I am sure as you read the title, you wonder what the hell is going on. Is this respectable animation blog, with writings on underappreciated Russian animators and animation for everyone really going to delve into Rapsittie Street Kids, a terrible cartoon already covered by every single Nostalgia Critic rip-off YouTube essayist?
Well I am not interested in reviewing this thing, I am not going to talk about the story in great detail and I’m certainly not going to nitpick it. My experience watching Rapsittie Street Kids was a positive one, so I want to discuss why it was a positive experience for me.
For those unaware, Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa was a holiday special that aired once in 2002, forgotten until uploaded to the Internet by the very director of the special. Almost immediately, the special gained infamy. The crude, amateur CGI is immediately noticeable. As you can tell by the screenshots, it does not look like something that would air on television, but instead a GIF on a 1999 GeoCities page. An attempt to create a kitsch sort of holiday staple, the special’s storyline and characters never try to break out of the mold. For these reasons, the special has been declared the worst animated Christmas special by some.
Yet it is fun to watch. I found the poor computer graphics to be charming, feeling nostalgic of the early days of computing. The pace is swift, and the special never really fails at being engaging. Strange things happen often, leaving me baffled at what just occurred. I guess these are the feelings that happen when you watch something “so bad it’s good,” but can something bad really be good? Can Rapsittie really be “the worst” when there’s holiday specials that are just boring to watch? There are holiday specials which are unwatchably boring, which is not a crime that Rapsittie Street Kids commits. Something like “Goof Troop” is regarded as a quality piece of television by some, and is a polished Disney animation product, yet I find it nearly unwatchable. It’s intensely boring and unengaging, yet Rapsittie isn’t boring nor unengaging. Is Rapsittie Street Kids better than Goof Troop? All I know is that trying to write 12 articles in a 12 day span is a poor idea that every editor at Cartoon Milk regrets.
