Child Of The 1980’s

If you come from outside of the UK, Ireland or several other European countries then you would be forgiven for thinking that the title of this post was wrong, and should in fact be Ninja Turtles. Well, these days that is definitely the case, but back in the mid 1980’s, when the Turtles cartoon first aired in the UK it was renamed because the word Ninja was seen as being too violent to be associated with a childrens TV programme.

Luckily this didn’t really effect the cartoon too badly. Other than a change to the logo and a few changes to the theme song the adventures of Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo and Michelangelo were relatively untouched by the censors scissors, at least as far as I’m aware. Michelangelo did have some nunchuks, which were banned in films and on TV for many years in the UK, even in adult films (most notably Bruce Lee’s Enter The Dragon, which suffered a fairly heavy cut) so there may have been a few scenes cut here and there involving those, but given these would have only been fight scenes the storylines and humour of the series would not have been compromised too much.

Originally the Turtles started life as comic book characters, but it wasn’t until the cartoon series appeared in 1987 that Turtle Power really hit the big time and they became a merchandising sensation stretching to action figures, films, videogames and all the other associated things like pencil cases and lunch boxes. More on some of these another time perhaps, but for now we’ll concentrate on the cartoon.

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One of the greatest kids shows to come out of the late 1970’s (and then to repeated many a time during the 1980’s) was Jamie and the Magic Torch. This animated show from Cosgrove Hall, creator of Chorlton and the Wheelies and Dangermouse amongst many other classic shows, featured young boy Jamie and his Old English sheepdog Wordsworth and their nightly adventures in Cuckoo Land, which as you will see was particularly aptly named.

Every episode started with Jamie being tucked into his bed by his mother, but as soon as she was out of the room Wordsworth would appear from under the bed with Jamie’s Magic Torch. Quite how Jamie came into possession of this gadget I have no idea, but upon switching it on and pointing the beam at the floor a helter skelter would be created which Jamie and Wordsworth would then slide down to enter Cuckoo Land. This was the title sequence to the show, which was accompanied by one of the most rock based soundtracks you could ever hope to find gracing a kids TV show.

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SuperTed was one of those cartoons that straddled the strange grey area between cartoons for little kids and cartoons for teenagers. Primary school children would definitely have enjoyed SuperTed’s adventures, but given that the hero of the show was basically a teddy bear by the time you reached around 10 years of age you would probably consider it a bit childish, but would probably watch it anyway if there was nothing better on.

The cartoon was first broadcast in 1982 on Welsh TV channel S4C, and was indeed a Welsh speaking show. It was soon dubbed into English to be shown in the rest of the UK where it initially aired as part of BBC1’s afternoon childrens line up. Derek Griffiths, a favourite from Play School provided the voice of SuperTed, whilst the great Jon Pertwee of Doctor Who and Worzel Gummidge fame was the voice of Spottyman, SuperTed’s alien friend.

SuperTed himself was originally a normal teddy bear, who was rejected from the manufacturing line for some reason and tossed into the factory basement. By lucky coincidence Spottyman, a yellow humanoid with green spots, came across the bear and sprinkled some magic cosmic dust on it, bringing the bear to life. Spottyman took the bear to visit Mother Nature, who gave the bear secret powers, making him into SuperTed. Quite a convoluted set up it has to be said!

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Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds was a phenomenally popular cartoon created in the early 1980’s by Spanish studio BRB Internacional, although it was actually animated in Japan by Nippon Animation. The show finally hit UK TV screens in 1985, being shown on Children’s BBC where it hooked everybody in. Based on the famous novel The Three Musketeers written by French author Alexandre Dumas in the 19th century, the series followed the adventures of Dogtanian (D’Artagnan from the original story) in his quest to become on of the Muskehounds, the finest swordsmen in the whole of France.

The story was serialised into 26 parts, and once you were hooked you wouldn’t want to miss an episode. For the most part the cartoon was very close to the novel, although for obvious reasons some of the content was toned down a bit for kids, especially D’Artagnan’s somewhat more amorous ways than his canine counterpart.

The most notable difference, which was made for no apparent reason, was the swapping of the names of Porthos and Athos, two of the musketeers. In the novel Athos is the leader and Porthos the muscle of the group, but in the cartoon it is Athos who has gained the pounds, and Porthos who is in charge. A strange decision, but not one that affected the flow of the series at all. Aramis, the romantic, poetry loving, ladies man remained correctly named.

