Santa Inc. is a 2021 satirical adult animation comedy series created by Alexandra Rushfield and animated by Stoopid Buddy Studios. Like Stoopid's previous works, this series is animated in Stop Motion, likely as a homage to the classic Christmas specials of Rankin/Bass Productions.
Candy Smalls (Sarah Silverman), a female elf working for Santa Claus (Seth Rogen) at the North Pole, dreams of becoming the first female Santa. Assisting her is Cookie (Leslie Grossman), a loudmouthed gingerbread woman, and Goldie (Gabourey Sidibe), a bisexual deer who is a member of the B-Team of Santa's reindeer. Part of the cast is Junior (Craig Robinson), the leader of the A-Team who belittles the other reindeer, and Devin (Nicholas Braun), Santa's intern who wants to get a job at the company someday, and Brent (Jim Meadows), Candy's old mentor who was poached by Amazon.
The show premiered on the 2nd of December 2021 on HBO Max. It was removed from there in 2022 just like many other series, but it was later added to Tubi in 2023.
Tropes in this series:
- Adjective Animal Alehouse: The "Thirsty Deer", a bar which appears in the show.
- Alliterative Name: Jingle Jim, Santa's right hand man.
- Alphabet News Network: HNN, the news network which serves the North Pole.
- Ambiguously Evil: Santa himself. While he is consistently portrayed as very flawed and clout seeking, the series as a whole can't seem to make its mind on whether he's genuinely contemptible. For one thing his reason for not picking Candy is portrayed as sound, but in the finale it's revealed he takes bribes. Candy clearly sees him as a Broken Pedestal at best, but it's implied she doesn't completely hate him by the end despite everything.
- Anthropomorphic Food: A common occurrence in the North Pole, with one of the main characters being a talking gingerbread woman named Cookie, complete with her taking a bite out of herself in the first episode.
- Asshole Victim: Junior is a verbally abusive jerk and is hit by Candy while driving then left for dead.
- Black Jezebel Stereotype: Played with in that she's not human, but Goldie acts like a Sassy Black Woman and is promiscuously bisexual.
- Blood from the Mouth: Junior does this after Candy accidentally runs him over with her car.
- Blowing Smoke Rings: Candy creates a smoke ring in episode 4 during her dinner with the rest of the men. In response, Junior creates a smoke penis and pushes it into the smoke ring.
- Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Candy desires to become the first female Santa Claus in history.
- Child Hater: According to Santa, this is the reason he didn't pick Candy to be the next Santa. She was just never good with children, and being a Friend to All Children is the most important quality a Santa needs.
- Christmas Elves: Being a series focused on Christmas, elves are fairly common and are of the dwarf variety, with the main character being an elf named Candy Smalls.
- Couch Gag: With the exception of the first episode, a different thing is seen occurring in front of the gates to Santa Inc in the opening for each episode.
- Country Matters: In the second episode, Junior calls Candy a "token elf cunt" after they bump into each other and he spills his food.
- Didn't Think This Through: Candy was so obsessed with being Santa, solely to be the first woman, that she didn't actually think about everything Santa stands for. IE, being a Friend to All Children. When Santa sees how she acts around children when she is made acting Santa, he sits her down and explains why he can't give her the job.
- Digging to China: Candy and the rest of the cast get to the South Pole in the fourth episode via drilling through the earth (with the help of a boat attached to a giant drill) from the North Pole.
- Double Standard: While the show tries to shine a light on issues such as sexism and representation, how it does that is... questionable. Such as Candy being hit on by a guy who gets invasive and he gets punched for being creepy, only for Goldie to basically do the same thing to Devin and it being considered comedic.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Candy is obsessed with becoming the first female, and elf, to be Santa. While she has the smarts and the skills to do the job, her lack of being civil with others and social interactions hurt her where it's needed most. Namely, she's terrible with children, wanting nothing to do with them and scaring them off. This is the main reason why Santa decided not to choose her despite filling all other criteria, as being Santa means being a Friend to All Children, something Candy has no actual interest in becoming and treats it more like developing a skill than just being nice to them. And yet, she refuses his compromise and sees the role being taken from her as unfair.
