The Life of Reidy

Last night I was chillin with some lady friends watching ol' video tapes of Christmas specials from 1987, and some of them were so bad and terrible that we simply fast forwarded the program to get to the much more exciting commercials. There was one program that did peak my curiousity however, in the middle of a "Disney Channel Christmas Special" which aired on CBS in December of 1987. This particular Mickey Mouse cartoon was one I remembered as a child: Mickey is playing carols on the street with his cello and Pluto howls close by in hopes that someone will toss them some money so they can buy a nice Christmas meal. As a child, I didn't pick up on all the less than subtlties. Mickey and Pluto are homeless, begging on the streets in a depression ridden winter, while the snotty upperclass child gets everything he wants in his nice warm house with his two butlers. The butlers try to purchase Pluto to make the boy happy, but Mickey and Pluto run, only to accidently break his cello and lose all hope for having a nice dinner. But wait! Mickey then stumbles on someone worse than he: an unidentified mother in a broken down home with at least 15 kids snugged in bed and a daddy in prison. For Mickey's "good deed" he decides to sell Pluto, give him a good home with the snotty rich kid, and use the money to buy this family toys (not food, or something more useful). And as karma would have it, Pluto ends up being kicked out of the rich house, the snotty kid gets his come-upins, and Mickey and Pluto, still homeless, feast on a turkey which haphazardly became tied to Plutos tail somehow.

Long story short, why don't we see any more of our beloved cartoon characters stricken with poverty on Christmas?