Introduction

Clangers films were first shown in 1969, the year man landed on the moon. They were described by a NASA scientist as “an attempt to bring a note of realism to the fantasy of the Space Race.”. The series concerns the life and times of the Clangers a race of highly civilised, small, bright pink, long-nosed mouse-shaped persons which stand upright on big flappy feet. They talk to each other by a kind of high pitched whistling and have large animated ears that they pull over their eyes when they are sad or distressed.

The Clangers live inside a small blue cratered planet which is covered in metal lids from which they hide from the cold and the numerous objects falling from space. They share their worldwith the Soup Dragon, who lives in the soup well and who provides the Clangers with green soup, the Glow Buzzers which provide light for the Clangers caves and tasty Glow Honey,and the conjuring froglets, inexplicable orange, oval stick-legged creatures which travel in a top hat and live in a vertical pond deep within the planet.

Their society is courteous and non-violent, nor is there any glorification of conflict. They enjoy the simple things in life, eating blue string pudding, watering various plants with the Cloud and radioing the Iron Chicken which lives in spiky nest somewhere in the Clangers’ planets sky. But a Clanger’s life is far from dull, theirs is a world where music grows on trees and were notes, when collected may be used to propel space borne craft. It is a place where the most unexpected things can happen and usually do.

The problems and situation that arise, or perhaps arrive, in their world are of course, much the same as ours but as their circumstances are so different the ways they have of dealing with them are different - original, unexpected and often profoundly sensible. For example in “The Seed” when the Clangers’ planet is infested with a rogue vegetable, the Iron Chicken calls in a herd of space-borne Skymoos from a neighbouring planet to help. The Skymoos, large purple four legged creatures, make quick work of the plantsand are rewarded with some soup.

In actuality the Clangers were constructed from an articulated skeleton of wood joined friction tight with brass balls and clamp plates (Meccano and joinery plates). They were stuffed with chopped foam and covered with a knitted woollen skin. Their feet were also made of wood with three holes in them to allow them to be pinning down with 1" tin-tacks to the scenery in various stable poses. Their fingers and the rims of their ears were made of dyed pipe-cleaners in which they could hold objects and which enabled a variety of facial expressions to be achieved.