Channel Frederator Blog

The Cobble Hill Theater, my local go-to cinema, has a great family series called “Big Movies for Little Kids”. On November 3 they will screen episodes of the French animated series Barbapapa. Barbapapa started out as a popular series of books, written and illustrated by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor. They star a shape-shifting blob that finds love and gets married. The bulbous couple then has a colorful brood of seven Barbababies. Barbapapa (barbe à papa) is French for candy floss, or a “father’s beard”. (Gotta say that he looks like a European cousin of the Shmoo from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.)

Although I was not familiar with the books until now, they have been translated into 30 languages. There were two animated series based upon the books: a French series from the 1970’s (45 episodes, five minutes each), filmed by Polyscope in the Netherlands; and a more recent series (50 episodes, five minutes each), produced by the Japanese firm Kodansha in the late 90’s. The globe-trotting Japanese version was called Barbapapa Sekai Wo Mawaru (Barbapapa Around the World).

Apparently the first series was syndicated in the US in 1981. Does anyone remember seeing it?

You can buy tons of Barbapapa items at this U.K. website. Animation lover Harry McCracken has a photo of the Barbapapa store on his blog here.

So far, I have not been able to find any source of Barbapapa VHS or DVD in the United States. Even the official site is of no help. Too bad, because I think this cuddly cult could be big!

After the jump, a Barbapapa theme song techno remix and a rockin’ montage!

—Anne D. Bernstein