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If there was ever a decade where companies learnt there was money to be made from kids then the 1980’s is surely it. This surely was the beginning of the merchandising age, where any toy, cartoon series, film, comic could reasonably expect to be refactored from one form of media to all of the others, with a motley array of lunchboxes, quilt covers, clothing and just about anything else you can think of thrown in for good measure.

One such example is the He-Man range of toys. The toy range was originally conceived as a tie-in range of toys for the Conan the Barbarian film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Given this films propensity for violence and “more adult themes” it was deemed that such a toy range was doomed to failure (no real surprise there - who ever thought it was a good idea in the first place?). The designs were therefore tweaked and in 1981 Mattel unleashed He-Man on the world.

In his original muscular form, our blonde haired hero wore little more than a pair of furry underpants and a harness intended for keeping his Power Sword and Battle Axe on his back. He also carried a shield. By far the most interesting feature of this He-Man was his power punch. The body of the toy twisted at the waist and was sprung loaded, so you could wind him up and make him punch other toys with surprising force. That is until the elastic inside him began to loosen up!

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I certainly remember my sister owning a Strawberry Shortcake doll, but I didn’t realise that, like the Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake started off as a range of greetings cards from American Greetings. The characters were introduced as cards in 1977, but it wasn’t until the 1980’s when the toy range really made it’s mark, spawning other merchandise such as comic books, videogames and the inevitable cartoon series.

The unique selling point of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls was that they were scented to match the desert or fruit after which they were named. Each doll also came with a small plastic pet, with Strawberry Shortcake’s being Custard the Cat. For some reason the advertising jingle sticks in my head on this point, it went something like:-

It’s Strawberry Shortcake in her floppy hat.
Strawberry Shortcake and Custard the Cat.

As already mentioned Ms. Shortcake was joined by friends such as Apple Dumplin’, Raspberry Tart and Lemon Meringue. With names like that most of the toys were female, although there was the odd male character thrown in as well. The advent of the cartoon series meant that Strawberry Shortcake required a nemesis to go up against, which ended up being the tongue twistingly named Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak! He too came with a pet - Captain Cackle the Berry Bird. Read more…

If you were to venture deep within the trees of Doyley Wood, it’s possible you might just bump into Willo the Wisp, or one of his friends. That’s if you’re watching cult 1980’s cartoon Willo the Wisp of course, rather than the real Doyley Wood which is somewhere in Oxfordshire, apparently.

The cartoon was voiced by Kenneth Williams, who brought to life all the inhabitants in a way only he could. In fact, the cartoon representation of Willo the Wisp was even drawn to look a bit like Kenneth. A real Will o’ the Wisp is a strange quirk of nature, also given the latin name ignis fatuus, which appears over bogs and looks like a flickering lamp. Superstitious folk thought they were spirits, and they have also been called Jack o’ Lanterns and Spooklights!

Anyway, back to the cartoon series. Here Willo the Wisp was the narrator of the stories that took place between the trees. The main two characters to feature in each episode were Mavis Cruet, a rather overweight fairy who had trouble flying and even more trouble casting spells, but saw the good in everyone, and Arthur, an orange caterpillar who was probably the most practical inhabitant of the woods. The average episode saw Mavis and Arthur helping one of the other characters out, whilst avoiding the plans of Evil Edna - a spooky witch who was actually a television set. Edna was nasty to everyone, calling people names and zapping them with magic spells from her antenna.

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Whilst checking out the new series of the Mr. Men on Channel five I came across another old favourite that has been recreated, Roobarb and Custard. Unlike the new Mr. Men the creators have wisely decided not to alter very much at all with Roobarb. The characters look the same as I remember them, and sound the same too since they got Richard Briers, the original narrator, back in to do the new series.

The animation style of the original was very wobbly, due to the fact that each frame of animation was drawn by hand and didn’t quite match up to the previous frame in terms of outline and consistency of the colouring in. This gave the original cartoon a really odd shimmering effect. The new series is presumably still hand animated but now created using computers, and it’s good to see that they’ve tried their best to recreate the wobbly look. It’s not quite the same as the original, and may even be an improvement.

Roobarb was a bizarre green coloured dog, who was also a bit of an inventor. He would sit in his shed and come up with all manner of strange ideas and weird contraptions, most of which usually failed dismally, much to the enjoyment of Custard the lazy purple cat, who was usually to be found lying on the fence watching Roobarbs antics and generally being sarcastic. He was often joined in his scorn for Roobarb by the birds who sat in the old conker tree in Roobarb’s garden, who sat twittering and laughing at Roobarb’s many failures.

One of the best things about Roobarb was the theme music, which was a mixture of rock guitar and harmonica. Check out the following clip of the opening titles to bring the memories flooding back…