Heat Miser

Heat Miser is a character from the Rankin/Bass 1974 children's television special The Year Without a Santa Claus. He is an ogre or demon-like being who controls all warm weather all over the world. His nemesis is his half-brother Snow Miser. Mother Nature herself is their mother. As he sings in his memorable ragtime song, the "Heat Miser" song ("Whatever I touch, starts to melt in my clutch"), he can melt objects with a touch. Even flammable objects, such as a shovel's wooden handle, melt in his hand, rather than combust. His heat abilities include bolts, beams, balls of lava and spitting fire. He can also project intense heat from his hands or mouth to form objects of flame that can endure independently for a few seconds. While grumpy, hot-tempered and bitter—over his beliefs that Santa Claus is unfair to him in giving Snow Miser free publicity while he gets none, and that Mother Nature likes Snow Miser better—he is not an evil being.

He lives in a volcano with tiny clones of himself called the Mini Misers. Heat Miser was voiced by character actor George S. Irving in the original special. In the 2006 NBC live-action remake, he is played by actor Harvey Fierstein. In this depiction, he wears a Hawaiian shirt, and the Mini Misers are replaced by women in gloves and fringe bikinis. They also operate his over-sized slingshot to launch fireballs in his feud with Snow Miser.