One of the most successful series of children’s books I remember from my childhood was the Mr. Men books, which are still around today. The Mr. Men set up a pattern for others to follow, which was to produce a series of books based around a range of characters based on a particular theme. One of the better series to employ this idea was the Munch Bunch.
The Munch Bunch were a group of walking, talking fruit and vegetables, mostly with suitably alliterative names like Sally Strawberry, Aubrey Aubergine or Pippa Pear. Alternatively they had names relating to the type of vegetable they were, for example Spud, who was obviously a potato, and Bounce, who was a spring onion (spring, bounce, geddit?). However, my favourite has to be Dick Turnip, who was a highwayman root vegetable, based on the legendary Dick Turpin. I wonder if kids today know who Dick Turpin is, as I’ve not heard his name mentioned in many a year.
Sorry, went a bit off track there. Enough of highwaymen and back to the Munch Bunch. There were more than 30 Munch Bunch characters created for the first series of books, which went on sale between 1979 and 1982, with each character getting their own book. In the years that followed additional books were released for the more popular characters, and larger format books featuring multiple characters were also produced.
The Munch Bunch were so popular that they were also taken overseas, which required the odd name change. For example, Aubrey Aubergine became Eddie Eggplant in the US. New characters were also created when the book landed in New Zealand, including Kiri Kiwifruit and Ted Tamarillo (no, I’d never heard of a Tamarillo before now either).
The inevitable TV show also came along, although rather than being a cartoon as you might expect it was actually a puppet series. The characters were the same as in the books, but they had new stories and were given an origin backstory, which was that they were old fruit and veg swept into the corner of the greengrocers shop, whereupon they magically came alive, escaped and went to live in a garden in a variety of overturned plant pots, wellington boots and watering cans.
Since so many of the characters were varieties of fruit it became a no-brainer for the characters to appear on pots of yoghurt to represent the different flavours. Some new characters were developed for flavours of yoghurt that didn’t already have a Munch Bunch representative (e.g. Jenny Cherry and Charlie Chocolate, the latter being somewhat of an odd one out since he is neither fruit nor vegetable). Initially these yoghurts were sold individually and all was well, but unfortunately this is where the story starts to go sour.
The books sadly went out of print after a fire at the publishers offices lost all the originally artwork, so when the TV series went off air and the books disappeared from the shops only the yoghurts were left. Néstle eventually ended up owning the rights to the Munch Bunch name, and in 1998 after reducing the line up of flavours dramatically we ended up with just six Munch Bunch characters. All were redesigned, although Sally Strawberry and Rozzy Raspberry were kept for two of the names, and a new set of books were produced for these new characters.
Eventually the available flavours were reduced to just three, apricot, strawberry and raspberry, and now Néstle have ditched the anthropomorphised fruit completely, keeping the Munch Bunch name with a new character, a cartoon cow named Munch…
What a sad ending to a great collection of characters. Never mind, to whisk you back here are the opening credits to the TV show, which had a really easy to learn theme tune (some bananas even provide you with the words to the chorus!).
Search for The Munch Bunch items on Amazon.co.uk
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Yes, I remember the Munch Bunch cartoon programme very well as a young child. I always wondered whether or not ot would be a long lived children’s TV show.
I was the illustator for the books working at Studio Publications and its good to see that people still remember the Munch Bunch books and TV shows.
They were great fun to create.
Hi Angela, great to hear from you. My sister and I were great fans of these books when we were growing up.
I remember we used to spend a lot of time trying to draw the various characters by copying the little pictures off the back of the books.
So sad that the Munch Bunch name has since been lost to a brand of yoghurt, and that the fruit and veg characters have now been replaced by a cartoon cow…
Hi Angela,
I was wondering if there are any plans to release the Munch Bunch on DVD?
Many thanks,
Jackie
Hi Angela,
I have been looking at ways to get in touch with you again, and come across this website. I’m back in England after some rather tragic family events and it would be really nice to get in touch after so many years. A lot has happened and it would be really nice to catch up and have a laugh again! Email me k-spink@hotmail.com . Nice to see that some people still remember your work and that YOU should get the credit for it. All the best, Ken
Ooh, never thought the website would be playing a Friends Reunited type role… 😉
I remember being three or four and having the measles and my father (who has now sadly passed) walking the two and a half miles in the snow to town on crutches because the only thing that would keep me happy was perfecting my reading. Dad came back from the high street carrying 20 books most of them Munch Bunch and Mr Men books. Even today over 30 years later I can still remember the sense of achievement I had when I could read these books to my baby brother!
Thank you for the memories Angela…
Much love
Paula
I’m in the US. I grew up in the eighties, I can remember checking these out of our school library. Sally Strawberry and the carrot were my favorites. I’m hoping my son loves them as much as I did, I can’t wait to dig them out and re-read them.
I’m a Chinese from Hong Kong. I still remember this cartoon on show in Hong Kong when I was small, when HK was still the British colony. I have lots of good memories related to this cartoon. Thanks a lot Angela. I hope someone will make the new version of it someday. (I still remember the theme song btw :))
I’m also a guy from HK. This is one of my most favourite cartoon animation when I was a child at that time. I remember I strongly requested my aunt to buy me every new episode once released every week which sold as 2 story books introducing 2 Munch Bunch members (in Chinese version). No matter the cartoon caracters and the stories are very funny,active and interesting. Each characters are very cute. I regret I threw away most of them several years ago. and left one of Pedro Orange. But now hope to re-collect it but found no new production again…: (
hello, i’m from singapore and chanced upon this site looking for munch bunch books for my 3-year-old. my mom saved my lot of books from 1980 and my little one ADORES them. We’ve read them again and again and again. He’s most displeased that we don’t have the entire collection, but they’ve become crazy expensive now! funny how well he’s taken to these old books in spite of all the newfangled hi-tech iPad things that’re out there now. Love the characters, the stories and of course the beautiful artwork (thanks angela!!)
There was also a Munch Bunch record! ‘Stories & Songs’. See my facebook page for image…
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=540566545959998&set=a.160698633946793.39884.159840780699245&type=1&theater
I am desparately trying to complete my collection again. I lost my original collection after my mother who is a teacher took them to her school, only for them never to return. I am glad I am not the only one who loves this and would love to see them return some how
[…] photos is of me, aged around 5 years old, in Austria wearing my big leather boots and ‘Munch Bunch‘ rucksack containing such essentials as a colouring book and […]
Hello I recently stumbled upon your website while having a trip down memory lane and was wondering where could I purchase the entire collection of original books and the badges for my children.
I have looked everywhere but to no avail, please could you advise me.
Kind regards
Randy