Christmas at Eureka’s Castle–aka Eureka’s Castle Christmas Special–is a TV special that premiered on Nickelodeon in 1990. For many of you, this might be a core memory, but for me, it’s just…well, a memory. A vague memory, but something that’s distinctly there. I’m not sure if I even watched this show as a very young Scrat. Yet I seem to recall recognizing the characters from this when I watched this TV special as a kid, so…maybe? This is, to the best of my knowledge, one of the only episodes of Eureka we taped back in the day. Fuck, it might be the only one. And yet I can still remember watching this as a whippersnapper and giggling at some of it. Kind of.

So…what is Eureka’s Castle? You’re asking the wrong person. It was basically Nickelodeon’s answer to Sesame Street, although the people behind it apparently hated that comparison. They also really hated Barney the Dinosaur, but it seems everyone in the children’s TV industry hated Barney the Dinosaur. Hell, maybe Barney the Dinosaur fucking hated Barney the Dinosaur but he had to pay the bills. You never know. Anyway, Eureka was a wizard. Or a witch. I’m not sure. She did magic, but she wasn’t very good at it. Always got her spells wrong. I can’t really tell if she’s meant to be an elf or a troll. In any case, she’s friendly but absentminded. Then there was Batly the Bat. Batly was vain, flamboyant, rather full of himself, and most likely a closeted homosexual. He also wore glasses, because bats have poor eyesight. Ha! Finally, there was a dragon named Magellan. He was probably a closeted homosexual too, but more notably, he was performed by Noel MacNeal, who you might recognize as the titular Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House. Cool.

There were other furry faces too–it’s really hard to watch this and not think of Sesame Street, so sorry if you’re reading this, good people who made Eureka’s Castle—including two…grouches? Swamp creatures? Hippies? They sing a song in this special about having a really long Christmas list, and that made me laugh as a kid, because that shit is funny when you’re like five. Actually, who am I kidding? It’s still pretty amusing as an adult.

Which reminds me…Christmas at Eureka’s Castle does have a plot. Kind of. Batly the Bat is directing a Christmas play, and Eureka is supposed to create a Christmas tree for it, but Eureka sucks at magic, so she makes teacups instead (then again, who am I to judge? I don’t know how to do magic!). So the dragon uses his tail to take the place of the Christmas tree, but this leads to shit going down, like him sneezing and nearly getting Batly killed, so Batly kicks the dragon out of the play, which makes the dragon sad, so he goes into the magical scary woods or something to find a Christmas tree to get back into Batly’s good graces. Also, I wanna say the TV show had a fucking giant in it, but if it did, said fucking giant doesn’t make an appearance in this special. But the greedy hairy hippies do.

Now, I mentioned earlier that my family taped this special off of Nickelodeon, but since my mom was evil, she skipped all but one of the commercials (one for Long John Silver’s) when recording it. So I was ecstatic to find this YouTube upload from the same broadcast including all of the ads…only to find it out is like five commercials total. Yeah. This thing has only one break. But hey, at least the ads are there, so if you want to watch this as God intended instead of my mom’s evil recording, then look no further!

As for Eureka’s Castle, it’s sort of fallen into a weird pop culture black hole. It’s never gotten a DVD release (at least in the states), and it is–not kidding–a show that falls into the “lost media” category. Sources vary on the exact number, but the series had at least 100 hour-long episodes during its initial run. These were later split up into half-hour episodes for syndication, although again, the exact number fucking varies. In any case, only 24 of the cut-down half-hour episodes are available on Paramount Plus, and really, how many people even know they’re on there? So sadly, Eureka’s Castle hasn’t been able to transcend generations. It’s more or less stuck in its own void, just like one of Eureka’s failed spells. Maybe one day the demand will be loud enough for those “missing” episodes to be found, but for the time being? “Just put it on the list.”

Gee, that was kind of a downer to end this on. Ummmm….happy Twelfth Night?