Trivia / Barbapapa

• Adored by the Network: Most Nickelodeon channels worldwide have been treating One Big Happy Family! fairly well, with good time slots and even commercial break bumpers being made just for the show.
• Channel Hop:
  • The 70s series was aired in various countries on many local TV channels that were available back then, however the 2019 reboot has strictly been airing in Nickelodeon channels all around the world, and has even been dubbed in languages that the original series was not dubbed in.^note This is not the case for Italy and Spain, as the original series (and even Around the World for the former) was already broadcast on Nickelodeon years ago.
  • The original network for the original series in France, the ORTF, shut down in 1975. In the same year, the series resumed on TF1.
• Children Voicing Children: The English dub of One Big Happy Family! uses child actors for all the Barbababies instead of adults.
• Creator Couple: Barbapapa is known for being created by French-American couple Annette Tison and Talus Taylor, who lived in Paris, France.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • If you were to tell anyone that the original animated series actually isn't French, you'd be met with surprise. There's a common misconception (that stems from the authors being French-American and living in Paris, France) that the original animated series was entirely French with no input from any other studio whatsoever. But alas, this isn't true: in the first season, the series was produced and animated by a Dutch studio, Polyscope B.V. In season two, this changed to being produced by the Japanese studios KSS and Topcraft. Although the creators of the book series also had a had in producing the animated show, there is no (known) French production studio that was behind the original series. The only possible truth to this was that the show was, allegedly, originally made in the French-language, and the Japanese and Dutch versions are simply dubs. However, it is true that the 2019 reboot was produced solely by a French studio, NORMAAL.
  • On a much lesser scale, a site went around suggesting that Lolita (the family dog) is named "Irving" in the English version of the franchise, when she does not appear to be named as such anywhere.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Well of course, given how Ricet Barrier originally voiced every single character in the 70s series, including the females. On the opposite side of things, all of the Barbababies were voiced by women in the 2019 reboot, including the males.
• Dawson Casting: Once again a given with Ricet Barrier in the 70s series, but there are various other examples; such as the 2019 reboot where all the Barbababies were voiced by grown women in French. In both American English dubs of the original, all of the Barbababies are very clearly voiced by adults who weren't even trying to sound like kids (with the possible exception of Magno!Barbazoo, although it's not too convincing).
• Died During Production: One of the creators of Barbapapa, American Talus Taylor died at age 82.
• Dueling Dubs: There's a lot of examples of this with various dubs of the first show:
  • There are five English dubs of the original 70s series. At first, a British English dub premiered in the 70s on BBC (and is the only one that remained lost). Few years later, a Gag Dub was syndicated on many networks in the US that was done by Magno Sound and Video, and a Canadian English dub ran at the same time (which appears to be the most distributed and recognized dub by many growing up in the 80s). The cheapest of all was soon to follow, a dub with limited voice cast and budget that was distributed to DVDs in Japan in 2001; the dub was made to teach Japanese kids English. Another American English dub by Centauro Group, which would be the last dub produced, was also released on DVDs in South Korea in 2006, with that same purpose; it is since then streaming on YouTube as of late 2022.
  • Two Arabic dubs of the original exist; one that aired on Qatar Television (and was based on either the British or Canadian English dub), and one that was released on DVDs by SharingCode (that was based on the Dutch dub).
  • There are three Finnish dubs. The first one was aired on Yle TV2's Pikku Kakkonen block in the 70s. Then a second dub by Golden Voice Oy was released on VHS in the 80's. Later, a dub was released in the 2010's on HBO Nordic and Netflix, and recently Viaplay. A similar case goes for the three Swedish dubs; the first was aired on SVT2, then another dub by Wendros was aired on SF Succé, TV3, and TV4, and then the third dub was also released on HBO Nordic and Netflix around the same time as the new Finnish dub.
  • The first Norwegian dub was released on VHS, while the second dub was aired on TV2, and is also available on HBO Nordic and Netflix.
