We’d love your own ideas, so please let us know what you have decided to wear.
September 9th is National Teddy Bear Day in America (although there’s nothing to stop you celebrating it here as well, with our help). Despite the worldwide popularity of the Teddy, of course the Americans claim to have invented the concept, when their President, ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, refused to shoot a black bear which some of his aides had captured, and the incident became the subject of a cartoon. A New York store owner created a bear cub toy called ‘Teddy’s Bear’ and it was so successful he apparently went on to create the Ideal Toy Company from these bear beginnings.
Dressing as a Teddy Bear is possibly not everyone’s idea of a good time but on the back of the celebratory day you might get a good excuse for a picnic out of it. Why not go for our fancy dress suggestion today that is ‘Childhood Favourites’
Today’s fancy dress theme will take you back to your childhood with ‘Children’s Television‘
It was sixty-one years ago today that Andy Pandy made his first appearance on the ‘Watch with Mother’ lunch-time slot on BBC TV. Although Andy and his pals have since been revamped for the modern day, the original series had some slightly odd aspects – Andy, plus his companions Looby-Loo, a rag-doll and Teddy, a bit of a bear-faced jack-the-lad, lived together in a wicker hamper with no-one questioning this rather strange ménage-a-trois. (The recent series has them each in a separate house). Despite Andy coming over as a bit of a wimp (there was even debate as to whether ‘he’ was a ‘she’), the character continues to be popularly remembered and often requested here at Props n Frocks. Although Children’s TV characters can tend to be a bit of a minefield – some are heavily copyright protected, and new characters and series’ are continually coming on the scene – one minute it’s ‘In the Night Garden’, the next it’s ‘Zingzillas’, there’s always scope for improvisation: At the moment the ‘Horrible Histories’ are proving quite popular.
We have previously given some great kids television programme costume ideas but new costumes are constantly arriving on the market. So although, you may initially think of younger children with your programme choices (Bagpuss, The Herb Garden, Play School (am I showing my age?), remember lots of other programmes aimed at children may have started off as a film or book, this opens up a huge range of potential costumes that you could choose.
Television character costumes include (bet these bring back some memories):
Spongebob Squarepants Costume
Banana Splits
The Magic Roundabout
Captain Pugwash
Bill & Ben
Jim I’ll Fix It
Tiswas
Pipkins
Just William
The Wombles
Take Hart
Thunderbirds
The Smurfs
Noddy & Big Ears
Rainbow
Rentaghost
Mr Benn – someone surely has to dress up as Mr Benn?
The Pink Panther Show
Grange Hill – an easy costume option
Animal Magic – dress up as the Zoo Keeper (Johnny Morris, or one of his beloved animals)
As we have mentioned in previous blogs, in these days of mass media and 24 hour TV it is difficult to remember that at one stage there was only BBC & ITV. Today marks the day that BBC2 ran its first TV programme which was Play School (this ran from 1964 until 1982). The channel had originally intended to launch the previous evening, but a mass power failure throughout Central and West London (which included Television Centre) meant plans were scuppered.
Now we hope if you are holding an event over the next week or so, that everything will run smoothly and it is not beset with such difficulties. In honour of Play School, we thought we might mention a few characters from children’s TV of yesteryear, so today we take a look through the round window. (If you have never seen the programme, this might not mean much to you!).
From Play School itself, there was Humpty Dumpty (very topical for Easter); Jemima the Rag Doll; Big Ted and Little Ted and the much hated Doll Hamble.
Other childhood memories that could give you costume inspiration include:
Morph. Morphsuits are the BIG thing in fancy dress at the moment
You may also remember your baby brother or sister, so why not dress up as a baby, or maybe a Scout, costumes are available.
What books, or comics, were you reading? What hobbies did you have? Take a trip back down memory lane and you may be surprised what you end up being dressed up in!
‘Childrens Favourites’ is our fancy dress theme for today. There is such costume choice for this theme it would be impossible to go into it in detail. What we have done is to look at various mediums and then give a few examples of potential costumes in each, hopefully, it will get you thinking along the right lines.
Now you could look at childrens television characters such as Andy Pandy, or more recent characters such as The Tweenies (do be aware of the licensing issues).
In the course of yesterday’s theme information we mentioned ‘The Ugly Duckling’ by Danny Kaye. Curiously enough, this was a tune that was a regular request on the Saturday/Sunday morning radio programme ‘Children’s Favourites’ – originally hosted by ‘Uncle Mac’ but later (and probably more memorably for most of you) by Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart. Ah, the heady days of radio before the commercial stations and the Internet! Anyway, we are choosing Children’s Favourites as our theme today, because on this date the renowned authors of children’s books AA Milne (creator of Winnie the Pooh before he (Winnie) was ‘Disneyfied’) and Arthur Ransome, (writer of ‘Swallows & Amazons’ and other adventure books) were born in 1882 and 1884 respectively.
