A while back, I asked some blogger friends if they’d want to write a piece for my Share Your Nostalgia feature. In the past we have looked at Favorite Childhood Toy and Favorite Childhood Book. We continue to visit Saturday mornings. This was when we sat in front of the TV with our favorite cereal and watched hours of cartoons. So I asked my guests to write about their favorite cartoon or cartoon character growing up.
My next guest blogger is my pal, Christian from Christian’s Music Musings. Christian features music from every era on his site. My favorite feature is his “Sunday Six,” where he features six random songs. The songs are often a mix of various genres and various eras. He grew up in Germany, so let’s see if that has any influence over his choice….
Childhood Nostalgia: My Favorite Animated Show
Share Your Nostalgia hosted by fellow blogger Keith (Nostalgic Italian) is in its third round, and I’m happy to be back with another contribution. This time, the ask was to write about our favorite animated show or favorite animated character while growing up.
While I loved watching Peanuts cartoons on TV while growing up back in Germany, I figured it might be more interesting to talk about a German animated program: Die Sendung mit der Maus (“the showing starring the mouse”), one of the most successful German children’s programs. In fact, after some 54 years and more than 2,500 episodes, it’s still on!
Launched in 1971, the program airs on Sunday mornings. The subtitle is Lach- und Sachgeschichten (“funny stories and educational stories”), which are presented in the form of short cartoons and short educational films.
The key protagonist of the cartoons is the mouse. To solve problems the mouse encounters, she has some supernatural powers, e.g., open her belly to grab a tool or rip off her tail to use it as a rope.
Die Sending mit der Maus also features a blue elephant who is smaller than the mouse. He is portrayed as curious, pretty strong, spontaneous and loyal, and likes to laugh when the mouse has a mishap.
There is also a yellow duck, which is smaller than the mouse but bigger than the elephant. She is mischievous and generally causes some chaos when showing up, which happens more rarely than the elephant.
Seeing is believing. Here’s a clip of a short funny cartoon starring the mouse and the elephant.
And here’s a clip of a short educational film around the essential question whether ducks get cold feet when walking on ice! 😊
While as a small kid admittedly I mainly enjoyed the cartoons with the mouse and her two friends, looking at program footage today, I find combining short funny cartoons with educational films a great concept for kids to learn.
Since I’m a music blogger, I’d be amiss not to mention there is a song about the mouse titled Hier kommt die Maus (“Here comes the mouse”). Written and produced by German TV entertainer Stefan Raab, together with Hans Posegga and Lars Dietrich, Hier kommt die Maus was released in February 1996 to coincide with the show’s 25th anniversary.
And, yes, Hier kommt die Maus even enjoyed some chart success. In Germany, it peaked at no. 2 for one week and remained in the charts for 19 weeks. The song was also popular in Switzerland, climbing to no. 12 and remaining in the charts there for 12 weeks.
In case you’d like to see more of the lovely mouse, I’m leaving you with a longer clip. And don’t feel funny. While the target audience for the show is kids in kindergarten and elementary school, Wikipedia notes the average viewer age is about 40 years, since parents and grandparents oftentimes join children in front of the TV – who could blame them!
Sources: Wikipedia; YouTube
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 