  • There are two Hebrew dubs. One that was aired on Channel 1 in 1978, and one that was aired on Hop! Channel in 2017.
  • Technically, there are three Italian dubs of the original. The first was released as its own standalone movie in 1973 (which predates when the show aired in France by a year) with clips from episodes re-packaged. When the show would air on its own a few years later, it got re-dubbed and was aired on Rai 1 and Rai 2. Then the series got another re-dub in 2006 by Studio P.V., and it aired on Nickelodeon, Rai YoYo, and DeA Junior.
  • There are two Latin American Spanish dubs; the first dub (that was recorded in Mexico) was aired on UCV Televisión and Azteca 13, and the second dub (by an unknown country) was aired on Canal 10 in El Salvador.
  • There are also two European Spanish dubs. The first by Tecnison was aired on La 2 and Canal Sur, and the second was aired on Nickelodeon.
  • Even the 2019 reboot got hit with this pretty quickly. The series gained a Finnish dub on Nick Jr. in December 2020, while a separate Finnish dub for the series (with some cast from the HBO/Netflix/Viaplay dub of the original remaining) was produced by Revolver Studio and aired on Yle TV2 less than a month later. Finnish dubs being produced separately for Nickelodeon and Yle aren't new, as this also is the case for Peppa Pig and PAW Patrol.
• Edited for Syndication: The American English dub of the '70s series by Magno is a literal example of this trope, as a lot was cut from the episodes when the series aired in syndication in the US. A five minute episode became a two minute episode. However, the dub that was aired was a Gag Dub, which made the cuts feel natural and even unnoticeable to those who were unfamiliar with the source material.
• Fandom Life Cycle: The franchise is at Stage 1, as not many people have heard about it, and those that have shrug it off as nothing more than a nostalgic memory (or even something they had dreamed up). The fandom for the series is almost nonexistent, and might even be surprising to those that did know about the franchise. It should be noted that some of the fans of the franchise had came from interest in the 2019 reboot, and to even fewer it was actually their introduction to Barbapapa as a whole; meaning that it might be working up to Stage X.
• International Coproduction: The original 70s series was produced by two Japanese animation studios, Topcraft and KSS, and a Dutch animation studio, Polyscope BV.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Being a very old series, it's no surprise that a lot of its material has been lost. Most notably:
  • The British English dub is the only English dub of the original series to be lost in its entirety, despite airing on the BBC (save for the songs, which were left undubbed in the Canadian dub and were released on CDs). Oddly enough, the DVDs that were made for the series and distributed by Betamax in the UK only contained the Canadian English dub, and even called it the "Americanized version", while the British dub was never released on home media.
  • The Magno American English dub was also rare, as it aired in syndication until 1983 and not much surfaced online, at least until 2017 when a good amount of episodes were uncovered (it wasn't until late 2020 that this dub was spread throughout the web, however). It is likely that there are more episodes that haven't been recorded yet, and what has surfaced isn't in the best quality. Legally speaking, it has not been released anywhere.
  • The Centauro American English dub was actually this for a while. Despite being officially released on DVDs, unlike the other two English examples, and also later being released on paid streaming services, there was still one problem: all of these options were only exclusive to South Korea. Meaning if you wanted to watch the series in full in English, with no edits, you'd have practically no choice but to use illegally distributed rips from the DVDs that were only just uncovered and bought by a member of the community in early 2021 (for context, the DVDs were released in 2006). Not helping is that not everyone even knew this dub even existed. It wasn't until November 2022 that episodes of the dub were being made officially available to YouTube, thus ending the journey of this dub on a high note.
• Late Export for You:
  • In the United Kingdom, One Big Happy Family! did not air in the country it was dubbed until July 10, 2021, while the show was already airing worldwide starting late 2019.
  • Unexpectedly, a European Spanish dub of Around the World launched, seemingly exclusively, to the official Barbapapa YouTube channel in 2022, labeled as "season 3" of the original series.
