Nick’s Thanksgiving Fest is a 25-minute animated Thanksgiving special which premiered on November 22, 1989, and ran annually on Nickelodeon until 1996.
The special was told in anthology format, and most of the runtime was taken up by two segments- Thanksgiving Nightmare, in which warring roaches and mice seeking a family’s Thanksgiving leftover must team up against a greater adversary- the family cat; and Thanksgiving Dreams, where two children growing up in the Great Depression have a marvelous dream about a Thanksgiving feast that prepares itself.
In addition, before, between, and after the segments were aired a series of interstitial shorts focusing on various aspects of Thanksgiving, each being little more than a setup for a simple gag. These consisted of:
- A worker in a cranberry factory explaining the outlandish process by which all of those cranberries are forced into that tiny can.
- A narrator attempts to interview one of the few turkeys who hasn’t been made into Thanksgiving dinner, only for the turkey to flee.
- A vegetarian hunter shoots carrots.
- A mother rabbit shows why Thanksgiving dinner gets harder and harder to prepare every year.
- The search for turkeys to interview is back on, but all the narrator can find is some very odd-looking moose.
- An astronaut demonstrates the wonder of dehydrated Thanksgiving dinner.
- A pair of lovely grandparents are thankful for what matters most- football!
- The narrator finally tracks down some turkeys, and manages to answer the elusive question- what do turkeys eat on Thanksgiving?
Tropes in the special include:
- Animate Inanimate Object: In Thanksgiving Dreams the children discover after getting downstairs that just about everything in their kitchen- from the toaster to the table- has gained a face and is helping to prepare a Thanksgiving feast.
- Anthropomorphic Food: In Thanksgiving Dreams, the children see a Thanksgiving feast helping to prepare itself- everything from carrots doing synchronized swimming in a stovepot to a chef hat-wearing plucked turkey supervising the other foods’ preparation.
- Bannister Slide: This is how Emily and Sam get to the kitchen in Thanksgiving Dreams; given that they were currently shrunken at the time, it was a lot more efficient than hopping down all of those stairs.
- Blob Monster: In Thanksgiving Dreams, overyeasted bread dough ends up growing into one of these.
- Cats Are Mean: Subverted in Thanksgiving Nightmare- the cat might be the antagonist, but it was only acting as such because its owner threatened to kick it out of they came back and “it” (read:anyone) had touched their Thanksgiving leftovers.
- Circling Birdies: The insect from Thanksgiving Nightmare gets circling stars after trying and failing to catch a bone falling from the table.
- Disappeared Dad: Sam and Emily's father is neither seen nor heard from during dinner or when the family gets up on Thanksgiving morning.
- Enemy Mine: In Thanksgiving Nightmare, the feuding cockroaches and mice end up having to team up to overcome the family cat.
- Explosive Breeder: One of the interstitial segments uses this as a gag, with an interview to a Civilized Animal rabbit who complains that, every year, it gets harder and harder to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her family. Pan over to show a screen night-completely covered in kid rabbits.
- Godzilla Threshold: The mice's plan involves sending someone (preferably someone too dumb to know this is a suicide mission) out to ensure the cat is distracted. The others immediately look over towards the same mouse with a Simpleton Voice. He knows exactly where this is going, steadfastly refuses, and gets kicked out into the open.
- Good Parents: Sam and Emily's mother is content to skip dinner so her children don't go hungry. Her only concern is that there soon won't be any food in the house at all for them to eat.
- The Great Depression: Thanksgiving Dreams is set during this, and stars two children whose jobless mother is struggling to find anything for them to eat for Thanksgiving.
- Instant Mass: Just Add Water!: Played for laughs in one of the interstitial segments, where an astronaut adds a tiny amount of water to a pouch and is greeted by a full Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, he might have a bit of difficulty catching it in zero-g.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: Sam and Emily shrink down to about palm-size in their dream.
- Last-Second Word Swap:Mouse: No all we need is someone stupid- uh, brave enough to go out there and take care of the cat.
- The Man in the Moon: When the childrens’ dream in Thanksgiving Dreams starts, the moon (and the stars too, for that matter) gains a face and starts dancing around in the night sky.
- Narrator: The interstitial segments have a male narrator interacting with the given subjects and setting up the related jokes. "Thanksgiving Nightmare" has a female narrator that plays things far more straight.
- No Focus on Humans: While a human family (including a member named Martha) does appear in Thanksgiving Nightmare, the main focus of the short is on the variety of hungry pest animals vying for the family’s food.
- Offscreen Crash: This happens at the end of Thanksgiving Nightmare when the woman throws the cat out of the house and he lands in some garbage cans.
- Or Was It a Dream?: The childrens’ adventure in the kitchen in Thanksgiving Dreams has to have been a dream- except the next morning there’s a full Thanksgiving meal in the kitchen with no explanation as to where it came from, and it’s even overly pepper-filled because of some Pepper Sneeze antics the children pulled. Oh, and one of the carrots pulls a Wink "Ding!" with Sam.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: One of the interstitial segments about “some of the lucky turkeys who managed to avoid Thanksgiving dinner” has them disguising themselves as mooses.Not-a-Turkey: He means meeses!
- Pepper Sneeze: In Thanksgiving Dreams, Sam defeats a doughy Blob Monster by sprinkling it with pepper, causing it to sneeze so forcefully it deflates.
- Pun: When the narrator asks a factory worker if there’s any special technique in canning cranberries, he responds that they must mean cramberries, because how else could they cram so many of them into those little cans? There’s also the fact that the berries are squashed into the cans by elephants, “who work for peanuts”.
- Running Gag: Every collection of interstitial segments has one about the narrators’ attempts to track down the rare few turkeys that haven’t been eaten for Thanksgiving.
- Scared of What's Behind You: This trope pops up in Thanksgiving Nightmare when the mouse and the cockroach fight- the mouse suddenly flees, only for the family cat to turn out to have snuck up behind the roach.
- Seesaw Catapult: At one point in Thanksgiving Dream, Sam and Emily use a spoon as one to send a fork flying.
- Show Within a Show: After a mouse changes the channel from a soap opera (see below), the cat ends up watching Invasion Of The Weasel Men.
- Soap Within a Show: The cat is shown watching a soap opera involving “John” and “Marsha”. Somehow, they notice when a mouse goes flying and hits the bottom of the television.
- Struggling Single Mother: Sam and Emily's mother is doing what she can to provide for her children, but she's out of work and well-aware the food is running out.
- Verbal Backspace: As the mice hash out there plan, the leader gets to the part where someone has to distract the cat."Now, all we need is someone stupid—brave enough to go out there and take care of the cat."
- Visible Odor: In the Thanksgiving Nightmare segment, a cloud of white mist emanates from the Thanksgiving dinner, grows a hand, and physically grabs and turns an insect by the nose.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: This can be observed in Thanksgiving Nightmare- the battle plans of the mice and roaches, which were explained in detail, fail, while the one whispered between the sole mouse and sole roach who didn’t get sucked into the vacuum cleaner works.
- White Gloves: The insect from the Thanksgiving Nightmare segment has four of these.