Talking about Land Of The Lost below I suggest that no-one was clamouring for a film remake. Well, to take that a step further I started to think about all the time filling but not very good series and cartoons I saw as a kid, and wondered if they too would be dragged out of retirement for a new generation of bemused kids and man-children. Whilst I could certainly see the French computer animation chaps behind The Magic Roundabout buffing up Wattou Wattou, its safe to say that the cheap bought in animation blocks on ITV were the bottom of the list. But hey, our poorly dubbed Eurotoon may well be a Norwegian animation classic.
And then I came across this.
That’s right. The live action Vicky The Viking.
Now there are two things I remember about this Norse Saga (where the word is used more in the way of a Saga holiday than an exciting Viking adventure). Firstly it had an impressive theme tune which made it seem much more exciting than it actually was (“Hey Hey Vicky, Hey Vicky Hey”). A proto Eurovision winner if ever there was such a thing in Viking times. But the main point of note was that no matter how much i watched it, I could never work out what sex Vicky was supposed to be.
After all Vicky was a girls name, and Vicky had longish ginger hair. But then all his Viking friends had long hair. Vicky belong to the cartoon species of clever and precocious kids who solve with ingenuity their dumb parents problems, along with Penny (and Brain) from Inspector Gadget. But nothing in Vicky’s voice can be determined for either sex. So imagine my excitement when I discovered this Spanish trailer. I would finally discover if Vicky was male or female.
Watch it. See if you can tell. Cos I sure as hell am still in the dark.
Actually it was a poorly dubbed European-Japanese cartoon (like Dogtanian and Willy Fog)! It’s one of the the main influences on One Piece, the biggest current manga in Japan.
And Vicky/Vicke/Wickie/Bikke is a boy.
Hooray for gendered pronouns (and articles)! I’ve never heard of this cartoon, but the title of the Youtube clip clearly states that the character is male.
also, i hate to get all Bechdel test on y’all but the blonde kid’s clearly a girl, and therefore Wickie has to be a boy. You don’t get two female child leads unless you’re making eg the parent trap or idk the princess diaries or something.
The blonde girl is not in the cartoon that I remember. And HE;’S CALLED VICKY!
The blonde girl is in the cartoon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLQz-O5x2g she’s right there in the opening credits. She was called Ticky in the English version and Ylvi in places where three consonants together don’t frighten people.
“THAT I REMEMBER”
And I said I had no love (or indeed patience) for Vicky The Viking.
Anyway, I am sure this will get followed up by the pornographic, sexual, lesbian / gay trysts of said characters as always happens on my kids TV threads.
Basically I apologise to everyone about my inability to identify the differences in sex in poorly drawn cartoons that I didn’t like beyond an admittedly catchy theme tune.
you forgot “and then blog about them”