The Raggy Dolls

THE RAGGY DOLLS
Made by: HTV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1988 onwards

Theme tune: "Raggy Dolls, Raggy Dolls, dolls like you and me/Raggy Dolls, Raggy Dolls, made imperfectly/So if you’re not at ease with your nobbly knees/And your fingers are all thumbs/Then stand on your two left feet/And join our Raggy Doll chums."

Suffering the same fate as Superted, the Raggy Dolls were what are politely known as factory seconds - in short, someone or something screwed up when they were being made. As a result, they resided in a factory crate (which they returned to in the closing titles) in Mr Grimes’ factory, and clamber out when no-one was watching, in order to participate in daring exploits in the big, wide world. In this idealistic cartoon, narrated by Neil Innes, there were a number of misfit playthings, who were all slightly flawed, but each had skills valuable to the group as a whole, and were therefore loved and valued. You can see what they were getting at here. Anyway, there was Back-to-Front, whose head and feet pointed in the opposite direction to the rest of his body; Claude, whose only fault seemed to be that he was French (understandable, from a British point of view); the dizzy Dotty; Hi-Fi, who wore a massive Walkman and a white vest, in the manner of most eighties roller-skaters; Lucy, the sensible member of the gang; Princess, who was intended to be stunningly beautiful, but ended up looking more like a pre-ball Cinderella; and finally, Sadsack, the melancholy big fella, who looked like a sack of potatoes. The Raggy Dolls were like a British version of The Get-Along Gang, minus about eight tons of saccharine and four kilos of cuteness, which made it bearable after-school fodder.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to markmasonanimation.co.uk for the borrowed pic)