This week, your favorite ex-puppeteers crack open a heart-shaped box of early-’80s television weirdness and revisit the 1982 holiday special The Valentine’s Day That Almost Wasn’t—a delightfully scrappy, foam-and-felt fairy tale that asks the eternal question: what if Valentine’s Day… just didn’t happen?

When the wickedly evil villain, Rubella Slime, concocts a plan to replace all the Valentine's love potion with Hostile, Arrogant, and Terribly Evil (H.A.T.E....Get it?...) potion, it’s up to a ragtag corps of rookie cupids to save romance itself. Stakes: high. Budget: low. Felt density: extreme.

We dig into the special’s handmade charm, old-school TV magic tricks, and the kind of puppetry that feels like it was built in someone’s garage at 2 a.m. with hot glue and blind optimism. Along the way, we unpack the puppet design, the analog effects, and whether these slightly lumpy, deeply sincere puppets hold up in the twenty first century.

It’s sweet, strange, and just cheesy enough—like a construction-paper valentine from a puppet with no fingers.

Because nothing says “happy valentine” like saving a holiday with a giant love bazooka.

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Original Music Composed by Taetro. @Taetro https://www.taetro.com/

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