Santa Claus: The Movie–aka Santa Claus–opened on this day 40 years ago. Produced by the Salkinds, they were wanting to do for Santa Claus what Superman: The Movie had done for the caped crusader. In fact, both films have lengthy “serious” prologues telling their hero’s origin stories before moving to the then-present day, which is where the tone shifts and the jokes start coming. The difference between Superman: The Movie and Santa Claus: The Movie (besides, you know, one of them obviously being a better film) is that Superman made big money. Santa Claus flopped hard. And I mean hard.

Yes, although it’s reached cult classic status today (and is one of the most popular Christmas classics in the UK, for whatever reason), Santa Claus: The Movie was inexplicably one of the most expensive films ever made at the time. Finding exact production budget info on a motion picture from four decades ago isn’t easy, unfortunately, but some reports suggest it cost as much as $50 million, and just for the sake of comparison, Return of the Jedi had cost $37 million two years prior, which was considered a lot back then. Just how the fuck did a Santa Claus movie require so much coin? Among other things, massive wooden sets were constructed to create the North Pole. That ain’t cheap.

You know what else wasn’t cheap? The marketing campaign. Believe it or not, Santa Claus: The Movie was everywhere at the time, and it still wasn’t enough to get people sleighing to the theaters (maybe because consumers didn’t even realize they were being sold a movie and just assumed it was Santa doing his usual commercial gigs). This included, yes, a partnership with McDonald’s, but sadly, you couldn’t get Dudley Moore or John Lithgow toys inside of your Happy Meals. Instead it was…a series of books about certain scenes from the movie, which is something they would also do for An American Tail (a film which did make money) a year later. Look, if I had been alive at the time and was old enough to read, I probably would’ve dug these. Just not as much as I would’ve wanted my very own toy Dudley Moore.

But that wasn’t the star of the show. The most famous part of this promotion was something you might have in your attic without even knowing it is from fucking Santa Claus: The Movie. That’s right. I’m talking about the reindeer ornament. Supposedly, this was highly successful, as it was a pretty good bargain, and really, high quality for something you got with a book of McDonald’s gift certificates (God, I miss McDonald’s gift certificates. I only ever got them once for Christmas, and that was enough to make me miss them!).

Merry Thanksgiving, y’all!