"Disney Holiday Treasures" - Upper Deck (2004) - The Figures!

Hope your 2023 is off to a great start!

We swing back to 2004 (which I can't believe was 19 years ago) for a stop at the Collectibles Corner with this pair of figures from Upper Deck's "Disney Holiday Treasures" from my personal collection:

Pretty cool! And no mention of Emily!

Emoji Blitz Update - "Mickey's Christmas Carol"

Hot on the heels of "The Muppet Christmas Carol" event, Disney Emoji Blitz now has a "Mickey's Christmas Carol" event, featuring two new emojis!

The new emojis are Emily Cratchit Minnie (seen at top) and Ghost of Christmas Future Pete (below).

Pretty fun, but this raises the question of whether Mrs. Cratchit is actually called "Emily" in "Mickey's Christmas Carol" or was that a name that was assigned later, possibly based on Miss Piggy's Emily Cratchit from "The Muppet Christmas Carol."

This bears further investigation! Not that I mind watching "Mickey's Christmas Carol" again!

More Blitzin'!

Disney Emoji Blitz also includes emoji from the Muppets franchise, so more holiday cheer this year included new emoji from "The Muppet  Christmas Carol" featuring Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy in their roles of Bob and Emily Cratchit:

Love it!

Very Much So!

OK, in the true spirit of randomness, here's a wacky card (I think) of the Cratchit Christmas dinner:

I don't remember where I got the image or what the context was, but... Fun!

"A Christmas Carol" All-Star Team - Day 9

The next Cratchit family member to join our "A Christmas Carol" All-Star team is the matriarch of the bunch - Mrs. Cratchit!

She looms pretty large in the scheme of things with her awesome pudding and frank assessment of the "founder of the feast," which is pretty good for someone without a first name! 

We never do hear Mrs. Cratchit's first name in the book and, in fact, I don't exactly know the first or last name of the person whom I pick to represent Mrs. C on my team!

She's the actress who voices Mrs. Cratchit on the 1953 NBC broadcast of "A Christmas Carol" starring Laurence Olivier. 

I've never seen an actual cast list for that show but the version available from Heritage Media has an outro that lists a few members of the supporting cast. The guy has a cool British accent, so he sounds reliable!

There are two females listed, Denise Bryer and Olive Gregg, both of whom were extremely prolific voice actors. 

There are two female roles in this version, Mrs. Cratchit and Fan (referred to as just "little sister"), so you figure one did one and the other did the other voice. But who was who?

Some further research indicates that both actresses did kid voices, including boys (not an uncommon practice).

So, I thought,  "Oh, I bet one of them plays Tiny Tim!" He only has his one line, said twice, but, yeah, it sounds like a woman doing a boy voice.

So, I tracked down what the "boy" voice of each actress sounded like, but they're pretty similar and they both do sound like Tiny Tim, so either one could've been TT, with the other probably Mrs. C!

Denise Bryer's actually still around at age 92! Do you think she remembers anything about this broadcast? Would she know which character she played?

In any event, as I mentioned when discussing this broadcast before, I listened to a record of it over and over as a kid and always thought Mrs. Cratchit stole the show!

So good job, Denise Bryer or Olive Gregg!