to find the lost bear.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Nicole gets this moment when she finds out that Ricky's bear she had thrown away was given to him by his deceased mother.
- Nice Girl: Lenee.
- No Accounting for Taste: Ricky has a crush on Nicole why, exactly?
- No Name Given: The school principal who appears for one scene. It's likely he did have a name in the script, since he appears in the promo art of the main cast, but we'll probably never know.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: According to the Lost Media Wiki, Rapsittie was animated using 3D Choreographer, an animation software suite first developed in the early 1990s for Intel 486 machines running Windows 3.1! By the time the special was released, said software is already considered primitive when machinima artists have done animated features with far superior visuals using popular video games. Ironically enough, very few copies of 3D Choreographer can be found on the web at all either.
- As of July 2021, the full version of 3D Choreographer has been found!
- As of July 2021, the full version of 3D Choreographer has been found!
- Oh, Crap!: Todd gets this expression after Smithy throws a sandwich at him, when he realizes the guard dogs are now after him.
- Pet the Dog:
- For all his flaws, Smithy is a legitimate friend to Ricky, being one of the few kids who doesn't make fun of him, trying to tell him Nicole's no good, calling her out when she rejects his bear and looking for said bear long before Nicole does.
- When Ms. Parmington tells the girl Zeke's bothering that he's doing it because he likes her, Smithy sounds completely unconvinced.
- Prized Possession Giveaway: Ricky decides to give Nicole his beloved teddy bear, which he got from his now-deceased mother. It initially backfires, because she doesn't at all care for it, but in the end, she not only comes to appreciate the sentiment but also gives him the gift he really wanted.
- Product Placement: In the page image, Nicole is holding what appears to be a can of Pepsi.
- Public Domain Animation: Sources like the Internet Archive state the movie fell into this early once Colin waived his ownership to the web, as the other rights holders are either dead, defunct, or publicly want nothing more to do with this film.
- Averted with Wolf Tracer's Dinosaur Island, which Colin kept after Rapsittie's release and is only available on his YouTube channel. Although with his death in the 2010s it's unknown whether or not Colin gave the film to any friends or family, leaving its current copyright status uncertain.
- Averted with Wolf Tracer's Dinosaur Island,
- Random Events Plot: The plot has tons of holes, convenient coincidences, and is generally quite strange and confusing.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Ricky's lines are mostly delivered by rapping.
- Rich Bitch: Nicole at the beginning.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: The sign outside the school says "Striving For Excelence [sic]."
- Sequel Hook: At the end of the credits, Jenna announces that she'll be back with the Easter Bunny, indicating that an Easter special was planned.
- Serious Business: The mall for Nicole. As far as Nicole's concerned, if your gift didn't come from the mall it's worthless.
- Soundtrack Dissonance:
- The opening theme of the movie is a choir singing a version of “Good King Wenceslas.” However, it sounds strangely creepy and ominous and wouldn’t look out of place in a Tim Burton movie.
- Later on, "Christmas Chimes" by Jason Ebs is played over a scene of Smithy running from a couple of bullies.
- Spoiled Brat: Nicole is implied to receive expensive gifts quite often (near the end, her parents mention that Christmas means she gets more presents than usual), which has made her unable to appreciate the sentimental value of Ricky's teddy bear (until she gets Character Development).
- Surfer Dude: Zeke speaks this way and also complains about being unable to surf on ice, implying he's an example.
- Title Drop: The next-to-last line of the movie is everyone yelling "BELIEVE IN SANTA!"
- Took a Level in Jerkass: At first Zeke appears to be a Cloudcuckoolander but then later he's joining Todd and Tug in mocking Nicole, Lenee and Smithy.
- Took a Level in Kindness: The focus of the special is Nicole transitioning from a spoiled, materialistic mean girl to a more kindhearted person.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Smitty seems preoccupied with sandwiches, carrying one with him most of the time.
- The Unintelligible: Ricky's great-grandma must be an alternate universe version of Boomhauer or something. To her credit she does speak intelligibly at a few points.
- Vague Age: The students look to be middle schoolers, as the appear to be in various stages of adolescence, but their grade level is never given. They attend elementary school and the movie is (apparently) about believing in Santa, however, the designs for several resemble teens or adults more.
- Vocal Dissonance:
- The characters are probably supposed to be around 10 years old but sound like teenagers or adults. It also doesn't help that most of them look like teenagers rather than kids!
- Todd has the opposite problem. Nancy Cartwright uses her Nelson Muntz voice for the role, but he looks like he's a teenager so hearing that voice out of that character comes off as weird.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Todd, Tug and Zeke suddenly just vanish from the plot after they get chased out of the junkyard by the guard dogs.
- "Will Return" Caption: The end credits promise that "The Rapsittie Street Kids will be back with A Bunny's Tale". Unsurprisingly, the Easter Special never happened.
- World of No Grandparents: Bizarrely averted as Ricky is raised by his great grandmother, Lenee's grandmother shows up briefly, and Nicole's grandmother is the one who sent her the Video Box she gives to Ricky.
- Younger Than They Look: Nearly all of the kids except for Lenee's little sister, Jenna, look more like teenagers than actual children.
Shut that door!
