Ivor the Engine

Like many other small boys I had an inexplicable fixation with steam trains. Combine this with the wonderful imaginative talents of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and you get Ivor the Engine. It’s beautiful, folksy, wistful, nostalgic for an era of community, and with dragons too (as any good Welsh story should have.)

Paul Bunyan

Here’s a great 1958 Disney production about the North American folk hero Paul Bunyan. We recorded this on VHS when I was a kid in the late 70s / early 80s and watched it on what must have been a daily basis.

Westi

I saw this on Channel 4’s three minute wonder about a year ago and again at the Encounters Film Festival in Bristol in November 2007. It’s a great little piece about bullying and confidence. Written by 13 year old Ben Westerman from Doncaster, this is a film about himself and his feelings about his self-image.

Made for RAW CUTS, a joint initiative between Channel 4’s 4Talent and the NSPCC.

Directed by Madevi Dailly

Fuggy Fuggy

Some more ego-posting here… here’s ninja Fuggy Fuggy, an animation from The Brothers McLeod as seen on MTV.

The most badly disguised superhero in the universe

So… He-Man!

Adam turns into He-Man and looks exactly the same except without his pink shirt, but now sporting a tan.

Teela and Evil Lynn are quite clearly designed to inspire certain feelings in their pubescent audience.

It sounds like beast man has some serious sinus issues.

Yes… it’s easy to pick holes in He-Man, but at the end of the day I loved it as a young boy.

Parts one to three of the first episode below.

Bananaman

Sometimes when you go back and looks at childhood favourites again you get a little disappointed. But not with Bananaman. It’s short, silly, with lots of visual gags and voiced by the Goodies with just the right amount of nonsense.