I picked up a copy of the original Nelvanamation VHS Cassette which contained A Cosmic Christmas. Other than the first broadcast, for most, this was the only way you could see these classic specials.
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Four magical fantasies from today’s top animation studio.
What if you received a Christmas visit by three wise men – from outer space? How about a rock and roll devil who offers you fame and fortune – at the price of your soul? Or a pair of runaway robots in an interstellar love story… or a kingdom of loony extraterrestrials who are eating their own planet?
The themes are universal. The appeal is to young and old alike. The technique is superb. The studio is Nelvana, an award-winning Canadian outfit quickly rising to international fame as the greatest thing since Disney. And this Warner Home Video program presents four of Nelvana’s marvelous animated fantasies on a single videocassette.
A Cosmic Christmas, Nelvana’s first big hit, is a lively and original fable about the meaning of the holiday season. It has all the superb characteristics of every Nelvana production: strong story line, fine musical score, painstaking illustration, and characterizations that leap off the screen with life.
The Devil and Daniel Mouse is a rock and roll parable about fame and its price, a marvelous modern retelling of the classic American legend “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” It’s also a showcase or the inspired talents of Nelvana, the award-winning Canadian studio that has set its sights on equalling – or even surpassing – the classics of he Disney era.
Nelvana’s next creation, Romie-O and Julie-8 (Runaway Robots!), brings Shakespeare into the space age. Two robots from rival manufacturing companies meet, fall in love, and try to run away – only to wind up in the hands of the horrible Junk Monster, another lovable Nelvana villain.
Finally comes Please Don’t Eat the Planet, subtitled An Intergalactic Thanksgiving, an ecology-wise tale that pits a family of hard-working, simple-minded space pioneers against a swarm of zanies on the planet Laffalot. Sid Caesar stars as the voice of King Goochi, whose subjects are – literally – eating themselves out of house and home.
This is real animation, light years ahead of the mass-produced article shown on Saturday morning TV. Each Nelvana film is a fully realized, meticulously crafted masterpiece requiring months of work and tens of thousands of individual drawings.
The result is more than impressive. It’s magic. And nothing like it has been done in years.
With songs and Music by John Sebastian and Sylvia Tyson. Featuring the voice of Sid Caesar as King Goochi.
Download a recreated pdf version of the Nelvanamation logo here.
Dyani-Alexandra Johnson
WOW! I. Am. STUNNED that you were able to find this!
I never knew all four of those cartoons came on one cassette! I always thought they were simply made-for-TV specials that my dad had recorded onto a VHS tape that I’d used to watch over & over & over again, all the way into my 20’s. Seriously, I LOVED those cartoons.
I’m 47-years-old now & over the years that tape my dad had made has long since disappeared (most likely binned by my ex-husband. He’d binned more than half of my belongings & sold most of the rest… another story for a different time).
I’ve told many people about these strange & fantastical cartoons since missing them, wishing I still had them, but no one’s ever heard of either them, or Nelvanamation.
Now, for nostalgia sake, I REALLY wish I still had these to show to my children so they could see some of my favourite cartoons growing up. My kids are 18 & 20-years-old, & while the 20-year-old would probably find them a wee bit bit goofy, they’d still enjoy it to a certain extent, especially since these are animated rather than live-action. However, my 18-year-old would likely really appreciate the storytelling & especially the art style (since they’re an artist themself who studies different types of stylizations & who has, over the past four years, developed their own using the digital pad medium).
This morning of August 23ʳᵈ 2025, on a whim I decided to Google The Devil and Daniel Mouse (MY favourite of the four because of the music, subject matter, B.L. was just so funny & interesting, plus Jan’s outfits were the best!) then continued on & on until I landed here, on this unsecure webpage.
If there’s anyone still monitoring the comments section from this August 21ˢᵗ 2021 posting (wow! Almost EXACTLY 4 years TO THE DAY of me typing this!), IF you still have this eclectic & AMAZING find, would you be willing to discuss my possibly purchasing a copy of it from you? There are any number of different mediums it could be recorded to, I’d accept ANYTHING as long as I could get my hands on these four cartoons again!
Please and thank you,
Cheers!
Jeff
Hi there, sorry, I’ve been remiss on responding to comments. A quick search of YouTube shows me that all four are readily available to view. Just search for them by name, and you should be able to share easily!