SpongeBob Christmas Crackers

SpongeBob SquarePants and Friends are to get festive with the Big Advent Calendar on Nickelodeon.
Following on from the success of last year, viewers can count down from Saturday 1st December until Christmas Day on-air and online with SpongeBob and his Nickelodeon chums.
The children’s channel is to provide parents and young ones with daily seasonal shows at 8am and 4pm for an hour.
“Making a special appearance during the festive hours of programming, an animated parcel will manifest on screen. Viewers can then visit nick.co.uk/spongebob to identify the present they spotted and unlock the calendar window for their chance to win that day’s gift. Prizes include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, vehicles, playsets and combat gear, SpongeBob SquarePants puzzles, voice changer and magazine subscription as well as Winx Club dolls and Victorious goodies. Plus, there is a very special gift for the calendar window on Christmas Eve – a trip for a family of four to Nickelodeon Land at Blackpool Pleasure Beach!” Nickeloden say.
A special part of Nickelodeon’s festive programming line-up this year is the network’s first-ever full-length stop-motion animation, “It’s A SpongeBob Christmas” co-written by Tom Kenny (voice of SpongeBob) and Andy Paley. The new half-hour episode also features John Goodman as Santa Claus.
In “It’s A SpongeBob Christmas” Plankton turns everybody in Bikini Bottom from nice to naughty by feeding them his special jerktonium-laced fruitcake, all in an effort to get his Christmas wish – the Krabby Patty formula. The Nickelodeon premiere will include bonus scenes featuring a stop-motion version of the character “Patchy,” also voiced by Tom Kenny.
Work began on the special in October 2011 at Screen Novelties production studio in LA, where the artists worked to insure the two-dimensional cartoon characters were properly translated into three-dimensional puppets. Six sets were operating at one time where 60lbs of baking soda was used as snow, 42lbs of glitter added sparkle, 22lbs of wood chips created Sandy’s tree house floor and 20 boxes of breakfast cereal covered the coral rocks.