Andy Pandy, 1950
One of The original Watch With Mother shows this little fella is 70 years old this year.
Andy Pandy was a British kids TV series that made it’s debut on BBC TV in the summer of 1950.
Originally the series was broadcast live until it was realised recording episodes meant they could be repeated.
A series of twenty six episodes were filmed and repeated until 1969.
In 1970, a new series of thirteen episodes was made, this time in colour.
Andy Pandy would pop up again in when a revival of the show was made in 2002. This time the show was the basis for an Andy Pandy comic strip in the children’s magazines Robin and Pippin. Whist the original series had used stringed puppets the revival used stop-motion techniques. These episodes were repeated until 2008.
The original episodes were 15 minutes duration, whlst the revival episodes were just 5 minutes long.
It is claimed that the design for the Andy Pandy character was based on Paul Atterbury, who at the time the young son of the puppeteer behind the character Audrey Atterbury.
Summary
Andy Pandy was a stringed puppet who lived in a picnic basket. Andy was later joined by Teddy, a teddy bear, and Looby Loo, a rag doll, who would appear/come to life when Andy and Teddy were not around. Looby Loo had her own special song “Here we go Looby Loo”. All three lived in the same picnic basket.
Each episode would end with a variation on the song: “Time to go home, Time to go home, Andy is waving goodbye.”
Clips
[AdSense-A]
[AdSense-A]
Narrated By
Maria Bird – 1950 – 1952
Vera McKechnie – 1970
Tom Conti – 2002
Details
Channel:
BBC TV (1950 – 70)
CBeebies (2002 – 2008)
Created By: Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird
Original Transmission Dates:
20th June, 1950 – 26th September 1952
25th March – 27th September 2002