Netflix and Sesame Workshop are getting festive with Mark Rober in a new holiday special that was just announced this morning. 

In Elmo & Mark Rober’s Merry Giftmas (30 minutes), the trending STEM YouTuber joins forces with Elmo and friends to make some special presents for a gift exchange. Sesame Workshop and Rober’s production company CrunchLabs produced the live-action special, which will be available exclusively on Netflix starting on December 8. 

It’s a cool collaboration for the two Netflix kids & family partners, combining simple science concepts with festive fun and three original songs. 

Merry Giftmas is designed to complement the new season of Sesame Street that premiered November 10 on Netflix, giving the streamer a great opportunity to prime family viewers for an upcoming Rober-led competition series that it will debut next year. Netflix has also picked up a package of Rober’s videos titled Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs (seven episodes). This curated collection of his YouTube science and DIY videos is available to stream now. 

Rober has 68 million subscribers on YouTube and has been rapidly building up a kids media empire that now spans a recently launched FAST channel and a consumer products deal with Moose Toys.  

Sesame Workshop is also on a strategic winning streak lately, too. After its HBO Max output deal for Sesame Street ended, Sesame managed to secure deals with Netflix, PBS, YouTube and Kidoodle.TV that will give the cult-classic preschool series a much wider audience.