Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas is a Christmas television special, featuring characters from the cartoon series Inspector Gadget. The special was produced by DIC Entertainment and LBS Communications, Inc., and aired on NBC on December 4, 1992.
The special opens up at the North Pole, where Santa Claus and his elves are working on all the toys that Santa will deliver at Christmas. Doctor Claw has managed to sneak into the factory and disguise himself as Santa. He has also managed to install mind-control devices on all the elves, which he then activates, and orders them to capture Santa. His plan is to use the mind-controlled elves to make defective toys, for which the world will blame Santa. Meanwhile, he orders his MAD agents to destroy Gadget. Several attempts are made in the opening credits, all of which fail.
Meanwhile, Gadget has been going around with his Christmas doings, completely oblivious to the MAD agents attempting to do him in. Later, he visits the local mall Santa, actually Chief Quimby in disguise. The Chief gives Gadget a self-destructing note containing his mission (and of course, Gadget leaves it to blow up in the Chief's face).
Gadget, along with Penny and Brain, heads off to the North Pole, taking with him the assumption that Doctor Claw has not made his move yet. Upon entering the factory, Gadget firmly believes there's nothing wrong. He doesn't even get suspicious when he's staring the Santa-disguised Doctor Claw right in the face. Penny and Brain, on the other hand, are not so easily fooled. But when they try to tell Gadget about it, he's sideswiped by a claw from the factory and thrown onto the conveyor belt with all the bad toys the elves are manufacturing where Gadget sings a parody of the "Twelve Days of Christmas" using the things he winds up crashing into. When this doesn't finish him off (thanks to Brain's meddling), Claw instead has Gadget dropped down the manhole he dropped Santa through at the beginning. There, Gadget comes upon the real Santa Claus, but arrests him, thinking this Santa is the fraud.
Meanwhile, Penny is snooping around the whole factory and hides in a giant jack-in-the-box. Penny sees the elves destroying the toys. Penny calls Brain to tell him that Doctor Claw plans to ruin Christmas. Brain then reports that the elves tried to eliminate Gadget, he found the real Santa and accused him of being Doctor Claw. However, the elves find Penny and trap her in the jack-in-the-box. Penny calls Brain to tell him that she will escape somehow and he has to save Gadget.