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“No child wants to play with a Charlie in the Box, so I had to come here!” Charlie wailed.
“Where’s here?” Rudolph asked, looking at the other boxes surrounding Charlie in the Box.
Slowly, unseen voices began to sing that they were on the Island of Misfit Toys, and didn’t want to stay.
Another box decorated with tractors and barns popped open, but it didn’t hide a jack-in-the-box, or a Charlie. Instead, it counted as other toys began to emerge. Clowns opened up like nesting dolls, singing about bringing joy on Christmas. They were joined by a rag doll, a spotted elephant, a cowboy riding an ostrich, all proclaiming themselves misfits, like Rudolph and Hermey.
And then a baby head with spider legs popped out, as the other toys sang
“A baby doll closed his blue eyes to dream.
“Now one-eyed with spider legs, he’ll make you scream!”
“Is it Christmas or Halloween?
They’re the strangest toys you’ve ever seen.”
“A soldier-slash-skateboard, legs on a fishing pole.
A duck head shoved through a baby doll’s head hole.
They were made by a boy named Sid,
But they wanted a nicer kid.”
None of the strange, reassembled toys were singing, though the babyhead started tap dancing with its sharp, metal feet. A toy soldier’s head affixed to a jingling baby chime toy jangled along to the beat.
Rudolph spotted a choo-choo train with square wheels on its caboose, but it sang about some of the other odd toys.
“A wind-up wheeled frog and a Rockmobile,
A child’s love is what we all yearn to feel,
When Christmas Day is here!
The most wonderful time of the year!”
“They knew another cowboy named Woody,” said a cowboy riding an ostrich.
“And a spaceman,” the spotted elephant nodded. “Everyone wants him. He had a light bulb that blinked.”
“That sounds like my nose,” Rudolph said, but the elephant said the spaceman thought it was a laser.
“But we’re misfits!” an owl with a fish tail cried, and the hand in the box patted it on the back.
Another rag doll with yarn hair, much like the dolly for Sue, stumbled out of a box, with her head taped on. She was joined by a plastic pterodactyl. There was no sign of either being misfits, other than their heads being taped back on.
“Hey, we’re all misfits too!” Rudolph exclaimed, though he didn’t feel as much like a misfit compared to some of these toys. Even the boat that couldn’t stay afloat and the water pistol that shot jelly didn’t seem as much like misfits. “Maybe we could stay here for a while.”
Charlie said they’d have to ask King Moonracer. Every night, he traveled the Earth (far more often than Santa) searching for misfit toys that no little boy or girl loved. Sid’s toys clearly hadn’t been loved at all.
Later, when Rudolph was grown, and guiding the sleigh through the snow with his nose, he got to watch all the misfit toys, Sid’s toys included, float down to loving homes with umbrellas. The baby face gripped an umbrella in his pincers, the hand in the box obviously held onto an umbrella with ease. The jingling soldier and frog traveled together, and Janie doll and the other doll floated down with the pterodactyl.