If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered where the Easter Bunny came from, and most who’s better to explain that to us than Burl Ives? Thats about what The First Easter Rabbit from Rankin/Bass Productions is, and thats fine by me.

I wasn’t around for the first airing of The First Easter Rabbit on TV, and I never remember seeing it in reruns, but I’m sure a lot of you remember it. Basically, it’s a short tale of a girl with a stuffed rabbit named Stuffy. A fairy decides that people need a symbol for Easter so they can remember when it is (no joke), so she turns Stuffy into The Easter Rabbit.

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Ah, Rankin/Bass. You can’t have Christmas without at least a few of their classic holiday specials. Of those, 1974’s A Year Without Santa Claus has received a modern spin-off starring the Miser Brothers, Snow Miser and Heat Miser. Canadian animation studio Cuppa Coffee and Warner Bros.

A Miser Brothers Christmas premiered last year on ABC Family, and is now available on DVD from Warner Bros. Mickey Rooney is back (albeit in raspier form) to voice Santa, and the special is a pretty decent attempt to emulate the look and feel of classic Rankin/Bass.

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Good news! The 1982 Rankin/Bass animated fantasy film The Flight of Dragons is finally available on DVD, via the Warner Archive. The movie is based on a couple books from the 70s, and stars John Ritter as a Dungeons & Dragons-type board game inventor who gets transported into the world of his game (which is really the world of his ancestors, go figure).

I had never seen this movie before, as it was just a little before my time, but it was pretty entertaining. Not in the way that Rankin & Bass intended, I’m sure, but it was entertaining nontheless. It kind of feels like a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Monty Python at times.

It stars John Ritter, James Earl Jones, Bob McFadden, and Don Messick, and even includes a title song by non other than Mr. American Pie himself, Don McLean.

You can pick it up exclusively on the Warner Archive website today.

Further Reading
The Flight of Dragons on Wikipedia.