The Clangers

The Clangers were created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin at Smallfilms and were first screened in 1969 (the year man landed on the moon). They were described by a NASA scientist as "an attempt to bring a note of realism to the fantasy of the space race."

This series follows the ups and downs of everyday life of the Clangers. The Clangers are a strange little race of small, highly civilised pink long-nosed mouse-like creatures that communicate in a high-pitched whistling sound. They express emotions such as sadness or distress by pulling their big floppy wears over their eyes.

This peculiar race resides in a small blue, cratered planet somewhere in the Universe. This planet is covered with dustbin lids, which are used as doorways to the Clangers living quarters below ground in worm-like passages. They share their world with the Soup Dragon who lives below in the soup well and who provides the community above with green soup (the Clangers staple diet). Light, and the very tasty Glow Honey, is provided to the Clangers by the Glow Buzzers. The Froglets are small oval shaped stick legged creatures who travel by means of a top hat and live in a vertical pond situated deep inside the Clangers planet.

The community live in complete harmony and are a very courteous race that enjoys the simple things in life, eating blue string pudding, watering plants with the Cloud, playing music and radioing the Iron Chicken, who lives in an iron nest, which floats above the Clangers planet.

Where music grows on trees and the notes can be used to propel spacecrafts, the Clanger's world is a place where unexpected things happen on a regular basis and not a day goes by where nothing uninteresting happens.

The problems and situations that arise during this spectacular series are much the same as ours, but of course slightly different solutions are used. E.g. When a rogue plant takes over the planet, in the episode "The Seed", The Iron Chicken asks the help of the SkyMoos who are large purple creatures who graze the plant - like cows.