Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo aspects of Christmas from South Park to remain politically correct and inoffensive. The episode was written and directed by the series' co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The Mr. Hankey character was based on an idea from Parker's childhood; when Parker and Stone conceived the "South Park" series, they wanted to make Mr. Hankey the lead character. Heavily influenced by the "Peanuts" Christmas special "A Charlie Brown Christmas" from 1965, "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" was the first Christmas-themed "South Park" episode, the first musical episode, and the only episode in season one (and therefore the first time in the
What a Cartoon! intervention: for example, even the music would be an individually crafted score. Each ""Looney Tunes" length" (7 minutes) short would debut, by itself, as a stand-alone cartoon on Cartoon Network. Seibert explained the project's goal in a 2007 blog post: "We didn’t care what the sitcom trends were, what Nickelodeon was doing, what the sales departments wanted. [...] We wanted cartoons." The "What a Cartoon!" staff had creators from Europe (Bruno Bozzetto), Asia (Achiu So), and the United States (Jerry Reynolds and colleague Seth MacFarlane). The crew also contained young series first timers (like Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, Rob Renzetti,