Trivia / Noddy's Toyland Adventures

• Acting for Two:
  • There were only two voice actors (Susan Sheridan and Jimmy Hibbert) for Toyland Adventures. As a result most of the characters might end up talking to another character who's voice actor has also voiced.
  • Predating Toyland Adventures is the 1963 animated short where Bernard Cribbins voices Big Ears and Mr. Plod, while Kathryn Beaumont voices the majority of the female characters.
  • Catherine Disher provided the voices of Noddy, Sly the Goblin, and Master Tubby in the US dub, while James Rankin plays Gobbo, Mr. Jumbo, Mr. Sparks, Clockwork Clown and Clockwork Mouse. This is in addition to voicing five puppet characters in the series the dub was a part of, but they never interacted with the Toyland Adventures cast except with Noddy in the second season.
  • Even more so the 1975 series, where Richard Briers provides all the voices.
• Adaptation First: Averted. The books were released before the cartoon, making it an Animated Adaptation. This, however, is played straight in the United States, as the books were never released there.
• Adaptation Overdosed: Consisting of, but not limited to, a 1950s puppet series, a 1963 animated short, a 1975 stop motion series, another stop motion series in the 1990s, a live stage show, and three CGI series.
• Approval of God: The early 1990s stage show Noddy Live (which gained a VHS release in 1994) was praised by Gillian Baverstock (Enid Blyton's eldest daughter).
• Adored by the Network:
  • Sprout loved airing Make Way For Noddy and Noddy, Toyland Detective, and would show them up to six times a day, including a few marathons for the former series. Also, when Sprout changed into a block on Universal Kids, Noddy was one of two shows to run more than two times a day (the other being Caillou).
  • TVOntario loved airing both The Noddy Shop and Make Way For Noddy, to the point that from 2002 to 2004, both were on the air at the same time, and they still aired "Say It With Noddy" into The New '10s!
• Channel Hop:
  • In the UK, the 1950's series aired on the BBC and then channel-hopped to ITV partway through its' run. All adaptations would stay on there until Noddy's Toyland Adventures, which went back to the BBC. Beginning with Make Way For Noddy, the shows aired on Channel 5 during their Milkshake! block and continue to be broadcast there to this day.
  • In Canada, the series generally aired on TVOntario beginning with the 1970's one, but The Noddy Shop was broadcast on both there and CBC at the same time. After years of sticking with TVOntario, the series were broadcast on cable channels starting with Noddy In Toyland, which aired on Treehouse TV. Noddy, Toyland Detective, the current incarnation, airs on Family Junior.
  • In the US, The Noddy Shop and Make Way For Noddy aired on PBS Kids. After skipping Noddy in Toyland, Universal Kids aired Noddy, Toyland Detective.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • The former website LocateTV used this image◊ for airings of Make Way For Noddy. It's not an image of the show in question, but one of The Noddy Shop. Some PBS member stations did the same thing when airing promos for the show, running an up next promo for The Noddy Shop that was five or six years old on their airings of Make Way For Noddy despite it mostly showing the puppet characters and only showing Noddy for two seconds.
  • RTP 2's description of the 2009 series of Noddy, Noddy In Toyland, is actually the description of The Noddy Shop and uses an image from Noddy's Toyland Adventures. This is somewhat justified, as Noddy In Toyland was the name that the former series went under in Europe. In addition, the description calls Noah Tomten "Mr. Noddy" and uses the original names of the human characters rather than their names from the dub (for instance, the character who is known as Tomas in the dub is refereed to by his original name, Truman).
  • Cablevision airings of Noddy, Toyland Detective use a picture that shows the series' French name "Oui-Oui, enquetes au pays de jouets" when no networks on that provider air that particular dub.
  • The CD CBeebies: The Album uses the theme song to The Noddy Shop rather than the theme song to the series that the channel aired at the time, Noddy's Toyland Adventures. This is because most of the tracks on that CD had already come from an earlier album by the same distributor, All Together Now: Children's Favourite TV Themes, which was released when The Noddy Shop still aired on British TV.
  • This website article published in 2017 says that Noddy airs on PBS Kids. While this is true of the DVD being promoted, which is from an incarnation that did air on PBS Kids, the plush doll is from Noddy, Toyland Detective, which airs on Universal Kids.
  • This article says that Noddy's catchphrase in Toyland Adventures was "What in tarnation?". This is actually the catchphrase of Noah Tomten, a character from The Noddy Shop.
• Creator Backlash: Both of Enid Blyton's daughters and granddaughters view The Golliwogs as this, despite their mother being responsible. In later editions, scenes featuring them were redrawn with goblins, toy monkeys, and other toys.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Noddy in most incarnations of the series was voiced by female voice actors. The exception is Make Way For Noddy where Noddy alongside the Skittles Children were voiced by actual male children.
