Gifts from the Air (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2017
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

"Good lord!  Are flesh-eating toy soldiers real?!"

Gifts from the Air is a 1937 animated short by Columbia Pictures which was featured as a part of their Color Rhapsody series.  This tells the tale of a broken toy soldier thrown away from a toy store but picked up by a poor boy.  The boy fixes the soldier and takes him home, where the soldier calls Santa Claus in gratitude who brings presents to the boy while he sleeps.

It's not a subtle short about the joys of kindness and giving, and it's more playful than it is enjoyable.  Gifts from the Air is harmless though it's hard to have any sort of opinion on it, especially when far better animated shorts were being produced at the time by Disney, Warner Brothers, and Fleischer Studios.  In fact it came out the same year Disney changed the animation game with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which makes it even more primitive by comparison.

It's fairly well animated though.

"I'm pretty sure that's racist, but it's hard to tell how because I'm so terrified."

The short is mostly dialogue-less for the majority of it, which partially works in their favor since they can fill it with nonstop humor.  Due to the quantity over quality style of the riffing there are a lot of gags that land, even if there are a fair amount that are just meh.

Of course Mike, Kevin, and Bill zero in on what was considered "P.C." in different times, pretty much from the Native American caricature in the opening credits of the piece.  What they seem to crave the most is the chaos of the finale, which is just a bunch of toys doing trippy things.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill are horrified by what they see, but they can easily make it hilarious in doing so.

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