  • In November 2022, the official Barbapapa YouTube randomly began uploading episodes of the Centauro Group dub, marking the first time the original series could be properly viewed in English, in full, in the United States. These videos are also available to view worldwide, meaning the dub is no longer South Korea-exclusive.
• Licensed Game: In October 2001, the 1999 anime Barbapapa Around the World had a Video Game on the PlayStation that was only released in Japan.
• Missing Episode:
  • When the show aired on Hop! Channel in Israel, the very last episode of the first season ("Retour sur terre") was skipped when the show aired on TV. This is because two episodes were being aired in one timeslot, meaning that 22 episodes with 44 segments aired, and unfortunately the last episode was not included in that. However, the episode was still released on Hop's site.
  • The "Beach" episode was left out of the UK DVDs for unknown reason.
  • The Magno dub of the original made a lot of edits to the series, which also meant that some episodes were cut. Most notably, the episodes "Le feu" and "La plage" were cut thanks to a change in the plot: once Cindy and Frank's parents meet Barbapapa, their father doesn't call the zookeepers to take him away like in the original, but instead him and the family instantly greet him and try to cheer him up instead.
  • In the DVDs released in South Korea by M&V Media, the Around the World 5-minute segment "High Andes - Black Bear" is missing. When an employee at M&V was contacted, they had roughly responded that "the quality of the episode was so bad from the first release", indicating that the episode was dubbed by Centauro, but was purposefully left out of the recent copies, and that earlier releases of the DVDs may have had the episode. The episode was still available on the services Laftel and Naver SeriesOn.
• No Export for You:
  • Barbapapa Around the World unfortunately never hit it too big, especially in the distribution market, with only a few dubs to date compared to the many dubs of the original, and even the reboot. Luckily, Centauro Group was feeling nice and decided to produce an English dub for the spin-off alongside the original.
  • One Big Happy Family! has yet to air in the United States, despite the fact that the show takes place in the United States. In late April 2022, the show was suddenly added to the Kidoodle service, however in countries outside of the US (such as Israel). Whether the show will ever be made available on the service in the US eventually has yet to be seen since then.
    • The reboot has also not aired in Japan or South Korea.
• The Other Darrin: Originally, the narrator of the 70s series, Ricet Barrier voiced all of the characters in season one. By season two, it became a common practice that each of the Barbapapas and the narrator would have their own separate voice actor. Around the World was recorded in Belgium, as opposed to France, so Mariline Gourdon replaced Ricet Barrier's role and all of the Barbapapas were replaced.
  • The 2019 reboot is recorded in France again; the show saw Bernard Alane as the new narrator, and again the Barbapapas all got another voice actor.
• Out of Order: Nickelodeon airs One Big Happy Family! in a different order than RTS and Télé-Québec do.
• Outlived Its Creator: While the other co-creator is still alive, Talus Taylor had died at age 82. Despite this, the franchise continued with a 2019 reboot that was produced by Alice and Thomas Taylor.
• Role Reprise: The Italian dub of One Big Happy Family! features the entire cast of the 2006 redub of the original series reprising their roles.
• Screwed by the Network: In Israel, a re-dub of the original series was planned for a long while, since the original dub had not aired in a long time. When the dub finally aired in 2017, it only aired for that year before it was taken off the schedule. They also skipped the very last episode of the season (on TV, at least).
• Two Shorts: How Nickelodeon airs One Big Happy Family!, while every other network airing the show airs each segment as a separate 11-minute episode.
• Uncredited Role: In the English dub of One Big Happy Family!, Barbabravo and the narrator are not credited, while the rest of the main cast is. In the former's case, his actor Felix Warren was omitted in error.
• Unfinished Dub:
  • All English dubs of the original show are incomplete as they only covered the first season, with the exception of one which completed both seasons; the studio of which went as far as to dub Barbapapa Around the World as well, though unfortunately their dubs suffered from poor distribution.
  • When the original show started airing in Albania, only the second season was dubbed. This is because it is common for Albanian dubbing studios to use what they can find in order to produce the dub.

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