Vintage Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Plush Toys

“You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, …. ” well, we all know the lyrics to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer so I’ll stop there. But every time I hear those words it takes me back to my childhood in the 1960s when you only got one chance a year to watch Rudolph save Christmas. We never missed it … it was Must See TV for sure!

Fast forward to the 1990s. By then, I was married and had two boys of my own to watch Rudolph with. Unlike when I was their age, we now had VHS tapes and could watch Rudolph whenever we wanted to, and we did. The boys got to know the characters as well as my husband Charlie and I knew them.

Then in 1998, the CVS Pharmacy sold a limited-edition set of 12 plush toy characters from the show made by the Stuffins Company. Each week for the six weeks leading up to Christmas, you could buy two different characters. I knew I had to have a set and remember going from store to store trying to find all of them. It was like a treasure hunt and we managed to find all 12. In 1999, CVS sold a new set of plush toy characters. This time around, we weren’t successful in getting all of them, but put the two years together, and we managed to buy most of the characters from the show. In all, we have 18 of them—Rudolph, Santa Claus in a red suit, Santa Claus in a plaid suit, Sam the Snowman, Clarice, King Moonracer, Comet, a train with square wheels on his caboose, a cowboy who rides an ostrich, a plane that can’t fly, Yukon Cornelius, Bumble the Abominable Snowman, Hermey, Elf Foreman, tall elf with glasses, Doll, Spotted Elephant, and Charlie-In-The-Box.

All are in excellent condition; however, they no longer have the tags. At the time, I didn’t know it was important to keep the tags attached to the toy so tore them off as soon as we got home from CVS. I guess if you’re a collector, you want the tags, but to me, they’d just get in the way.

Since 1998, these cute little plush toy characters have had a place in my home every year at Christmastime and I definitely consider them to be a family treasure!