"When I was growing up, my favorite Christmas memory was the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas record -- you know what I'm talking about? "Christmas, Christmas time is here. ..." You remember that song? My brother and I had it on LP, and we would play it on the slooooowest speed possible on the record player. So then, it sounded like four normal monotone guys just singing this boring Christmas song and then this demon from the ninth level of traitors and murderers screaming at them ..." -- Patton Oswalt, Feeling Kinda Patton

The enduring popularity (or, at least, the enduring familiarity) of Alvin and the Chipmunks can be explained by either the public's affection for innocent whimsy and charm or a perfectly-executed marketing plan that stretches back over four decades. Originally created in the '60s by songwriter Ross Bagdasarian, The Chipmunks were a fictional trio of singing mammals whose novelty recordings were immediately and strangely popular. In reality, The Chipmunks were a minor feat of engineering -- Bagdasarian would sing at half-speed, and when played back double-speed, his voice would be a full octave higher at normal tempo. It's a fairly cheap trick, and yet it resulted in a band -- or, rather, a brand -- that endured long enough to re-record Cheap Trick, on the 1981 album Chipmunk Punk. Thanks to the work of Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. and the entertainment industry's never-ending quest to turn old ideas into new money, The Chipmunks have been featured in music and animation virtually non-stop since their debut. Now, 20th Century Fox Animation has given us a new iteration of the Chipmunk saga, and the result is a surprisingly good-natured kid's film -- which, phrased less delicately, is a nice way of saying that Alvin and the Chipmunks did not make me want to die after I saw it at a 10:00 AM press screening whose audience was seemingly made entirely of screaming babies talking on their cell phones.

10 Zen Monkeys has a pretty interesting article posted about squirrels, jazz music and Alvin & the Chipmunks. Apparently there's been an Alvin movie in development for a couple of years, spearheaded by Simpsons writer John Vitti.

Although the movie seems to be swirling on the edge of the whirlpool that is "development hell," the article covers some interesting facts. Did you know that the original creator of the Chipmunks, Ross Bagdasarian Sr., first came to fame by recording the song Witch Doctor in 1958? It's no surprise that the witch doctor in the song ("ting tang, walla walla big bang") sounded like Alvin. Bagdasarian would record on a reel-to-reel machine running at half-speed. When the tape was played normally, voila, Chipmunks! The success of Witch Doctor let Bagdasarian play around with the concept, and later in November of 1958, he released The Chipmunk Song. It went on to sell an astounding four and a half million records in seven weeks. From that one song was born the whole concept of Alvin, Simon and Theodore. It gave birth to a television series, tons of merchandise and made an overnight star out of the squeaky-voiced star.

Bagdasarian Sr. died abruptly in 1972, and his son, Ross Jr. and wife Janice, picked up the torch and brought a new Chipmunks series to television in 1983. They have since produced numerous albums and worked on numerous direct-to-video Chipmunk movies including: The Chipmunk Adventure, and Alvin & the mini-Munks. According to the Chipmunks.com site, Alvin & the mini-Munks is a blend of puppetry and CGI that is a work in progress, but it is unclear if this is the same film that Vitti is developing. We're guessing it's not. Hopefully something will happen to bring this project together. It has such an incredible backstory, and Alvin & the Chipmunks are great characters for a family-friendly franchise that needs to be reintroduced to a whole new generation of kids.

ALVIIIINNNNNNNN!

PS - as an added bonus, check out this both creepy and fascinating sound file which plays the Chipmunks at normal speed, and then half speed. You'll hear how Ross Sr. had to speak/sing when recording the Chipmunk lines.