The Toycracker: A Mini-Musical Spectacular
YouTube

This is an 8-minute commercial that aired in two 4-minute blocks during commercial breaks from an ABC presentation of Frozen. It was the culmination of Target's 2016 holiday commercial campaign, which featured a girl named Marisol (played by Kylie Cantrall), who is apparently the "director" of the play that's performed in this ultimate ad. (Throughout the campaign, we see Marisol and a dog named Bullseye, and/or CGI toys, preparing for the production.) I made this page after it was all over, and I put the series of ads on my Christmas commercials playlist. But checking it in December 2017, I found that all the ads had been deleted, so I went looking for replacements. I'm sure I haven't found all of them, but I've put the ones I could find into a Toycracker playlist.

In the play itself, there's a young girl named Clara (Isabella Russo) who is impatient to open presents on Christmas Eve, but her family never opens gifts until midnight. Her father tries to cheer her up with nutcracker and rat king toys, since she used to love "The Nutcracker." But she isn't interested. (She's more concerned that she can't use her tablet because the wifi is down.) So she goes up to her room to lament having nothing to do for the next three hours. Of course, she soon falls asleep, and finds herself in a magical land of living toys, including a life-size Nutcracker (Chrissy Teigen). There are lots of other toys, including Rarity and Pinkie Pie, a couple of Ninja Turtles, Barbie and Ken, Elmo, Troll dolls, LEGO figures, Wonder Woman and Superman, et al. (They don't all have speaking parts, but presumably they all take part in some of the group singing.) Anyway, they all want to avoid making much noise, for fear of disturbing the Rat King (John Legend). Of course he does show up and challenges the Nutcracker... to a rap battle. That was cool, but after that there's a depressing twist in the story. But it all leads to a very positive, feel-good conclusion. All in all, I'd say it was a pretty fun play.


Christmas commercials
musicals

click to open/close magazine ad