When Steve runs away from the family's preparations to go into hiding for Christmas in "Ninety North, Zero West", he takes a ride on the holiday train at Chimdale Traintown, but he and all of the other Children vanish and the parents are drugged with tainted candy canes in order to forget their children. As the Smiths worry about how to find Steve a figure emerges from the Christmas trees and offers to help, although Roger initially believes that he was his hook-up from a sexual encounter. The figure informs them that Santa Claus had kidnapped the children to work in a mine at the North Pole, and reveals himself to be an elf that had been banned for causing trouble, having been stretched taller and having his pointed ears clipped by Santa as well.