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King Rollo was an animation created by David McKee, who was also creator of the much loved (by me, anyway) Mr. Benn.
The series was about the titular King Rollo, who though he appeared quite grown up (he even had a beard!) he was actually quite child like in nature, playing with toys and, to be frank, being told what to do by his cook and his magician. So it was he spent most of his time learning about the world, ably assisted by his cat Hamlet, who also appeared to be more grown up and worldly wise than his master.
When King Rollo got bored playing by himself he had his next door neighbour Queen Gwen (two castles next door to each other, what a street that must be to live in!) to play with and also fellow King Frank.
The characters in the cartoon did not speak. Instead it was down to narrator Ray Brooks (who also narrated Mr. Benn as it happens) to do all the talking. As I recall he did change the sound of his voice slightly when one of the characters was supposed to be saying something, but it was more a change of inflection rather than a put on accent or something.
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As good as the Inspector Gadget cartoon was, I could never quite work out exactly what Inspector Gadget himself was. Since he had a niece called Penny I always assumed he must be human, but given that he had extending arms and legs and flip top fingers he always appeared to be more robotic in nature. I guess then he must have been some kind of human-android hybrid, in which case having all those gadgets fused into his body must have been quite painful.
During the Eighties the BBC brought us a great number of cartoons which were in serial form, that is made up of 20 to 30 episodes which formed an epic full story, rather than most cartoons which are normally stand alone episodes.
Er, you might be thinking? Firstly, why is he writing about The Simpsons, surely that’s a nineties thing at most? Secondly, has he been trying to draw his own pictures again?
Moomins are odd looking creatures who most resemble hippos, and were the invention of Finnish artist Tove Jansson. The originally started life in a series of books, the first of which appeared in 1945. This book was called The Moomins and the Great Flood, and it told how the Moomin family came to live in the Moominhouse in Moominvalley.
What was it about Eighties cartoons that meant they all had such brilliant theme songs? Thundercats is no exception, with it’s pop-rock musics and highly repetitive lyrics (Thunder-thunder-thunder-thunder-cats!) I can still remember it clearly today.
I met up with a friend at the weekend who happened to mention a cool kids TV show that I’ve not yet managed to cover, so Al, here’s a post for you on The Trap Door.
When I think back to childrens television of the mid 1980s I often end up reminiscing about Childrens BBC and the 
