Child Of The 1980's

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.

The main hero of the stories was Moomintroll, who was a young inquisitive Moomin who was fascinated by the world around him. His mother and father, Moominmamma and Moominpappa, also featured heavily. Moomintroll had a large extended family who often came to stay, including a female Moomin called, no not Moomingirl or something like that, but bizarrely The Snork Maiden?!

Other frequent guests of the Moomins were Snufkin, a wandering lad who played the harmonica, and the frankly scary Little My, who seemed to have a permanent scowl on her face and who got irritated about things very easily. Little My lived almost permanently with the Moomins, and despite being a bit disruptive at times could often be useful to have around.

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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.

The cartoon itself was about a group of humanoid cats that were the last surviviors of the planet Thundera. Having escaped Thundera before it was destroyed by the evil (of course) mutants of Plun-Darr, the Thundercats end up on a planet known as Third Earth after many years in stasis.

Only seven Thundercat survivors make it to Third Earth, these being Lion-O, Tygra, Panthro, Cheetara, WilyKit, WilyKat and Snarf. Lion-O was a child when he started his journey, and I believe he was a kind of prince of Thundera, as he was entrusted with the magical Sword of Omens which contained the Eye of Thundera, a gem stone that gave the Thundercats great power. Poor old Lion-O though, he missed out on his teenage years, as he was a child when he was put into stasis, but something went wrong and when he awoke he had slowly aged to become a young man.

The Sword of Omens was a useful tool for Lion-O, not just because it was good for stabbing at things, but because it could transform into a massive broadsword, and Lion-O could look from the Eye of Thundera to give him “sight, beyond sight“. This power allowed Lion-O to see what was going on in other places, and help guide him in making the right decisions to be true leader of the Thundercats.

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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.

The Trap Door, or just Trap Door as most people called it, was a plasticene modelled animated (or claymation as the method is sometimes called) series about a big blue creature called Berk. Berk was basically butler, cook and bottle washer for The Thing Upstairs, a mysterious being who we never saw but who ordered the good natured Berk around by bellowing commands at him, the most often used request being “Berk, Feed Me!“.

Berk had two main companions, who tended to be more of a hindrance than a help usually. First there was Boni, a skull who tended to complain rather a lot, so a lot of what he said went unheard by Berk, which was sometimes a pity as he did often give useful advice.

Berk also had a pet called Drutt, which was a kind of fat bodied spider like thing that scuttled around causing mischief and making farting sounds a lot. Whether this was his voice or just flatulence I don’t know.

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When I think back to childrens television of the mid 1980s I often end up reminiscing about Childrens BBC and the Broom Cupboard, with Phillip Schofield, Andy Crane or Andi Peters (OK, maybe not Andi Peters quite so much) introducing all those great TV shows we had back then.

The BBC went through a period of commissioning some classic cartoons at the time, what with Bananaman, SuperTed (if you liked this one, you’ve still time to enter our competition which has a SuperTed DVD as one of the prizes – but hurry!), The Family Ness and the subject of today’s rememberings, Jimbo and the Jet Set.

The titular Jimbo was a Jumbo Jet, or at least he was supposed to be, but when he was being built someone confused centimetres for inches and he came out half the size (or more accurately 39.37%) he was supposed to be. He may have been small, but Jimbo was big on determination, and would struggle through whatever task he was given to save the day.

Jimbo and the Jet Set was created by Maddocks Cartoon Productions (who also created The Family Ness) and was set at the fictional London Airport. The airport was managed by the grumpy, orange moustached traffic controller named Chief, who gave Jimbo some ridiculous things to do and was never happy with the way Jimbo got the job done.

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Depending on where you come from you might know the subject of today’s post under a different name.  In Japan it was called Gatchaman (or Science Ninja Team Gatchaman if you prefer!), whilst in the rest of the world it has been known as both G-Force and Eagle Riders.  Here in the UK, we knew it as Battle of the Planets.

