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The Telebugs was a cartoon shown as part of the after school children’s programming on ITV. It was about a group of three flying robots who would come to the aid of people in distress, and because they were also kitted out with microphones and cameras would double up as TV news reporters, reporting back on their own daring rescue missions! Not a bad idea really, a good way of making your life as a superhero pay for itself!
All three Telebugs looked somewhat similar, with sleek curved bodies and a television screen for a head. They differed in size and colour. CHIP (Coordinated Hexadecimal Information Processor) was the notional leader, and was the tallest and white in colour. SAMANTHA (Solar Activated Micro Automated Non-inTerference Hearing Apparatus) was yellow and, being a girl had a red ribbon moulded to the top of her head (in so far as a robot can be called female anyway).
The smallest Telebug was called BUG (Binary Unmanned Gamma camera) and he was red in colour, and was, I suppose given his name, the cameraman of the group. He also had a pet named MIC (Mobile Independent Camera) who flew alongside him and helped in filming duties.
The Telebugs travelled around by flying. Instead of legs they had booster rockets, which enabled them to both hover in place and fly off to the rescue of some poor hapless civilian.
Professor Brainstrain was the inventor of the Telebugs, though unfortunately he had a bit of a problem pronouncing the letter R, so he referred to himself as Pwofessor Bwainstwain.
Of course, as with all good superheroes there were a number of baddies who they went up against on a regular basis, and were generally the cause of all the problems that the Telebugs had to put right. The big bad guy was called Baron Bullybyte, who owned a super computer called Angel Brain which he used to cause most of the trouble.
Bullybyte’s sister Magna was also a bit of a trouble maker, as was Zudo Bug. Zudo Bug was also invented by Professor Brainstrain, but unfortunately he ended up turning evil thanks to a bit of mis-programming caused by Brainstrain’s cat Grumble.
The cartoon was made by Telemagination and 86 episodes were made, first airing in 1986 and 1987.
January 15th, 2012 at 2:58 am
Wow – I had completely forgotten about this series, but now it’s all flooding back! Just watched an ep on Youtube with the infamous Zudo Bug (“Evil OK, evil OK”) and I do remember seeing it originally! Thanks for posting!
January 15th, 2012 at 8:27 am
Yeah, I’d forgotten them too, until they suddenly just popped into my mind the other day. Not even sure why they did – the word Telebugs just suddenly occurred to me. Glad it’s refreshed someone else’s memory too!
October 6th, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I recently had a fragmented memory of this show having watched the video to the new Muse song, “Unsustainable”. All I could remember was BUG and that in one episode something happens where he was switched off.
I’ve just spent the last WEEK trawling google images and I finally stumbled across this page this morning. Thank you, Talk 80′s!! You’ve saved me from who knows how much mental anguish!!
November 28th, 2012 at 2:34 pm
In later years (well, late-80′s early 90′s) when I first read the Iain M. Banks novel ‘Consider Phlebas’ the description of Unaha-Closp made me think of BUG for some crazy reason.
May 16th, 2013 at 11:31 pm
When I first saw the teletubbies I thought they must have been inspired by this, great show loved it as a kid and once dreamed I had my own telebug, so disappointed when I woke up!