Rudolph's Shiny New Year is a 1976 American-Japanese Christmas and New Year's stop motion animated television special and a standalone sequel to the 1964 special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer produced by Rankin/Bass Productions. The special premiered on ABC on December 10, 1976. Three years later, it was also aired on TV Asahi in Japan on December 24, 1979, under the Japanese dub title 赤鼻のトナカイ ルドルフ物語 (Akahananotonakai Rudorufu Monogatari). Plot Just after the events of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus receives a letter from his friend Father Time asking for help to find Happy the Baby New Year before midnight ("the 12th bong") on New Year's Eve or else it will be December 31 forever. Santa sends Rudolph out to find him due to the snowstorm currently happening outside. An evil giant vulture named Eon the Terrible is supposed to live for exactly one eon after which he will turn into ice and snow and disintegrate. As this particular eon will end January 1 of the New Year, he plans to kidnap Happy to keep the year from ending and stop time, thus preventing his predestined death. General Ticker (a military clock) and the great Quarter-Past-Five, or Quart for short (a camel with a clock in his hump), bring Rudolph to Father Time's castle beyond the Sands of Time. Father Time speculates that Happy, who ran away due to his big ears being laughed at when they were first seen by Nanny Nine O'Clock, is hiding out in the "Archipelago of Last Years" where the Old Years retire and rule over an island styled to resemble the year over which they ruled. When Rudolph is attacked by Eon on the ocean while en route to the Archipelago, he is saved by Big Ben (a sperm whale with a clock attached to his tail) who transports Rudolph across the ocean. Upon arrival in the Archipelago, Rudolph first travels to the island belonging to a caveman named O.M. (short for One Million B.C.). O.M. inhabits an island anachronistically inhabited with friendly dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. As Rudolph and his friends search for Happy (who left after his hat accidentally fell off saving a baby Pterodactyl and revealing his big ears, causing the dinosaurs to laugh), they repeatedly encounter Eon. After other off-screen visits to the islands of 4000 B.C., 1492, 1893, and 1965 have been completed without success, Rudolph and O.M.