  • Noddy is voiced by a female (Brigitte Lecordier) in every incarnations of the franchise since Toyland Adventures.
  • Sly was voiced by a woman in the stop-motion series which is also present in the US dub.
  • Master Tubby Bear is voiced by a female (Catherine Disher) in the US version of Toyland Adventures
  • Mrs. Tubby Bear was voiced by a male in the vinyl record Noddy Goes Shopping and Noddy at the seaside which promoted Kellogg's Sugar Ricicles.
• Children Voicing Children:
  • In earlier 50s era audio adaptations of the Noddy books narrated by Enid Blyton, Noddy was voiced by an unknown child actor (mainly for the singing sections).
  • In both dubs of Make Way For Noddy, Noddy, Master Tubby Bear and The Skittle Children were voiced by actual children. In the Canadian dub, Tessie Bear was voiced by Britt McKillip, who was around 13/14 at the time of recording.
  • Tessie was also voiced by a young girl in the dub made for The Noddy Shop.
• Descended Creator: In the 1950s puppet series The Adventures of Noddy, Enid Blyton served as the show's narrator.
• Direct to Video: This is how Toyland Adventures itself was released in the US, as on television, the segments aired as part of The Noddy Shop, which split the stories in half and put them in between a live-action storyline.
• Edited for Syndication: The version that aired on PBS Kids, The Noddy Shop, took the classic episodes, split them in half and sandwiched them between live-action and puppetry segments.
  • Also, the US version of Make Way For Noddy has the Say It With Noddy segment which teaches various languages. This segment is absent from the version of the show aired elsewhere. Make Way For Noddy also had a segment between the animated segments shot in Live-Action hosted by Naomi Wilkinson, who tells the viewer about what the animated segments will be about and telling them what language the word in Say It With Noddy is said in. There also used to be a music video segment seen before the credits such as "Noddy Will Lead The Way" and "Googleberry Pie" that were later removed in later airings of the show on Sprout. These segments were all kept when it was On Demand years ago but would later only contain the animated segments except the songs and Say It With Noddy. However, Say It With Noddy did air as a segment in between shows on TVOntario up until January of 2011.
• Inspiration for the Work: The idea for the Noddy series originated when Blyton used to holiday virtually every summer at the village of Studland (which ToyTown was designed after) in Dorset sometime in the 1930s and 1940s. Some English book historians even claimed that a small corset was "Noddy's Wood".
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • While the CGI series have got some fair exposure on DVD, the only DVD release of Toyland Adventures in the UK was one including three episodes of The Noddy Shop, which featured this show, but even then there were only three episodes included. However, most of the series was released on VHS, and the show did get DVD releases in France and Japan, but the DVDs only contained the audio of their native countries. And don't even bother looking for the 50s-70s shows or the American spin-off The Noddy Shop...
  • In 2017, Toyland Adventures began being uploaded onto the official Noddy YouTube channel starting with "Noddy Meets Some Silly Hens", which coincidentally was one of the only three episodes released in English to DVD. Episodes of Make Way For Noddy, Noddy in Toyland and Toyland Detective are also uploaded, though the earlier Noddy shows are still absent.
    • Three years after this, Peacock added the entire series.
  • There was a Korean Noddy variety show called Hello Noddy that aired on MBC in 1999. Not much is known about it, as only pictures of the show itself and commercials for tie-in merchandise exist, as well as some CDs that contain the theme song and tie-in books. It is also unknown if this was a Framing Device for either Toyland Adventures (which is most likely given the commercials and tie-in books) or a Noddy Shop dub (being that it premiered the same year that show was exported outside of North America).
  • The 1963 animated short "Noddy Goes To Toyland" by Arthur Humberstone hasn't been shown to the general public for 58 years. It wasn't until the short was uploaded to Youtube on March 24th, 2021.
  • The North American dub of Make Way For Noddy seems to be this, as when the series was uploaded to Peacock and Noddy's official Youtube channel, the original British version was used instead. A good number of episodes of this dub can be found on DVD, but those releases are out of print.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • The Noddy Shop was bought over to the UK for the franchise's 50th anniversary.
  • In honor of Noddy's 60th Anniversary in 2009, a new book was written◊ called Noddy and the Farmyard Muddle written by Enid Blyton's granddaughter, Sophie Smallwood. The book was also illustrated by Robert Tyndall◊, who has drawn the characters in the Noddy books since 1953. A second CGI series called "Noddy In Toyland" also premiered in the UK in April 2009. France honored the character's 60th anniversary by creating a special musical called Oui-Oui Et Le Cadeau Suprise (Noddy And The Surprise Gift) which involves Mr. Plod, Mr. Wobblyman, Tessie, Dinah, and Whizz planning a surprise birthday party for Noddy. By the end of the show, Noddy even invites Sly and Gobbo to his birthday celebration. In addition to the series' 60th Anniversary, a biopic about Enid Blyton was aired on BBC Four which briefly touched on the creation of the series.
