Bananaman is coming back, as is Danger Mouse. And now we can add another beloved 80s cartoon to that list, with the BBC announcing it is set to revive SuperTed. Original creator Mike Young is behind the new run of 26 episodes, and it is hoped that original voice actors Derek Griffiths (SuperTed) and Melvyn Hayes (Skeleton) will be lured back for the new incarnation. However, as Young states, fans should expect to see a revamp of sorts in order to make the show more politically correct for today’s audience:
“In SuperTed, we had a gun-slinging cowboy, a flamboyantly gay skeleton and a fat guy who had jokes made about his weight and all these things you just wouldn’t do today,” Young tells the Radio Times. “But you can still write the show in a funny, entertaining way. We have got to be careful. So often things they re-make come out very slick. I won’t mention any names but many of the stop-frame series have been remade in the UK with less than fantastic results. They sometimes lose the charm of the original production. That’s what we have …got to watch out for, to maintain what the original shows had and that’s easier said than done.”
SuperTed was created by Young in 1978 and tells the story of a discarded Welsh teddy bear is brought to life by cosmic dust from an alien named Spotty and is subsequently granted super powers by ‘Mother Nature’. The animated series ran from 1983 to 1985 and was followed in 1989 by a brief U.S. revival entitled The Further Adventures of SuperTed.
Originally published July 15, 2014. Updated January 18, 2020.
