The First Easter Rabbit

Now we go into the second of the Easter Trilogy of Rankin Bass, The First Easter Rabbit.

Burl Ive reprise himself as narrator as an olde white hare as tells a tale of the First Easter Rabbit. The Rabbit named Stuffy (voiced by Robert Morse) was a stuff doll for a little girl named Glenda (maybe Robotic, yet remind me of the same girl in Frosty’s Winter Wonderland), but she got sick, as the doctor recommend burning all of her fabrics away.

“Fire, and lots of it!”

-Dr. Hibbert.

“That’s you answer to everything!”

-Marge Simpsons.

A fairy named Calipee saves the Rabbit by bringing him to life as the Easter Rabbit for a symbol and to go Easter Valley. He meets with a real rabbit trio of Spats, Whiskers, and Flop.

The villain is Zero the Snow Wizard (one of four Paul Frees voices) and Brrruuuuuce the snowball. Their plan is to spread snow to everywhere including Apri…I mean Easter Valley, and get the golden lilly.

Our bunny friends got to Easter Valley through a caverns from a hallow tree, where they meet Santa Claus (once again voiced by Paul Frees.) as he suggest to start Easter at a nearby town.   

This is the weakest of the trilogy, but naturally better than the sequel. Unlike the first and third of the Easter films, I didn’t have any long nostalgia for this film. It’s not the worst, but it’s less magical and most rushed of the films. I had a little theory that ABC either wanted another Easter film only shorter, or ABC like Peter Cottontail, but hated the length of the film, and results in negative that they wanted a longer one while not as long as Cottontail. It’s very similar with the music choice in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that they like “We’re A Couple of Misfits, but hated the length, as they hated “Fame and Fortune”, but like the length, and made worst for CBS when put the “We’re A Couple of Misfit” audio rushed through the “Fame and Fortune” footage. Thus we have Easter Bunny Is Comin’ To Town, which I’ll be hopping towards later.  

Best time to bring up Robert Morse. This is his first out of three of the Rankin Bass along with young Scrooge and “slightly young” Jack Frost. He does OK as much as everyone except for Glenda here. He’s not as good and active as Casey Kasem as Peter Cottontail (what bunny can aside from Bugs Bunny or Hugh Jackman) He still voice act today for better (the governor in Legend of Korra) and for worst (Santa Claus in Teen Titans Go).

This is the last film Joan Gardner voiced for Rankin Bass after six earlier films, as she moved on to voice in mostly Hanna Barbera TV shows. I do miss the voice as sort of wished they used her more often.

While one of rabbit is Paul Frees (this isn’t the Paul Frees heaviest of the films), the others is Whiskers voiced by Don Messick of then Scooby Doo but in voice range of Ratchet of G1 Transformers, and Flops is voiced by Stan Freberg of Junior (Looney Tunes).

I almost thought Stuffy was a young Colonel Bunniton, but that’s less likely the case, as it is its own Easter film to set in their own town, an unnamed town that I could assume is New York, but it’s not that big and every state has their 6^th Avenue, and yes, they used the Easter Parade song here. I’m better off watching most of the Easter Parade with the host in the next review, Fred Astaire.

As for the film itself, it’s pretty filler with some nice Mushi Studios animation, but this wasn’t fully stuffed for me.