Justin’s rating: What era is this set in, the ’30s? There’s a paddywagon!

Justin’s review: Reaching back in my mind to the ’80s, I know that the Sunday (and daily, if we could get our hands on it) funny pages was a sacred experience to a kid. But even back then, I understood that about only 20% of the strips — your Far Sides, your Calvin and Hobbes — were the actually funny ones and that the other 80% were tiresome exercises such as Marmaduke and Family Circus and Garfield and Cathy and Andy Capp.

It’s bonkers to me how unfunny most of these long-running strips were, but perhaps people simply like the comfort of seeing familiar faces going about familiar routines.

And in case you were wondering, Ziggy (which first debuted in 1958) was in the 80% of strips I’d read but be amused enough to laugh. Its main character was almost designed to be forgettable — a bald, short, half-naked sad sack who meandered through life. And in 1982, he meandered into his one and only TV special, a short Christmas episode called Ziggy’s Gift.

Our little hero ventures out to sign up to become a street Santa amid a wave of petty thefts. All you really need to know about the Ziggyverse is that everyone here is involved in slapstick and Ziggy seems to emit a force field that breaks stuff in his vicinity, from mirrors to clockwork Santas. He’s also got a cute little pudgy dog that doesn’t do a lot other than pee on stuff.

As Ziggy goes about the trials and tribulations of Santa apprenticeship, he finds himself at odds with a secret pickpocket who’s been hiding mailboxes, garbage cans, and so on. Ziggy himself doesn’t talk, but others around him sometimes do. Mostly it’s a lot of sight gags and physical humor.

Oh, and for some unexplained reason, Ziggy’s collection cauldron is magic? Or something? Occasionally it glows and pits out a wad of cash when he needs to buy something, like 50 live turkeys that he promptly lets loose all over town. The neighbors will love that.

Unlike all of the crooked Santas, Ziggy is a paragon of charity as he putters around helping those who need an extra hand. It’s a pretty selfless focus for a main character of a Christmas special, and that makes it kind of endearing. So don’t find yourself too surprised when his wanderings end up in a foster home.

Like its namesake comic, Ziggy’s Gift is charmingly inoffensive. The animators put in a lot of extra work to make this look fantastic for the time, and the (dorky) theme song actually won an Emmy. It’s very much a trip back to early ’80s TV Christmasland with a warm-hearted ending. I can hardly summon enough Scrooges and Grinches to put it down.

Intermission!

• Not exactly tearing up the ’82 Christmas charts with that theme song, are ya?
• Ziggy’s mirror is uncooperative
• How exactly does the news track charitable giving on street corners?
• Wow, we actually see Ziggy’s underwear
• This is a really sad apartment, especially with the yo-yo on the coathooks
• Garbage pickpocket!
• That is a terrifying clockwork Santa
• Man, a pee joke? What kind of filth was the network peddling back then?
• “Yes we’re open but don’t expect much.”
• All of the sad Christmas turkeys waiting execution
• $175 for all of the turkeys seems like a good deal
• The impromptu caroling is pretty funny
• The cop’s badge starts glowing?