They're furry and they're fun
Here come the Numtums
Let's start with number one!"
The Numtums is a British educational show created by Barry Quinn for CBeebies. It spanned three series which lasted from 2012-2014. The three series revolve around a group of ten Numbats each representing a number between one and ten.
In the first series, one Numtum is chosen to be the subject of each episode. After the Numtum is chosen, the episode plays several short clips which teach about the number that Numtum represents.
In the second series, the series got a Retool as the main characters are named Bendy Go, Dar Dar, Champer, Gladdy, Little Sandy, Flinders, Humpty Do, Coogee, Hobart, and Nimbim. They live out in an outback area named Gumnut Gorge. Living with them are an echidna named Billy and a lyrebird named Larry.
Bendy Go, Champer, Humpty Do, Little Sandy, and Dar Dar make up a group called The Numpups. They are all but fans of an in-universe cartoon called Super Numtum, and are often inspired by the show to go on adventures around Gumnut Gorge while learning about simple math, such as basic addition and counting.
The third series is more of less the same, but is aimed at older audiences and used more complex concepts such as shapes and numbers beyond ten.
This show contains examples of:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Little Sandy wears a pair of costume butterfly wings. Flinders sports an orange bandana.
- Affably Evil: Fluffy Mctuffy.
- All-CGI Cartoon
- A Lizard Named "Liz": Frilly Lizzy the frilled lizard.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife
- Animal Superhero: Super Numtum.
- Anthropomorphic Shift: In the first series, the Numtums only communicated through chittering. In the second series, they can speak fluid English.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Coogee.
- Big Bad: Fluffy Mctuffy the koala is the big bad of the Super Numtum cartoons.
- Big Eater: Humpty Do.
- Bottle Episode: With one exception, all of the episodes take place in Gumnut Gorge.
- Cartoony Tail: The numtums' tails are more of a lightbulb shape compared to the noodle-shaped tail of a real life numbat.
- Cheerful Child: All of the Numpups.
- Cool Old Guy: Flinders.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Larry the lyrebird. Billy counts as well.
- The Dragon: Frilly Lizzy is this to Fluffy Mctuffy.
- Elvis Impersonator: Billy has shades of this, even sporting Elvis' famous cowlick.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Billy has a pack of flamingos out in the outback.
- No Antagonist: Aside from the in-universe fictional Fluffy Mctuffy, the show doesn't have a true villain.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Frilly Lizzy is a frilled lizard on the side of the villain. Downplayed in that she's not necessarily hostile, has concern for her partner, and will root for Super Numtum if the situation calls for it.
- Save the Villain: Super Numtum did this occasionally.
- Show Within a Show: Super Numtum.
- Silent Snarker: Although she doesn't speak, Frilly Lizzy is often seen rolling her eyes at Fluffy's schemes and sporting a cynical expression.
- The Smart Guy: Little Sandy.
- Spoiler: The episode names of season 1 are spoilers. Each episode, a numtum is picked, and the episode name is the numtum picked. This goes from 1-10 then repeats with the prefix "More", and the rest of the episodes in season 1 are kind of spoilers as all the numtums are picked.
- Team Mom: Nimbim. Gladdy counts as well.
- Theme Tune Roll Call
- Those Two Guys: Billy and Larry.
- Title Theme Tune: "Here come The Numtums, they're furry and they're fun!"
- Trademark Favorite Food: Termite treats.
- The Voiceless: Frilly Lizzy.
