So Bart has a drag-related accident, and busts his tailbone. But Springfield Elementary has no accessible ramps for his new wheelchair! Luckily, Fat Tony has a construction company that specializes in charging for said ramps, and before you know it, the school is shut down for lack of funds. Since this is nine years before McDonald's would start sponsoring report cards, how can they raise the funds? Well, there's a group willing to run the school. But they sure do like to talk about toys!
In fact, that's all they want to talk about. Lisa's punished for drawing Venn diagrams (fight the power, sister!), and quickly discovers the group running the school is only interested in designing a hot new Christmas toy. And by hot, I mean evil. Funzo is SO evil, he's programmed to destroy other toys.
So to save Christmas, Homer is pressed into Grinch duty and rounds up all the Funzos. A quick bonfire seems the best way to go, but the evil company's security guard, Gary Coleman (played by Gary Coleman) interrupts, and there is a long and wide-ranging conversation about the good and bad points of Christmas and materialism. In the end, all the Funzos are destroyed, and The Simpsons share a nice Christmas dinner with Gary Coleman.
We're about halfway through my Christmas Simpsons marathon, and this is as good a time as any to point out that the last two episodes both reference It's A Wonderful Life and see presents burnt. I'm planning a full roundup of recurring themes after I review all nine.
As a Simpsons episode, I rate this 8/10.
As a Christmas show, I rate this 7/10. There's a lot of Christmas at the end, but less than half the episode even takes place in December.
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