Nutcracker Fantasy (くるみ割り人形, Kurumiwari Ningyō, lit. The Nutcracker) is a Japanese-American stop motion animated film produced by Sanrio, very loosely based on Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker and E.T.A. Hoffman's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It is directed by Takeo Nakamura and written by Shintaro Tsuji, Eugene A. Fournier and Thomas Joachim. It is officially released in Japan on March 3, 1979 and later in the United States in July 6, 1979.