• Missing Episode: Compared to most series Toyland Adventures onward, the 1975 Noddy series is largely lost to the public outside old VHS releases. 25 episodes were made, but almost half of them are uncovered to date.
• No Export for You:
  • Outside of France, the United Kingdom, other Commonwealth countries, the original books by Enid Blyton were never released.
  • Outside of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries, this applies to the pre-Toyland Adventures series (and pre-The Noddy Shop for markets outside of Europe, Latin America, Portugal and Asia), as well as Learn English With Noddy, as they have never been broadcast there.
• The Other Darrin:
  • The Noddy: Playtime In Toyland PC game uses different voices than the North American dub of Toyland Adventures, among them Grey Delisle and Gregg Berger. This is justified, as the game was recorded in the United States and the dub of the series was recorded in Canada.
  • The French exclusive musicals had a different voice cast brought in voice Tessie Bear, Dinah Doll, Mr Wobblyman, Mr Plod, Whizz, and Mr Jumbo compared to the French dub of Noddy In Toyland. Brigitte Lecordier was the only voice actor that managed to return to voice the titular character.
• The Other Marty: Noddy between the classic episodes and Make Way for Noddy. Also, between the US and UK dubs, which both use different talent houses.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Due to popping up in some promotional VHS tapes, "The Great Car Race" short was long thought to be part of a full series The Further Adventures of Noddy, with the rest of the show lost to time. As it turned out, this was only half true. According to an interview with a Filmfair animator, "The Great Car Race" was the pilot of a planned series, but lack of funding meant no other episodes were made.
• Recycled Script: Curiously both stop motion shows and even Make Way For Noddy (which is otherwise new plot lines) have a loose adaptation of the novel story Noddy and Tessie Bear (Noddy loses Tessie Bear's farm goods on his runaway kite, which "rains" on the rest of Toyland).
• Short Run in Peru: Toyland Detective was first aired in France before arriving to other countries due to the Noddy series being extremely popular in that country.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Susan Sheridan usually plays characters of a noble class. Here, she plays a friendly young boy.
  • It's the same with Noddy's Canadian voice actress Catherine Disher, who is usually cast as a parent or authoritative figure. In this show, Catherine plays two child characters, as well as a villain.
• Role Reprise:
  • In France, Brigitte Lecordier (Noddy's french voice actress) managed to reprise her role as the titular characters in various incarnations of the series since the 1990s.
  • Bernard Cribbins provided voices for both the 1963 animated short and also narrated the Filmfair pilot "The Great Car Race". However the only character he voices in both cartoons is Big Ears (though his performances are different in both).
• Screwed by the Network:
  • The German Disney Channel quickly replaced the episodes from later seasons with Sabrina: The Animated Series reruns, running at ridiculous hours in the morning.
  • Make Way For Noddy was treated this way on the NBC Kids block. It often was the last show to air on the block on most affiliates, and this meant that it faced sports pre-emptions. The only network that did not treat the show like this was WNBC in New York, who instead put LazyTown at the end of the block.
  • Noddy, Toyland Detective, which was once adored by Sprout, got this treatment along with several other shows once the Sprout name was dropped from the preschool block, being reduced from three airings a day to one airing a week. In June 2018, it was removed completely from the channel and replaced by Masha and the Bear.
• Sequel Gap: Season Four of Toyland Adventures aired in 2000, six years after Season Three.
• Unfinished Episode: Enid Blyton was planning on making a new Noddy book called Noddy Goes to The Moon (possibly based the episode Noddy And The Moon from The Adventures Of Noddy). However, the story was never published or possibly never written for unknown reasons. The last page of the book Noddy and the Aeroplane carried a notice saying "LOOK FOR THE NEXT NODDY BOOK'' despite being the final entry of the series during her lifetime. This could be due to Blyton's declining health starting in 1957, and showing signs of dementia in 1960 which worsened as the decade went on.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A pilot for a second stop motion series The Further Adventures Of Noddy was made by Filmfair, "The Great Car Race". However funding was cut afterwards and the pilot only saw release in some kids compilation videos.
  • According to the official production soundtrack for Noddy's Toyland Adventures, Susan Sheridan's musical number "Don't Let Christmas End This Winter" from the Christmas Episode "Noddy and Father Christmas" originally had the lyrics "You must never ask for presents, and try not to be rude. Don't be sad and angry, or never mean and nasty." entirely spoken instead of being sung.
• Write Who You Know: Mr. Plod was based on a real life police officer named "PC Christopher Rhone", which Enid Blyton meet during her annual summer holiday at the village of Dorset in Studland.

---