Mega dittos there!! I remember hearing about the premiere of the RankinBass The Hobbit...we were on our way back from Seguin and I made the family leave early so we could get back in time to catch it on the night it was played!! Made it JUST IN TIME to catch the commercials before the opening scene. I was in heaven.
All because I had been with my mother at a department store, bored out of my mind, and catching a rack of books where the Hobbit stood out, quite apart from the standard romance novels that were packed there. "What's this? The Hobbit? What the heck is a Hobbit?"
It's been a rocky road since!!
My mother read "The Hobbit" aloud on a car trip home from Florida when I was 8 - she dislikes Tolkien, but my dad loves it. When I found out there was a Hobbit movie, I was so excited.
Only then I watched it. Ouch.
What's a burrahobbit? :) I caught the premiere of Rankin-Bass as a kid while randomly flipping channels, and I happened to come in during the Riddle Game. I remember it distinctly because I was eating a honey sandwich, so for a while after that I couldn't eat a honey sandwich because it reminded me of Rankin-Bass Gollum, who creeped me out because he seemed like a frog or something, LOL!