Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo classic Christmas specials with their own irreverent "South Park" twist, and so they watched the famous 1965 "Peanuts" special, "A Charlie Brown Christmas", repeatedly during the production process. Parker said, "At this point, we just sort of wanted to do a Charlie Brown Christmas "South Park" version. That [special] was definitely a huge part of my life growing up." The episode was considered the first "South Park" musical episode, and included such songs as "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo", "A Lonely Jew on Christmas" and "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch". Parker and Stone were initially concerned about making
What a Cartoon! Burbank, as the rightful Hanna-Barbera successor to produce original programming for the network and future projects. Two "What a Cartoon!" shorts, "Wind-Up Wolf" and "Hard Luck Duck", were the last cartoon shorts directed and produced by co-founder and co-chairman William Hanna. In addition, "What a Cartoon!" and spin-offs were the final original productions released by Hanna-Barbera. Creator of "The What a Cartoon! Show", Fred Seibert, left Hanna-Barbera in late 1996 to open up his own studio, Frederator Studios, and has persistently continued in the tradition of surfacing new talent, characters, and series with similar shorts "incubators", including (as of 2015)