Saturday, July 29, 2006
Bear Trap Comic Strip Scan


Here is my first scan from a German comic strip book (it comes from the Einfach Tierisch 1 Bauerschlau book).

It's dated 1987 which means it was either created before or during the first run of the Boes TV show. The reason I decided to scan this one in is to show the continuity between the comic strips and the TV show. Epiosde number three, "A Small Kindness, A Terrible Nuisance", features Ollie (Boes) dashing around with his doctors bag trying to help out sick and injured animals. As you can see from the above scan it was a concept taken from the comic strips. I have other scans to further illustrate this point...but I'll save them for another day. In the meantime, enjoy this comic strip!

Posted by MarkOut @ 7:25 PM

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Monday, July 17, 2006

German Books Arrive


Hooray! Hurrah! Hurroo! I received the German books in the mail today. My divvy of a mail man CRAMMED them into my mailbox and I was convinced he had damaged them. But my fears turned out to be unfounded. Both were in really good condition (mainly due to the fact that their covers are made from very hard wearing cardboard). Apparently I overpaid the guy because he also sent me a series of twelve mini comic books featuring Wowser (Cubitus in German) as a bonus. Some of you may recognise the name Wowser. It was another animation series that aired on CITV during that same summer when Ox Tales aired. Strange coincidence that...

Anyway, I received the two books today. It appears it was a series of two that were released in 1994. They're both jam-packed full of strips from the 1988-1990 era. The series is called Einfach Tierisch which translates to Simply Animal.

The first book is subtitled Bauernschlau which translates to Farmer-Smartly. I'm guessing that it means that Ollie is a smart farmer or something along those lines.

The second book is subtitled Ohne Federlesen which translates to Without Feather/Spring Vintages. I guess I could just discard the Spring Vintages part of the title and assume that Without Feather is a pretty accurate translation (seeing as how the cover features a group of plucked chickens on it).

If you think the mating rabbits comic strip that I uploaded was a little risque, it's actually an ongoing theme! Lots of mating jokes are to be had. Another interesting factoid is that a lot of the jokes that you see on the Ox Tales TV shows are featured in the strips. For example, the episode "A Small Kindness, A Terrible Nuisance" which features Ollie running and helping the animals out with his doctors bag appears to have originated in the comic strips. There are more, but I'm going to save them for another post...

Posted by MarkOut @ 1:40 PM

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http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boes check out this dutch encyclopedia...

# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 6:43 PM

 

Thanks for the link Anon. I can't begin to estimate how many hours I've spent googling Ox Tales, Boes, Fantazoo and other key words! If you have any info you'd like to share with me about Ox Tales/Boes feel free to do so!

# posted by Blogger MarkOut @ 11:58 PM

 

the guy that ilustrates is now linked to geesink studios, as you can see on http://www.geesinkstudio.nl/portfolio/boes.html
he also designs a lot for the amusement park Efteling in holland... awkward designs!!

# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 3:24 AM

 

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Thursday, July 13, 2006

3. "A Small Kindness, A Terrible Nuisance"


I now present my eleventh review of an Ox Tales cartoon. It’s number three in the series: “A Small Kindness, A Terrible Nuisance”.

The narrating toucan explains to the audience that Ollie has decided to become a doctor today. He’s sitting at home when he receives his first call. Sammy is crying in pain with a nail stuck in his paw. Ollie pulls out some bandages, but instead of wrapping Sammy’s injured paw he uses them to wrap Sammy’s crying mouth shut. Ollie then encounters a sad looking, loosely skinned dog. Ollie gives it a face lift by tying his loose skin back, giving him no other choice but to smile.

He then finds a stork whose leg has been broken by a lobster. He wraps the leg in bandages then hangs it from the stork’s beak in a sling. The uneven weight distribution causes the stork to topple over and it ends up standing on it’s bad leg. Ollie then finds a sausage dog dragging it’s belly along the ground. Ollie helps it out by bandaging it’s body up to where it’s belly no longer drags along the floor.

Jack has a cold. Every time he sneezes his shell shakes as if it’s about to fall apart. Ollie arrives on the scene and reinforces it with surgical tape. It seems like a good idea but when Jack sneezes again, instead his shell shaking he shoots out of it it like a bullet from a gun.

Hannah the hen has cracked an egg which she was attempting to hatch. Ollie has the solution as he tapes it back together with surgical tape. When the egg finally begins to hatch, the chick can be heard chirping from inside as it tries to break through surgical tape.

Ollie helps out two mothers who keep dropping their babies. A monkey is having a tough time keeping her child attached to her back so Ollie ties it on. A kangaroo is having similar problems. With every leap her joey falls out of her pouch. Ollie comes up with a solution, securing the baby in it’s mother’s pouch with a seat belt.

