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The New Adventures Of Little Toot: An Exercise In The Dishonesty Of Nostalgia

 
 
Nostalgia can make you love even the most baffling things.

Nostalgia is the best liar that we have, quite honestly. Something truly terrible you might adore, simply because it came to you in a part of your life when you needed it, or when you enjoyed it for what it was, instead of seeing it for what it truly is. This is why people still like certain shows they grew up with, despite a good handful of them being just trash. When I was growing up, I really only had a select few things to watch, because for a good while when I was little, we didn't have cable. Because of this, I wound up renting movies a lot, and a lot of those are, admittedly, still movies I love today. Some of which have since then become all time classics. Stuff like Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, or Beetlejuice.

But some of them, even I'll admit despite my fondness remaining, are pretty terrible, honestly. And none is a better example than what the spotlight will be shone on today; The New Adventures of Little Toot.

An animated feature film (arguably, I'd say, because it's only actually clocking in at 52 minutes - despite other sources like IMDB stating it clocks in at 45 minutes - and a feature film is generally over 60 minutes, so) from 1992, based on the characters from the beloved childrens book classic and Disney animated original short film, "Little Toot". There's no user reviews on IMDB, there's no information outside who starred in it and who directed it on Wikipedia, and there's not even a Rotten Tomatoes page for it. This thing is the epitome of a Fuzzy Memory, because as far as I know, I'm the only one who's ever seen the damn thing. Oh sure, if you look hard enough you can find it to watch online, but even then it requires a bit of commitment.

There's been plenty of things I saw as a child that I held dear to my heart because, growing up, media was my only friend and escape from the pain in my day to day life, but there's also been plenty of things from that same category that I've refused to rewatch as an adult because, under new light, I know I'd be overly critical of it even if I still loved it, and I know I'd only love it because of that ever present long lasting drug we call nostalgia. New Adventures of Little Toot is one of those. Sort of. Because I have rewatched it as an adult, and that's partly how I came to this conclusion. Nostalgia bleeds into our present by tricking us into believing our past was ideal, when, for many of us, it so clearly wasn't.

I was constantly told growing up that once I was out of school, I'd miss it. That those were the best years of my life. While we're just gonna ignore what a horrible thing that is to tell a child ("better enjoy this, because it gets worse from here!"; what a hopeful sentiment), we aren't going to ignore the stone cold fact that I don't miss school one iota. I miss aspects of school. Things like the structure it gave my life, constantly having something to do every day, things like that. But school itself? Nah. I outright don't miss it one bit. Those weren't the best years of my life by a longshot. Hell, I'm 31 now and I still haven't gotten to these supposed "best years". With my childhood filled with abuse and trauma and grief, why do I constantly feel an urge to swaddle myself in the things that protected me during that time, things like media, and return to that stage of my life? Because nostalgia. Nostalgia is that little nagging doubt of a voice in the back of your head constantly lying to you that the past was better, and we're all just gullible enough, just miserable enough today, to believe it.

This is why we give a pass to many pieces of old media we loved as children, media that, as adults, we can now recognize are outright awful. And yet...even with the seemingly ever present rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, I can't bring myself to hate the stuff I know to be bad now. It still holds a dear spot in my life, because it was there when I needed it the most. That's something I will always be thankful for.

New Adventures of Little Toot is a clear, shameless cash in on a property someone clearly thought they could work with, that they knew was established just enough that they could build on it and make it their own, and maybe rake in some of that money in the booming 90s animation scene. But they forgot one little thing...it still has to be good. Much as I may like the film, because of what it gave me at the time I saw it, I can admit it's not very good. It's short, it has almost no plot, the characters can be wildly irritating and the animation at times is wildly fluctuates between being either incredibly lazy or incredibly sloppy. I don't know how they managed to do both, but they did, so kudos to you guys. But, because of nostalgia, I will forever love it and likely show it to my (hopefully) eventual children. It gave me warmth and comfort, a friend, when I needed all those things as a little girl, and that's why, even in acknowledging its sins these days, I can't fully turn my back on it. When you spend a lifetime being abandoned by people, you cling to media because it can't abandon you, so you'll never abandon it.

Or maybe I just have a really strange attachment to media. I did make an entire blog about it, so that theory isn't entirely discredible, I suppose.

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