The wombles
The Wombles are literary characters by the British author Elisabeth Beresford in a series of children's books of the same name ( The Wombles ), which were published in Great Britain from 1968.
Children's books
The wombles are pointy-nosed, furry, and teddy-bear-like cave dwellers in the London borough of Wimbledon . In the original children's stories, they use ingenuity and inventiveness to help keep the environment clean and in this way promote ecological awareness. The name "Womble" allegedly goes back to a slip of the tongue of one of the author's children who is said to have incorrectly pronounced "Wimbledon" "Wombledon".
A total of five children's books in English were produced: The Wombles (1968), The Wandering Wombles (1970), The Wombles at Work (1973), The Wombles to the Rescue (1974) and The Wombles Go Round the World (1976). The central Womble characters are: Great Uncle Bulgaria, Trinidad (Tobermory), Orinoco, Bungo, Wellington, Madame Cholet, Kiev (Tomsk), Alderney, Miss Adelaide and Stepney.
TV series and feature film
Between 1973 and 1975 the British production company FilmFair made a television adaptation of the Wombles for the BBC . The approximately 60 five-minute doll cartoons were produced using stop-motion technology. In the English-language original, Bernard Cribbins lent all Wombles his voice, in the German version Dieter Hallervorden . For the German first broadcast in 1977 on the ZDF pre-evening program, an alternative dubbed version with distributed speaking roles was produced in which Arnold Marquis Onkel Bulgaria spoke, and the German version of the title song was sung in the opening credits. The text read:
Environment begins at
your own door, wombles are beings that do something for it!
They are quiet and friendly and clean,
everyone has to waffle, otherwise it will never work!
The original version of the theme song, the Wombling Song , written by Mike Batt , was able to place itself in the English charts as a single in 1974 - along with three other releases. Batt then conceived four albums ( Wombling Songs , Remember you're a Womble , Keep on Wombling and Superwomble ). Furthermore, in 1977, Wombling Free, a live-action feature film with actors in costumes as wombles, was produced. Batt also provided the soundtrack for this children's film. In 1998 there was a new edition of the Wombles as a puppet series, which was produced by the Canadian company Cinar Films . December 2007 a DVD with the first 15 episodes and a new synchronization was released on the German market.
Discography
Albums
| year | title |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChartsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
 UK
|
|||
| 1974 | Wombling songs |
UK19th  (17 weeks)UK |
|
| Remember You're a Womble |
UK18th (29 weeks)UK |
||
| Keep on Wombling |
UK17th (6 weeks)UK |
||
| 1975 | Superwombling |
UK-  |
|
| 1977 | 20 Wombling Greats |
UK29 (1 week) UK |
|
| 1998 | The Best Wombles Album So Far |
UK26 (4 weeks) UK |
Singles
| year | Title album |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 DE
|
UK
|
|||
| 1974 | Wombling Song Wombling Songs |
- |
UK4 (26 weeks) UK |
1998 again at number 27 in the UK
|
| Remember You're a Womble Remember You're a Womble |
DE22 (7 weeks) DE |
UK3 (21 weeks) UK |
1998 again at number 13 in the UK
|
|
| Banana Rock Remember You're a Womble |
DE45 (1 week) DE |
UK9 (13 weeks) UK |
||
| Minuetto Allegretto Remember You're a Womble |
- |
UK16 (9 weeks) UK |
||
| Wombling Merry Christmas Keep On Wombling |
- |
UK2 (8 weeks)UK |
||
| 1975 | Wombling White Tie and Tails Superwombling |
- |
UK22 (7 weeks) UK |
|
| Super Womble Superwombling |
- |
UK20 (6 weeks) UK |
||
| Let's Womble to the Party Tonight |
- |
UK34 (5 weeks) UK |
||
| 2000 | I Wish It Could Be A Wombling Christmas |
- |
UK22 (3 weeks) UK |
|
Others
The Wombles appeared Europe-wide as part of the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 produced by the BBC as an interval act during the vote, in which they - accompanied by a mix of their songs The Wombling Song and Remember you're a Womble - in a film Cityscapes from the Brighton venue.
The mascot of the AFC Wimbledon football club is a womble named Haydon . The name was personally chosen by Elisabeth Beresford after a naming competition and refers to the Haydons Road station, which was the closest to the old stadium of Wimbledon FC , Plow Lane.
Web links
- Tidy Bag - The online Wombles Museum (English)
- http://www.stintfangwomble.de/ The first German Womble homepage
- British Film Institute Screen Online (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Chart sources: DE UK
- ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK
- ↑ Eurovision.tv (English)
- ↑ AFC Wimbledon ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
