Barbapapa
Barbapapa is a French franchise starting in 1970 with picture books made by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor. It spawned three TV shows: the original series from 1974-1978, the "Around The World" Japanese spinoff from 1999 and the "One Big Happy Family" spinoff from 2019-2020.
Plot
Barbapapa is a pink shapeshifting papaya/avocado-shaped creature, who was raised by two humans, Frank and Cindy. He then finds a mate - a black pear-shaped shapeshifter named Barbamama, then they have seven kids: Barbabravo (red, athletic boy), Barbalib (orange bookworm girl, the only family member with glasses), Barbazoo (yellow animal-loving boy), Barbalala (green music-loving girl), Barbabright (blue scientist boy), Barbabelle (purple fashionist girl) and Barbabeau (black artistic boy, the only family member with fur).
Why it Rocks
- The characters are all memorable, especially the Barba family.
- Memorable quotes, such as "You brussel sprout!", "Clickety, click, barbatrick!" (Replaced with "All change!" in the British dub) or "All my stuff is there".
- The concept of a family of shapeshifting kind-hearted monsters is great as a whole, and represented very well.
- Colourful and neat animation in all the three series.
- There is a lot of moments that are either heartwarming or simply give off positive vibes.
- In Japan, it actually spawned a video game for the PlayStation in 2001!
- The One Big Happy Family reboot has aged pretty well, thanks to Nickelodeon's support (which is not big of a surprise as the original series have already been around on Nickelodeon in Italy and Spain once).
Bad Qualities
- Most of the dubs are currently lost.
- The original series showed the usage of guns, which caused controversy. In fact, in an episode, a bird is shot in its wing on-screen, and there is actually an instance of blood. In another one, a cowboy threatens to kill Barbabravo, which thankfully he does not do.
- Lolita, the family dog, has been quite a punching bag in the "Around the World" reboot.
Trivia
- The original series received 5 English dubs, 3 Finnish and Italian dubs each and 2 Icelandic, Norwegian, Arabic and Hebrew dubs each.
- The franchise is quite popular in Israel to the point of creating a cult song and in Japan, to the point when there is a café dedicated to NOTHING but the Barbapapas.
- Google created a doodle to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the first book, as well as to memorize Talus Taylor.