Ollie then rushes to the scene of a fire with Ellen the elephant in tow. She fills her trunk with water from a pond then uses it like a water hose to extinguish the fire. Unfortunately it leaves Ellen flat and dehydrated. Ollie calls for Rodney’s help in moving her. He ties her trunk to Rodney’s tail, but as Rodney starts to walk away Ellen floats behind him as if she were a kite.

Ollie then comes across two alligators snapping at each other. Both alligator’s mouths are at 180 degrees and they appear to be stuck together. Ollie defuses the situation by zipping their two mouths together as if their teeth where teeth on a zip. He then silences a hissing snake by using it’s forked tongue to tie it’s mouth shut.

Ollie gets his final emergency of the day as Lenny the lion is preying on Zane the zebra. Ollie takes his trusty bandages and uses them to wrap Lenny’s mouth shut. With Lenny unable to bite him, Ollie takes the opportunity to check Lenny’s heart beat with a stethoscope. The stethoscope tickles Lenny and Lenny’s laughing causes the bandages to come loose. With his mouth free, Lenny chases Ollie away as the cartoon comes to a close.


“A Small Kindness, A Terrible Nuisance” is one of those gag after gag after gag cartoons. It worked pretty well and had some funny moments. It contains two scenes that were immortalized in the English and Dutch opening montages. The scene where the bandaged up stork loses it’s balance is one of the clips from the English titles. The scene where Ollie is seen skipping along the bank of an alligator infested lake is from the Dutch titles.

Posted by MarkOut @ 9:18 AM

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

"Digging A Well" Missing Scene


I’ve unearthed another missing scene that was in the original Dutch cartoon but was left out of the U.S. version. It comes from episode nine: “Digging A Well”.

When digging the new well, Ollie taps on the wall with his hammer and the tapping sound is strangely answered by the flushing of a toilet. A little door swings open to reveal a mole sitting on a miniature pink toilet reading a newspaper. He has a few choice words for Ollie before slamming the door.

Maybe this was considered a little too crass for American kids at the time, or perhaps the American crew couldn’t come up with an innocent enough one-liner to accompany it.

Posted by MarkOut @ 8:25 PM

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Tuesday, July 11, 2006

7. "Momma Peggy Leaves Home"


I’m reviewing episode number seven today for a couple of reasons. On the surface it may seem like just another episode, but there are a handful of interesting anecdotes surrounding it. This is going to be a fairly long post.

First of all, it has two English episode titles: “Ping Mamma Leaves Home” (or “Momma Peggy Leaves Home” as I’ve renamed it to make it a little less confusing), and “Porker Problems” (it’s title card from the VHS release of the same name).

This episode is included on the HALLO BOES DVD from the Netherlands. It’s called “Mama ping loopt weg”. What’s interesting about this is it actually contains five scenes that were cut from the U.S. release. I had read somewhere that the U.S. distributor, Celebrity Home Entertainment, was known for editing imported cartoons, and “Momma Peggy Leaves Home" was a major victim of this.

At first I’m going to present the regular review, then following that I’ll go into the missing scenes.

Peggy the pig is feeding her four piglets. Ollie fills up her trough with a bucket of slop and calls her over to eat. The four piglets get there first and eat it all. Peggy gets mad and jumps into her empty trough, destroying it. They continue to bother her so she just leaves their father, Peter, to look after them.

Peter finds mud to wallow in and is soon joined by his four young piglets. Unfortunately, once they’ve dived in they stay submerged. Ollie calls for help and Edward the elephant fishes them out with his trunk.

Fresh from their rescue, the piglet quartet are soon back to their annoying ways, bothering a cow and a hen. Jack takes the initiative of taking off his shell and turning it into a see-saw. All four end up on top of it at once and the shell breaks under the weight.

Meanwhile, Peggy is enjoying her newfound freedom. She’s wearing makeup and has a belt tightly wrapped around her waist to hold in her belly. She trips over a rock and tumbles head over heels, turning herself into a giant pink bouncy ball. She rolls down a hill and bowls over a group of storks. An alligator hits her with his tail as if she were a baseball. Gaylord the gorilla and fellow gorilla Bongo play football with her. She then ends up down a hole. A bear emerges from the hole with her and balances on her as if he was performing in a circus. He flattens her under his weight and he tosses her away. An elephant then bats her around with it’s trunk and Peggy ends up in a river.

Farther up stream, Peter is taking a bath. As soon as he’s finished, he’s back wallowing in the mud. Unattended, the piglets are back bothering animals. Sammy and Rodney are their protagonists.

Ollie finds Peggy dripping wet on the river bank so he wrings her out like a towel. He lays her flat on the grass. The piglets find her and look to be drinking from her nipples, but it actually turns out they were re-inflating her.

The cartoon concludes with Peggy once again in makeup, wearing a belt, being chased by her four piglets.