The show originated in Japan in 1972, but was brought to the western world in 1978 by Sandy Frank Entertainment, who cut the original episodes up to remove some of the more violent moments, added a few new characters and generally made the show more palatable to western tastes.  This meant poaching a fair few ideas from Star Wars, including an epic sounding theme song and a token R2D2 like droid, but more on that later.

Battle of the Planets followed the adventures of G-Force, a team of five youngsters who defended the Earth from attacks from outer space, normally perpertrated by the evil Zoltar (an absolutely perfect name for a villain if ever there was one!).  They travelled through space in a ship called the Phoenix, which in great Japanese tradition had a number of mini vehicles which the different members of G-Force could use.  The Phoenix could also transform into a fiery bird like craft called the Fiery Phoenix, which looked brilliant and was often the easiest way to save the day at the end of the episode!

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I am constantly surprised my how many toys and cartoons from the eighties that were aimed primarily at little girls actually started off life as a series of Hallmark greetings cards.  The Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake are both good examples, and another is Rainbow Brite.

Rainbow Brite first appeared on a card in 1984, and that same year she also featured in her first animated film entitled Peril in the Pits.  In 1985 the theatrical release Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer came out, and then in 1986 the little multicoloured one got a regular cartoon TV series of 13 episodes.

The backstory to Ms. Brite’s adventures was that a little orphan girl named Wisp was whisked away by a magical force to a place called the Colorless World.  She befriends a Sprite called Twink, a funny little fluffy fellow, and a horse called Starlite with a rainbow colored tail and mane.

Wisp is tasked with bringing colour back to the world in which she finds herself, and to do this she must free the seven Color Kids, who are Red Butler, Lala Orange, Canary Yellow, Patty O’Green, Buddy Blue, Indigo and Shy Violet.  As you can see there was a Color Kid for every colour of the rainbow, and each had their own personal Sprite friend.

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Made in the early 1970’s, Crystal Tipps and Alistair was still being shown whenever the childrens TV schedule had a five minute gap well into the 1980’s.  The cartoon was about a girl called Crystal Tipps who wore a tiny yellow and green striped dress and had the biggest shock of curly purple hair you’ve ever seen.  Always at her side was her lumbering canine pal Alistair, who always looked a bit dopey and often got teased mercilessly by Ms. Tipps.

The show was created by Hilary Hayton who was a designer at the BBC.  Interestingly it was Crystal Tipps name that came first, as Hilary noticed the name Crystal Tips on an ice machine in the BBC canteen!  In the late 1960’s Hilary designed a young girl and her dog, and so with an extra “p” Crystal Tipps and Alistair was born, and their first adventure was created as an entry for an internal BBC competition.

Hilary’s work was noticed and in time she was asked to create a full series, which eventually amassed into 50 five minute episodes, and a longer Christmas special.

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In 1981 toy manufacturer Mattel released He-Man on an unsuspecting world and quickly convinced millions of young boys that a blonde haired muscle bound hero in furry pants was the business.  The cartoon series was also popular but what annoyed the bosses was that they had only captured half the market.  What about the girls?

In an attempt to repeat the success of He-Man with the female half of the toy market, Mattel came up with She-Ra, Princess of Power, and in order to launch their new range of toys got Filmation, the company behind the He-Man cartoon, to make a series of animated adventures for She-Ra.

In order to tie the two product lines together She-Ra was supposed to be the twin sister of He-Man, although she lived on an entirely different world called Etheria (He-Man was from Eternia).  Her name was Princess Adora, and the story was she was kidnapped as a baby, but since we’d never heard anything of her before in the He-Man stories this seems a little weak.  Unsurprisingly, She-Ra used the template set up by He-Man, modified to appeal to girls.

Like He-Man, She-Ra was armed with a magic sword, called the Sword of Protection, and also like her brother she could hold it aloft and say the magic phrase “By the honour of Greyskull” (note honour instead of power, He-Man’s version of the line) and be transformed from Princess Adora into She-Ra.  When this happened, her faithful equine companion Spirit was transformed into a flying unicorn called Swift Wind.  Of course, the horse could talk, just like Cringer/Battle Cat in He-Man.

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