- Dumb Is Good: Devin is rather awkward and dim witted, and one of the least corrupted characters on the show. This leads to him being chosen as Santa over Candy.
- Easter Bunny: Here, he's known as Peter Rabbit, lives on Easter Island, and has a successor who is more interested in arts and crafts. The third episode has him try to poach Cookie to Easter Enterprises, only for it to be revealed that it was part of a plan by him to bring down Santa.
- The End... Or Is It?: The final episode has Junior seemingly run over and killed by Candy. At the very end, after the plot has been wrapped up, a shot of his prone body is seen, with his nose beginning to glow again...implying that Junior survive and most likely he'll come back and Candy will face the consequences of her actions.
- Everyone Has Standards: This depiction of Santa is far from the most ideal but it's clear he takes the role Friend to All Children very seriously. Despite Candy checking off every other criterion he needed and more, her inability and refusal to get along with kids made him change his mind about selecting her as his successor.
- Feminist Fantasy: Candy's ambition is to break the glass ceiling and become the first female Santa Claus.
- Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: Santa's reindeer are usually bipedal, although they can go on all four legs if the situation calls for it. A miniature horse is also briefly seen which only walks on four legs.
- Friend to All Children: Arguably the most important quality for anyone in the position of Santa and the eventual reason why Devin is chosen as the next Santa over Candy.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Candy is obsessed with proving herself as Santa's successor and truly does everything she can to earn her role. However, Santa chooses Devin instead of her because Devin has a natural talent for working with children, an essential quality of being Santa that Candy lacks.
- Honor Before Reason: Despite Santa offering her a legitimately acceptable compromise that would allow her to be the brains of Santa Inc, allowing her full control to build the company in her image, Candy rejects it completely since she wanted to be his proper successor and out in front for people to see rather than from behind the scenes.
- Karma Houdini: Candy hits Junior while driving to work and leaves him for dead, the ending leaves the situation ambiguous and his status as an Asshole Victim may make his plight less sympathetic but regardless, by the end of the season, Candy receives no on-screen consequences for what is, in effect, attempted murder.
- Legacy Character: As in Arthur Christmas and to a lesser extent The Santa Clause, the title of Santa Claus is a title which is passed from person to person. It's noted that they are typically white males, which Candy wants to change.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Apart from humans and anthropomorphic animals (particularly reindeers), Santa Inc's world is populated by mythological creatures, Anthropomorphic Food, Living Toys, Plant People and overall anything christmas themed under the sun.
- The Napoleon: Being an elf, Candy is naturally short. She's also hot-tempered, quick to violence and has a cynical outlook.
- Never My Fault: Candy is aggressively convinced she deserves to inherit the role of Santa, and is incredibly dismissive of the reasoning against it (namely she's a Jerkass around children). She halfheartedly offers to learn not to hate kids, but that's as far as it goes.Candy: scoffs* So I'm not "warm and cuddly", big deal. I know how to get the job done.Santa: "Warm and cuddly" is the job.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Episode 6 has a teen activist named Helda Bunburg show up, a fairly obvious reference to Greta Thunberg.
- Not Quite Dead: At the end the badly wounded Junior's nose begins to glow.
- Pesky Pigeons: It's revealed that every year, a group of pigeons spray negative graffiti on Santa's sleigh, requiring the elves to release sleeping pills to stop them.
- Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: After accidentally hitting Junior with her car, Candy refuses to get help for him because he was a jerk to her.
- Sassy Black Woman: Goldie's entire personality revolves around this.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Candy has become so focused on the practicalities of running Santa Inc. efficiently that she has neglected the most fundamental part of the job, being a Friend to All Children. This ends up costing her the position of Santa.
- Series Mascot: What Santa's compromise with Candy would have made Devin. He would make Devin the "Santa" but Candy would be the one with real power in the company.
- Strike Episode: The finale of season 1 has Candy stage a walkout of all the workers to show Santa how important they are to the day to day processes of Santa Inc.
- Tropaholics Anonymous: The trio come across one of these in the second episode for the denizens of the North Pole and which is kept secret.
- World of Jerkass: The entirety of the cast contains bumbling males and hyper-aggressive females.
