Has anyone seen the Wombles? The hunt is on for TV’s favourite puppets and props | Child’s Tv set

Are you sitting comfortably? Bagpuss is, however Mom Clanger is just not. Dougal could also be – no particular person is sort of completely certain. And the Wombles – very nicely, they haven’t been witnessed for a few years.

Not all of those icons of childhood have been supplied the remedy they’re worthy of and now a few of the prime lights of kids’s Television and animation have known as for them to be given their very personal family.

Though a few of the puppets, costumes, props and kinds from kids’s Tv reveals are scattered all-around museums within the British isles and overseas, others languish in storage fashions or are packed away in lofts or barns. Some have even been ruined, evidently with out considerably thought of.

The superb data for nostalgics is that Bagpuss is celebrating his fiftieth anniversary along with a few of the Clangers on the Beaney museum in Canterbury. The V&A has Ollie Beak. Bradford’s Nationwide Science and Media Museum has Month-to-month invoice and Ben the Flower Pot Males, the Fimbles, some Woodentops, a variety of Bob the Builder vehicles and Gordon the Gopher. The distinctive Thomas the Tank Engine mannequin is within the Hara Design Railway museum in Japan.

And dread not, Paddington followers – the bear is the star of Gyles Brandreth’s teddy bear assortment, on exhibit at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire, along with Pudsey, a Sooty (no Sweep), Nookie Bear and even the preliminary Fozzie Bear, a present from Muppet impresario Jim Henson within the 80s.

“I typically say at my reveals ‘Andy Pandy’s coming to play’ and the viewers instantly responds with the next line,” Brandreth acknowledged. “They’ve not skilled this of their heads for 70 yrs however it arrives straight again once more to them. Any museum of childhood should embody issues like these very good elements – the props, the puppets, the prevent-body animation stuff.

“The purpose is that every one these elements are actually essential, not solely just because they’re well-known, however primarily as a result of they type who we’re as developed-ups.”

Though children’ Tv in 2024 is struggling to grab kids’s consideration, and the Youngsters’s Media Basis launched a advertising marketing campaign remaining week to help preserve the type, the Uk has a really lengthy and loaded document of puppet- and model-centered halt-motion animation.

The genesis was the Tiny Angel Theatre in Islington, opened in 1961 by John Wright.

He skilled and labored with animators along with Ivor Wooden, Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, who ended up accountable for a number of of the finest-regarded reveals.

“It was a spot the place by puppeteers uncovered factors – it was so unconventional to have a organising for puppetry at the moment,” claimed Ronnie Le Drew, who was Zippy on Rainbow – ITV’s reply to Sesame Street – and in a while labored on Labyrinth and several other Muppet films.

Ivor Wood labored at Filmfair and created and animated The Magic Roundabout, The Herbs, The Wombles and Paddington, whereas Postgate and Firmin made Bagpuss, Pingwings, Ivor the Motor and the Clangers, filmed in a barn in Kent along with many individuals of starlings.

“When my dad was filming the Clangers, he’d should mop up the starling poo on the earth within the early morning,” claimed Daniel Postgate. “There was a unique scene with the Soup Dragon holding a chocolate coin. When he returned to it within the morning, mice skilled eaten the coin and 50 p.c the hand.”

Firmin gave puppets absent to Daniel and the opposite babies, and quite a lot of have solely disappeared or been eaten by wildlife. “We by no means know precisely the place the Toddler Soup Dragon is,” he acknowledged.

“Somebody stole Mother Clanger. Emily [Firmin] typically digs over the yard and finds bits of the Clangers’ planet.”

Wooden’s creations have fared significantly much less completely. Instantly after FilmFair, he established up Woodland Animations to make Postman Pat, Gran, Bertha and Charlie Chalk. The primary Postman Pat variations endure, however the different Woodland varieties don’t, in line with Josiane Wooden, his widow .

“It’s a disaster primarily as a result of once we marketed Woodland Animations I actually do not assume they realised how useful the puppets have been,” she acknowledged. “Each night they utilised to go once more in a cupboard, wrapped in tissue paper. Then I requested for one factor again once more they usually defined they skilled destroyed each little factor.”

A few of Wooden’s different creations at the moment are owned by WildBrain, which additionally owns reveals which incorporates Teletubbies and Within the Night time time Yard backyard. Shaun Smith, Wildbrain’s communications director, talked about that they skilled obtained “a array of first manufacturing components from these collection, which at the moment are housed in secure and sound and secure creation storage in London, as is typical apply for shows of historic significance.” That built-in varied costumes, puppets and props, he added, as successfully as the opposite preliminary Paddington bear.

Tom Sanders, a contemporary animator and Ivor Wood fan has used a while searching for to look at down Wooden’s work and claimed the one Womble verified to outlive is Terrific Uncle Bulgaria.

“The Herbs ended up recognized in a field in Ivor’s accountant’s enterprise workplace,” he defined. “We’ve acquired all these priceless gadgets that might be housed someplace. One other particular person simply must do it.”

Britt Allcroft, who developed the Thomas and Mates assortment, agrees. “I would really like that to return about,” she acknowledged.

Re-enter Brandreth. “I could remorse this,” he instructed the Observer. “However rest sure. We’re prepared – we is likely to be utterly prepared to determine an annexe to Brandreth Residence in Newby Corridor.”