During the song The Best Kid in the World, Nicole tells how Santa will see just how good she thinks she is. I thought she said that she didn't believe in Santa?
Maybe she's a closet Santa believer?
Great-Grandma's language?
Why does Ricky's Great-Grandmother speak in English half the time while the other half is nonsensical gibberish?
Why was this aired on national television? THAT'S the million dollar question.
Because in those days, WB would air ANYTHING as long as they could find advertisers.
The Voice Acting
How did they get A-list voice actors for this, and why did they agree to do this?
Three words: paycheck, paycheck, paycheck.
As Platypus Comix explained in their article on the special, the voice acting is one of the first things done in a typical North American cartoon. When the actors were hired, the script and the concept art were the only things done by that point; they couldn't know the animation would turn out the way it did. Both script and art weren't that great, though, so it's still likely they were only in it for the money.
How did this movie come to be?
My biggest question is who came up with this idea in the first place. Honestly, there was actual potential here for something great. The cast and animators were all very experienced. So, what in the hell happened?
Unseasonal clothing
Why in the hell is Nicole wearing a midriff baring outfit while it’s SNOWING?!
For the same reason JRPG characters wear bare midriffs while it's snowing, I guess.
Because this was set in 2002. Trust me, this was super common at the time - the idea was that people would put on coats when it was cold.
Teddy out of place?
How did the teddy bear specifically, of all the trash that was presumably in the dumpster, end up on a random car in the junkyard with no other trash in sight (except for the cars themselves, which presumably were not present in the dumpster)? The implications are either that each piece of trash from the dumpster was placed in a different random spot (which would be a pointless waste of time) or that the teddy bear was the only thing in the dumpster (possible, if unlikely, but wouldn't it be dumped in a general trash pile instead of with the cars?)
, the voice acting is one of the first things done in a typical North American cartoon. When the actors were hired, the script and the concept art were the only things done by that point; they couldn't know the animation would turn out the way it did. Both script and art weren't that great, though, so it's still likely they were only in it for the money.