Count Duckula first aired 30 years ago today!

On the 6th September 1988, Count Duckula, which was a spin off from Danger Mouse, aired on CITV in the United Kingdom, the first episode being "No Sax Please, We're Egyptian". 

To celebrate, tonight at 8PM GMT, my fiancé and I will be streaming the two Count Duckula games that were ever made while also having a go at making broccoli sandwiches and sipping on hot cocoa and choccie biccies.  Just the food and drink we need while ploughing through those unfortunately abysmal games. 

The coffin lights up once more!

Greetings! I must admit I haven't updated the fan site for over 8 years, but after a lot of changes I think it's about time I gave an update.

• First of all, not only have I found a new home, the website has found a new home at Duckula.de, with special thanks to Jano for offering to host the site!
• Livejournal's gallery system has been totally mixed up for years so I will look into an alternative to hosting the images that were on there. The good news is that as far as I know, I still have everything.
• Given the return of Danger Mouse back in 2015, it also meant a return for Count Duckula so I'm hoping to gather some info.
• The link to the forums have been fixed.

That's all I have to report, but keep your eyes peeled on the blog and the Twitter page for more updates and other neat bloggy things Duckula related. Goodnight out there, whatever you are!

As you can see the Duckyboos website is down

It went down pretty much as soon as I switched to Sky a couple years ago.  I do however still have the files.  I don't think I can afford to buy webspace in the near future especially after I lose my job next year, but would it be worth looking for free webspace to host it up again?

Count Duckula amongst a Retro Weekend on CITV!

On the 6th and 7th January, UK channel CITV is going to dedicate an entire weekend to shows from the past to celebrate 30 years of kids' telly on ITV, and amongst its lineup an episode of Count Duckula will be shown (making it maybe the first time it's aired on UK TV since 2001).

At the moment it doesn't look like they've specified what episode they will show though from the small bit of info on the online TV guide at ITV it says:

"From 1991, the animated adventures of Count Duckula who lives in a spooky castle with his butler, Igor and nanny".

So I'm assuming they might show an episode from the 4th season?  Who knows?  Either way I am rather stoked about the whole thing as they will also air a few other obscurities like Finders Keepers, Woof and so forth.

Stay tuned!

Update: The episode was "There are Werewolves at the Bottom of My Garden", which was actually made in 1990 though it must have aired the following year.

RIP Mark Hall

First the former animation studio itself, now this; Mark Hall, who co-founded the British animation studio that brought Count Duckula [along with Dangermouse, Wind in the Willows among many] to our world, has passed away last night at the age of 74, after battling with short term illness. He along with Brian Cosgrove were one of the most prolific animation duos in the history of British animation, and even now as I hear that they have recently reformed as Cosgrove Hall Fitzpatrick, [so it seems] were still going strong.

As part of the Duckula fanbase, I won't forget how awesome Brian and Mark had made it, as well as how gracefully they crafted their other shows [especially Wind in the Willows, man], and I don't look forward to telling this to my mother since she has always said to me how much she enjoyed them all as well.

RIP Mark, say hi to Jack May [the late voice of Igor] for us.

New Duckula T-Shirts

Oh dear lord I have been behind, only now I've found that Truffleshuffle are selling two new designs of Duckula t-shirts. Unfortunately the old ones are gone and I can only bet you'd only find them on eBay now provided you don't mind other people's germs (I kid!). I never got hold of the any of the old ones, not even at Christmas, so I sort of regret not buying them despite the hefty prices, but oh well.

Nobody is listening

Hello again. Sad to say Duckula has had a fruitless year this year; no new merchandise since the knickers we showed last year [at least, not that we know of], no new DVDs or anything, and no sign of those movie rumours ever being true. Let's hope 2011 bears more tomatoes.

But the main thing I want to address, and this is probably the second time I've done, is that I DO NOT TOLERATE PEOPLE STEALING MY FANART! See my leniency is wearing thin. In the past month or so I've seen 5 bootleg items on eBay all using the same picture from the first ever post here, as well as about 4-5 people doing copies of it and claiming as their own, the oldest of such people being 31! Way to make a first impression you guys.

It's getting ridiculous. If people knew just how much this sort of thing actually puts me off drawing full stop, barring what I have to do at work, maybe they would think twice and just be original with the art. It just gets stale copying the same picture over and over, with each of them being less cop each time.

If you are directed to this blog via Google images, read this before you try to impress DeviantART with such plagiarism.

Recent additions to my collection

I've been meaning to make another merchandise post for quite a while, though this time we'll be looking at some stuff that was around since back in the 80s.



First we have a bag I picked up back in February which I think must have been designed for kids to take to school, considering how quite small it is. I could probably only fit A5 sketchbooks in it, I tried bigger things before but thankfully I have other bags for when I'm travelling around Essex. It's still a cute bag though, and funny enough I ended up bidding on two because the seller on eBay had 3 brand new ones, one of which I got outbid on.

A couple of weeks ago I had my 23rd birthday, and I was really surprised to unwrap these beauties, all of which were given to me by my boyfriend!

The talking Duckula plushie! Even though he sounds like he has a sore throat, I've always wanted to see one of those for real.


When I first saw photos of this one years ago I thought it was... well. But only when I actually opened up to it I found something quite interesting about it - this is German! As far as I knew, some Duckula toys were made in Germany by Bullyland, which were also responsible for the little Disney figurines I always used to pick up from the Disney store back in the 90's, so it's good to know that they made plush dolls as well. This even has the Duckula logo on the back of his cape.

Finally we have one of the figurines from the Rainbow toys era [by the way, I recently found that this was a UK division of LJN toys, which I believe used to specialise in character toys, but also got picked on by the Nerd a lot, LOL], this one being the one with the clippy hands at the back. Always wanted one of these.

See ya later, I'm off on another hunt!

Thames TV promotional poster with Duckula

I recently received an email from David Wakefield, who happens to have been a former employee at Thames TV back in the early 1990's, and was kind enough to offer me a photo of this rather interesting piece of media he managed to take out of a media industry magazine. It's a promotional article regarding some children's programmes that were screening or being developed at the time, while having some focus on Duckula as well. I've made sure the text here is still readable but here's the Duckula part anyways:

"He's green. He's a vegetarian vampire. And he's looked after by his nanny. A bizarre combination. Even for a duck. Yet Count Duckula is one of Thames Television's biggest stars and most appealing personalities. We don't accept that animated characters need be one-dimensional. Instead we've treated Duckula just like any other television character with a fully formed personality of his own. When the series was created, the Duckula writers gave each character his or her own personal biography, CV and personality analysis, complete with problems, phobias and foibles. Does all this sound like a lot of trouble to go to for a children's programme? It should do because at Thames we take making programmes for children as seriously as making programmes for adults."

Now that part about the characters having their own profiles like that has really intrigued me. Based on all my gatherings, I've been attempting to make my own biographies of the major characters but that sounds like something much better...

Thanks David for showing me this, not only is the Duckula picture on this beautiful, the writing around will be intriguing for a lot of us.

We now have a DeviantART group!

Popular artsite DeviantART has recently launched a new feature simply known as Groups, and I've taken the opportunity to make a Count Duckula one myself.

CastleDuckula via DAGroups

There, members can suggest favourites as well as submitting their own Count Duckula artwork, either into both the group and their own gallery or as an exclusive to the group. We do have rules that you may want to check out first, just to be on the safe side.

We're still in early days, but check us out sometime!