The Magic Roundabout is an English-language children's television programme that ran from 1965 to 1977. It used the video of the French stop motion animation show Le Manège enchanté, but with completely different scripts and characters.
The French series, created by Serge Danot with the help of Ivor Wood and Wood's French wife, Josiane, was broadcast from 1964 to 1974 on ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française). The BBC originally rejected translating the series because it was "charming... but difficult to dub into English",but later produced a version of the series using the French footage with new English-language scripts that bore little relation to the original storylines. This version, written and narrated by Eric Thompson, was broadcast in 441 five-minute-long episodes from 18 October 1965 to 25 January 1977. It proved a great success and attained cult status, and when in October 1966 it was moved from the slot just before the evening news to an earlier children's viewing time, adult viewers complained to the BBC.
The Archies is an American fictional garage band founded by vocalist/guitarist Archie Andrews, bassist Reggie Mantle, drummer Forsythe "Jughead" Jones, vocalist/keyboardist Veronica Lodge and vocalist/lead guitarist/percussionist Betty Cooper, a group of adolescent characters of the Archie universe, in the context of the animated TV series, The Archie Show. The group is also known for their real world success, through a virtual band.
The fictional band's music was recorded by session musicians, featuring Ron Dante on lead vocals and Toni Wine on duet and backing vocals, and released as a series of singles and albums. Their most successful song, "Sugar, Sugar", became one of the biggest hits of the bubblegum pop genre that flourished from 1968 to 1973.
The Richard Scarry Playskool Puzzletown series is considered one of the most creative playset series available in the 1970's. Each puzzletown set includes woodboard "wall" pieces and roof pieces that can be assembled in a vairety of ways to build different playsets.
Mayor Fox's Town Center includes puzzle pieces that build a town, including everything from a Mayor's office in Town Hall to a Veggie market stand and a Bakery.
The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures created by Elisabeth Beresford and originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968.They live in burrows, where they aim to help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in creative ways. Although Wombles supposedly live in every country in the world, Beresford's stories are concerned with the lives of the inhabitants of the burrow on Wimbledon Common in London, England.
The characters gained a higher national profile in the UK in the mid-1970s as a result of a BBC-commissioned children's television show which used stop-motion animation. A number of spin-off novelty songs also became hits in the British music charts. The Wombles pop group was the idea of British singer and composer Mike Batt.
The Womble motto is "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish". This environmentally-friendly message was a reflection of the growing environmental movement of the 1970s.
Camberwick Green is a British children's television series that ran from January to March 1966 on BBC1, featuring stop motion puppets. Camberwick Green is the first in the Trumptonshire trilogy, which also includes Trumpton and Chigley.
When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and en route they meet a Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) that needs a brain, a Tin Man (Jack Haley) missing a heart, and a Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) who wants courage. The wizard asks the group to bring him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) to earn his help.
The Green Cross Code is a brand created by the National Road Safety Committee (now the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, RoSPA) to raise awareness of pedestrian road safety in the United Kingdom. The multimedia Green Cross Code campaign began in 1970 and continues today.
The Green Cross Code replaced the earlier Kerb Drill (below) pedestrian safety campaign; the Kerb Drill's military style ("Halt! Quick march!") was deemed confusing to children by safety authorities.
