Rasmus Klump is a Danish text comic strip for young children, launched in 1951 by wife-and-husband duo Carla and Vilhelm Hansen. The main characters are a bear cub, Rasmus Klump, and his friends Pingo the penguin, Pelle the pelican, Pilskaden the turtle and Captain Skæg the seal who travel around the world in their steam boat Mary.
In English, the strips were published under two names: Barnaby Bear (published by Random House), and Bruin (published during the Seventies in Glasgow's Evening News).
Tropes in this work:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Pingo, with his bowtie.
- All Just a Dream: The Doggerland, a place with dinosaurs and other strange beings.
- Animated Adaptation: It has been adapted into cartoon form in the 1960s, 1984, 1997 and 2014.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: All of them are barefoot. Captain Skæg started this way too, but gained boots later on.
- Beary Friendly: The bears are all very nice.
- Big Eater: Knalle the ostrich. Also an Extreme Omnivore.
- The Blacksmith: Rasmus' Grandpa is one, though while we see him in his smithy he seems more a mechanic and handyman. (He is also the town icecream salesman, unlike most examples of the trope.)
- Carnivore Confusion: Eating fish or stew is OK for the characters.
- Child Prodigy: Rasmus' little brother, who is very good at designing and building things. Rasmus comes home from one journey and discovers he became a big brother while he was gone, so the little guy might even qualify for Brainy Baby.
- Childhood Marriage Promise: Rasmus and the daughter of the bears' king.
- Cool Ship: The Mary.
- Crazy-Prepared: It rarely happens that Pelle can't find anything they need in his beak.
- Disappeared Dad: Rasmus' father never shows up and also isn't mentioned.
- Dub Name Change: Rasmus Klump has different names in other languages.
- In Dutch Pol.
- In English he is named Barnaby or Bruin.
- In French Petzi.
- In Faroer Rasmus Tøppur.
- In Finnish and Swedish Rasmus Nalle.
- In Icelandic Rasmus Klumpur
- In Norwegian Bamse Bjørn, not to be confused with another Scandinavian comic strip bear of the same name: Bamse.
- In Spanish Pechi.
- Free-Range Children: Rasmus is a kid, and the other guys are his friends. Not only are they on free range, but they travel all over the world.
- Funny Animal
- Funny Background Event: Done by the little rascals (the turtle, the frog and the parrot).
- Girls Have Cooties: Averted, Rasmus and Pingo both find little girlfriends.
- The Good Captain: Captain Skæg.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Skaeg / Old Salt smokes pipe. Probably today this would be impossible, and in the animated series the pipe was removed.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Rasmus, Skaeg, Knalle. Pelle and Pingo don't need clothes at all (not counting Pingo's bowtie here).
- Hammerspace: The pelican Pelle surely can store a lot of useful stuff in his beak.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Rasmus and his friends meet a lion and a lamb who are a couple.
- Inexplicably Identical Individuals: All the penguins.
- The Key Is Behind the Lock
- Lazy Bum: Skaeg / Old Salt mostly likes to sleep.
- Limited Wardrobe
- Meaningful Name: Mary, Rasmus' ship, is named after his mother's name.
- Momma's Boy: Rasmus loves his mother, Mary.
- Never Heard That One Before: The captain enjoys telling stories, especially about his adventures in the Bay of Biscay.
- No Antagonist: Nobody in this comic strip is evil, bad or a threat.
- Noodle Incident: Old Salt often tries to tell about the great storm in Biskaya, but we never find out the details.
- Species Name: For Pelle and Pingo
- Shout-Out: The captain often offers to tell Rasmus and his friends stories about "Tintin and Captain Haddock".
- In one story they gang end up shipwrecked on the same island as Robinson Crusoe.
- Speech Bubbles: Averted in most comics - the text of whoever is speaking is under the pictures and usually accompanied by a small icon of the character's face to indicate who is speaking. Newer albums tend to use text balloons more.
- Stealth Pun: In the German translation, one ostrich (German: Strauß) character (not Knalle) was named Franz Josef. In other words, Franz Josef Strauß
. - Tattoo as Character Type: Sea captain Skæg has an anchor tattoed on his chest.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Rasmus loves pancakes with jam.
- Skæg enjoys eating pickerels.
- Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction
- Walk Like an Egyptian: When they visit the pyramids in the album set in Egypt, they find paintings like this. Strangely, they don't notice that they're the ones depicted.
- World of Funny Animals: The entire world is inhabited by funny animals.
- World of Weirdness: The Doggerland, where they meet dinosaurs first (with Skaeg lampshading that they should have died out long ago) and many even weirder creatures later.