Thoughts: This was a strange one! The idea of a pig turning into a giant pink bouncy ball was truly surreal. It was a nice little episode but weirdness truly oozed from it’s pores! The pig family plays a fairly big part in some of the earlier episodes and I thought this was a good pig episode.


And now onto the missing scenes. As I said earlier there are five in all. Two of them are fairly morbid gags. The remaining three are nipple gags.

1. When the piglets are bothering Peggy at the beginning of the cartoon, she walks away from them, dragging them behind her by her nipples. They stretch out for several feet.

2. When Peter takes the piglets walking, they all follow him in a chain with each piglet holding the preceding piglet’s tail in it’s mouth. They all bump into one another and collapse in a heap. When Peter turns his head to look at them he see’s them as joints of roast pork.

3. When Peggy is out walking, she passes another mother pig who is being followed by dozens of piglets. The mother has dozens of nipples all over her body to compensate for her many young.

4. When Peggy becomes a giant pink bouncy ball and the elephant is playing with her, after bouncing her on it’s trunk a few times the elephant begins to blow air into her as if she were a balloon. She eventually pops and the camera cuts to the sky where we see a floating Peggy shaped cloud, complete with halo and wings, accompanied by harp music in the background.

5. At the end of the cartoon when the piglets are once again trying to drink from her nipples, it’s revealed that they’ve all been tied in knots at the end to prevent them from doing so.


So there you have the deleted scenes. Seeking out those are going to add an entirely different dimension to the episode reviews.

Posted by MarkOut @ 10:47 AM

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Monday, July 10, 2006

The Dutch DVDs Arrive


As you can tell by the title of this post, the four Dutch DVDs I had on order have arrived!

Above is a side by side comparison of the American NTSC 1990 Funny Farm Madness video tape and the Dutch PAL Dollen Met De Mollen DVD (click to enlarge it). It's from the "Snow" cartoon (ep.4). As you can see, the DVD quality is far, far superior to the 1990's VHS. This means that there are FANTASTIC screen captures on the way! This is exciting stuff...

I've already looked over the content of all four discs. Here is a brief rundown of each disc (Although I have the Dutch titles for each episode, I've listed the English titles for simplicities sake. I'll go more indepth into all this on the web site):

Vol.1: HALLO BOES (Hello Boes)

1. "Hello Olle" (ep.1)
2. "Digging A Well" (ep.9)
3. "Momma Peggy Leaves Home" (ep.7)
4. "It's Not Easy To Manage A Farm" (ep.2)
5. "A Peaceful Day" (ep.6)

Vol.3: DOLLEN MET DE MOLLEN (Working On The Field)

1. "Working On The Field" (ep.4)
2. "Who Stole The Milk?" (ep.15)
3. "Woody" (ep.17)
4. "Snow" (ep.16)
5. "The Guard" (ep.8)

Vol.4: BOES WEET WAT EEN VARKEN EET (A Peaceful Day)

1. "A Peaceful Day" (ep.6)
2. "I'm The Champ" (ep.55)
3. "It's Hard To Be A King" (ep.20)
4. "The Lost Baby Elephant" (ep.21)

Vol.5: HELD OP KLOMPEN (The Guard)

1. "The Guard" (ep.8)
2. "Pigs After Rain" (ep.22)
3. "No Arm Wrestling Anymore" (ep.23)
4. "Cheese" (ep.24)

The main piece of news right now is I have a NEW episode! "I'm The Champ", episode 55, is part of volume four. I also discovered that the narrating toucan and laughing mole cut scene's aren't part of the original Dutch version. I'm guessing they must have been part of the Japanese show.

Posted by MarkOut @ 4:15 PM

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Aha! Am I right in thinking that "I'm the Champ" is the episode where Ollie and Gaylord get into a boxing match? It was one of the episodes I missed when the show was on British telly, and I was most miffed because it was apparently excellent. The horse racing episode also falls into that category, although I'm not sure if you have that one. Anyway, if you come to do some framegrabs, I'd be delighted to see some shots from episode 55.

# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 4:22 AM

 

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Wednesday, July 05, 2006

"Like Rabbits"/Update


I've accompanied this post with the most adult Boes comic strip I've managed to find. I think we can safely say that no scene like this made it onto CITV! Sorry if it offends anybody.

I just want to add a few sidenotes in respects to the proposed Hey Big Guy web site. The planning stages are in full swing. I have most of the content and layout on paper and it's now time to transfer it onto a computer screen. I have a few new programs I've been looking into to help me with that. There hasn't been much new stuff on the blog recently because I've been dabbling in the world of YouTube and it's been cutting into my time on this project (and pretty much everything else!). The YouTube stuff may continue to cut into my Ox Tales stuff over the next little while so please be patient with me!

Still waiting on my four Dutch DVDs and two German comic books. I didn't really expect them anytime soon. Just looking forward to receiving them really.

Posted by MarkOut @ 1:56 PM

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