Roly Poly The Polar Bear

A few years ago, all of my Dad's side of the family met in San Diego for Christmas. As people generally do the first time they visit there, we spent a day at the zoo. So as a San Diego Zoo veteran, let me give you this advice; skip the panda exhibit. It's what everyone wants to see, but it's totally not worth the hassle. You stand in line for a good half an hour, and for your wait are generally treated to a black and white blur hiding behind bamboo plants. If you want to get your money's worth, head straight to the polar bear exhibit. Those guys know how to put on a show. When we were there, two of them were bouncing a ball back and forth, and another one was doing back flips in the water for a solid twenty minutes. It was definitely one of the highlights of my holiday that year.

The Peppermint Kandy Kids - "Roly Poly The Polar Bear" (mp3)

When I was a kid, my sister and my favorite Christmas albums were by a group called The Peppermint Kandy Kids. Of the three we had, Rudolph's Christmas Party was the best. It was full of fun song's (like this one) about Christmas characters you never heard of on other albums, like Morris The Moose, or Peter and Penelope Penguin. I have absolutely no idea when it was released, but I can't really remember a Christmas when we didn't listen to it. Usually the well worn LPs were the soundtrack to decorating the tree.

A couple of year's ago I did some searching online trying to dig up information about the albums, but all I found were a bunch of message board posts from other people who were trying to track down this album. I'd pretty much given up on ever hearing these songs again, when last year just before Christmas I got a package from my mom. She had found a shady record dealer online who was selling CD copies of the albums. But in this case, hurray for music pirates! Listening to these songs again was a great trip down memory lane, and I'm looking forward to listening to them with my niece this year.

If you're one of those who grew up on The Peppermint Kandy Kids and stumbled onto this post, you might want to head over to FaLaLaLaLa, a great blog dedicated to old, out of print Christmas albums. One of their featured albums would probably interest you...

UPDATE (11/17/08): Usually I hate doing anything Christmas related until after Thanksgiving, and that includes posting Christmas songs. But for the third year in a row, I'm getting bombarded with visits (12% of my traffic over the past two weeks) and e-mails regarding the Peppermint Kandy Kids. So I'm reposting this song two weeks early. Consider it an early Christmas present. Enjoy!