Sam Downing

… is exemplified by the opening theme songs of the respective British and American adaptations of the children’s book series What-a-Mess, about a short and scruffy Afghan hound.

The British theme song is kind stylish and catchy (sadly you must visit YouTube to watch the clip, on account of some jerk disabling the embed function. HATE).

The American theme song does not compare:

It rings of “generic wackiness” rather than “delightful quirkiness”, which is pretty typical of lots of American cartoons. (Not that all American children’s animation of inferior quality – I have very fond memories of some US cartoons, while there was plenty of off-putting stuff that came out of the UK.)

Last night I watched My Neighbour Totoro, and this has to be said: CATBUS FTW!

That’s all.

Rhiannon Hart has posted about the amazingness of The Trap Door and Count Duckula and T-bag (hee, “T-bag”), three serials I inhaled as a child. Remember how Trap Door’s Bert had the unseen master known only as “The Thing Upstairs”? In one episode there was a teensy tiny glimpse of the Thing – which revealed him to be a sort of Lovecraftian horror – and my childhood self thought that was the raddest thing ever.

As a kid I was also partial to SuperTed, though even back then I knew it was kinda lame. So SuperTed is a defective teddy bear, who is brought to life by a spotty alien man (how Spotty achieved this was never, to my recollection, explained), then taken to a magic cloud, where Mother Nature gives him special powers? Huh? How does that make even a lick of sense? Talk about your convoluted backstories.

My mum had a theory that SuperTed’s magic word was, in fact, “magic word”. I reckon she was on to something.