Button Moon

BUTTON MOON
Made by: Thames TV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1980-88
Theme tune: “We’re off to Button Moon/We’ll follow Mr Spoon/Button Moon, Button Moon…”

This was programming shamelessly brought to you direct from the deepest bargain basement. It was puppetry for a start, which went out with Victorian seaside resorts, and the puppets were made of household waste. The premise was simple: Mr and Mrs Spoon (wooden spoons for arms, you see) lived with their daughter Tina Teaspoon in a cardboard box helpfully labelled with the word ‘box’. Mr Spoon had invented a rocket, made out of what was a feebly-disguised Heinz baked beans tin and a funnel, and he took his family for trips through Blanket Sky to Button Moon, a giant yellow button. Tina would take her friend Eggbert (an egg cup, surprise, surprise), who was the son of the Spoons’ neighbours, ice-cream man Daddy Eggbert, and his aptly-named wife, Vanilla.

The Eggberts were the Spoons’ poor-relatives, because they lived in a battered high-rise block of flats, whereas Spoon obviously had a private income which allowed him to jaunt off into the galaxy every day.

Once on the moon, they would often encounter Captain Large and Small Bottle, empty disinfectant bottles of the Bottle Army, who were based in Drainpipe Castle and seemed to have no enemy whatsoever.

The theme was sung by veterans of rather greater sci-fi shows, the husband and wife partnership of Peter Dr Who Davison, and Sandra Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Dickinson.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 4/10

(Thanks to www.nostalgiacentral.com for the borrowed pic)