NASA's greatest clanger Rights to the celebrated documentary The Clangers are changing hands. Often mistakenly described as “a children’s programme”, the 1970s series revealed for the first time the existence of an advanced knitwear-based lunar civilisation, knowledge of which has been suppressed by governments and space agencies ever since. Not only …
Don't let those toffy English fox hunters in on the existence of that hallowed creature, the Soup Dragon. They might find a good excuse for sending in thousands of fox hounds to rip the poor thing to shreds of cotton.
So named after the popular music band of the 90s. I think.
They've also bagged Bagpuss, and Ivor the Engine.
As reported in The Grauniad:
"The Coolabi chief executive, Jeremy Banks, said: "This is an exciting acquisition for Coolabi. Bagpuss is a much-loved classic brand and we look forward to applying our proven brand management skills to its reinvigoration and to successfully introducing it to a new generation of children.
"In addition, we have secured some other interesting properties which the Coolabi team will begin work on immediately in order to accelerate their development."
GAH!
Why was the secret of Blue String Soup covered up? With a dustbin lid, no less. ISTR an episode where little humans turned up wearing spacesuits. With hilarious consequences, naturally. Things were fabulous in 1973, kids today have no idea. We only had to work three days a week, you know. Worker's paradise, it was...
It's very important to have things like this on El Reg. Without them I wouldn't have just put 2 and 2 together and had the ace idea of starting conversations in Clanger, Soup Dragon and Iron Chicken on internetshout.com. Still waiting for my home Internet connection after the house move though, so the ideas open to takers. If anyone can actually do Froglet, I'd be impressed too.
Go on, you know you want to and it'll give our colonial friends a serious WTF? moment......
Who can resist the Clangers ? At a very early age, this became my first ever unmissable TV show! And I was not alone; my big sister, my little sister, Mum & Dad and Grandma would all flock to the telly to see these delightful little chaps, speaking so eloquently yet only in whistles. The soup dragon was there, and they would all pop in and out of their little dustbin lidded craters on the moon. How NASA missed them, I'll never know .....Yet I am sure Major Clanger would soon sort out thoese pesky NASA guys tearing up the moon in their "dune" buggy!
Apparently Major clanger expressed himself too forcefuly, and it had to be toned down.
The whisting noises aren't just random whistles. They wrote an actual script with words, then whistled it. And like all other Childrens' prog scripts, it had to pass the censor......
'Things were fabulous in 1973, kids today have no idea. We only had to work three days a week, you know. Worker's paradise, it was...'
And it's back!
In 1973, we had an unpopular government, nationalisation, a run on the banks, collapsing house prices, rising unemployment, an economy in the crapper, energy supply problems and to top it all we were busy losing a war with Iceland.
Now all we need is Jon Pertwee back as the Doctor.
It wasn't a moon. Not ANY moon.
Anybody who was paying attention knows full well that the Clangers lived on a small, blue PLANET. Our moon (for those who haven't been paying attention) is not blue, and not a planet. It is in fact cheese coloured, as proven beyond any reasonable doubt by Wallace and Gromit (at least pm seems to be awake).
9/10 for the story, 0/10 for successful investigative journalism.
Paris, because we'd all like to see her moon.
Over and out.
Glenn.
You are assuming the layabout so-called "scientists" who pack our observatories today, and who have realised that it is MUCH harder to do science for yourself than to yawp on endlessly about how your betters did it wrong a hundred years ago, haven't decided to recalssify the Clanger's home world due to it being too small to be a planet. Look at the obvious radius of curvature in that picture. That place is about three miles around the equator or I'm a scotsman.
Note to "scientists": Where's my bloody personal jetpack? Where's the bloody space station I was promised as a kid? That bunch of overgrown baked bean tins you lot stuffed up there for a King's ransom is a bleeding joke! Either do some science or pay back the sodding grant money you got under false pretenses you lazy gits.
The Censors may have seen A script, but not necessarliy the one that Postgate & Firmin worked from.
Not so long ago Tesco were selling a toy Tiny Clanger with a sound chip in it, when squeezed it whistled in Clanger.
And what it said was.... "Bugger it - the damn thing's stuck again!"
Apparently, the first words spoken (whistled) on the Clangers were Major Clanger saying "Oh sod it! The bloody thing's stuck again!" He was trying to open a door.
There used to be a www.clangers.com site (now defunct) which said the episodes were scripted in English but then translated into whistles so they sounded like a real language.
I can only assume that Mr. Orlowski writes articles that don't include his favourite word "freetard" only when he is well lubricated?
Given that I otherwise enjoy Mr. Orlowski's writing, and so long as you promise to never, ever again show a picture of his face, I vote that Mr. Orlowski be given a raise to be paid in his favourite tipple (yes, even if he does prefer a shandy) at his local pub, available throughout the week and not just Fridays. Then maybe he'll start writing readable articles again.
"Ummm
By Ed Posted Friday 24th October 2008 14:27 GMT
Like WTF Reg......?
"
LOL, it's british thing Ed, what i want to know is what was the name of the first clanger on the earth and what did they say when they steped off their spaceship, was it broadcast all over the moon, and did why did they not return for so long!
i hear the eastern clangers have now got a robotics plan to return to earth and land some automateted robotic dragons to map the earth, but the west the united states of clanger nation dont like that so are now planning to make a north poll terra base soon.
there was part of me , thinking that I watched a kids programme back when I was 4 years old all those years ago... but no it was stuff that NASA had missed !
now I can buy into that , after all they faked the moon landings, and had an imaginary rockets that left cape canaveral, and where thus using there billions of US Budget using early CGI in the early 1970s..
oh bugger I must remember to take the pills the psychiatrist gave me ......he's a very nice man !
I haven't looked at these poor knitware creatures the same since someone pointed out that a Bedfordshire Clanger is a food item. Apparently, in Bedfordshire, they hunt and kill these magnificent aliens.
A full recipe, with "Pork" as an alternative ingredient in these PC times, can be found here:
http://www.bedfordshire.gov.uk/LeisureAndCulture/HistoryAndHeritage/BedfordshireClanger.aspx
See... they are even proud of their alien hunting ways! Presumably the Soup Dragon was the starter.
Save the clanger...
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