Something to help get you into the "spirit" of Halloween - from the same company who brought us the wonderful
Button Moon,
Playboard Puppets also blessed us with the equally mad
Spooks of Bottle Bay, which lasted three seasons between 1992 - 1995.
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| Some of the Spooks are out to play! Drawn by me back in 2009. |
Mad seems like an ideal word to describe this show on account of the setting - as shown in the title sequence, Bottle Bay seems to take place in a fishing village within a ship-in-a-bottle trinket. In its way, it's also quite creepy to those who remember. From
Sybil Sludge's gruesome
Zelda-like appearance from Terrahawks to the manic plaid-covered
Tommy Spook, who was forever grinning and giggling...
Yet somehow, it was one of those shows where I
enjoyed being scared, in a good way. There was a light-hearted manner on how the scares in this series were portrayed, and the construction of the puppets always fascinated me whenever this popped up on CITV "in the day", with a theme tune as haunting as the spooks themselves.
In fact, just compare the mouth shapes of
Fred Spook to
Captain Large of the Bottle Army - almost a "family resemblance" in its way...
So for those who have never seen see the series before, or haven't watched it in a while, let us reacquaint ourselves with the first two seasons...
whoooooo!
SEASON 1
SEASON 2
LINKS OF INTEREST:
Great drawing, you should do more!! Do you have any episodes of the series recorded from TV? I run the YouTube channel (the one with the first ep, amongst other clips) and I'm such a big fan - been looking for episodes for the last ten years or so, and I've found a few, but they're very few and far between, and it only seems to get more difficult as time goes on unfortunately :/
ReplyDeleteChris; thanks for the comment. And thank you for posting the first ep to begin with =)
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I haven't recorded any of the episodes at the time, but I'm sure you're bound to come across the VHS cassettes if you search hard enough. Amazon, eBay or otherwise. Best of luck all the same.
Once again Mr Signore you've made me remember a wonderful part of my childhood. I can always remember Bottle Bay so vividly, mainly because it terrified me from going near any bed sheets or curtains when it got dark! :D
ReplyDeleteAs Chris said above, you should definitely have a go at drawing more Spooks of Bottle Bay images. You've captured the look of Sally and Baby Spook so wonderfully in the one you've shown above. =)
This is fab! Such an epic programme, I can't believe almost all my friends either never saw it or just don't remember! I used to have the video on all the time, dancing and singing to the theme song at the start of every ep! lol << sad! x] xo
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