King Rollo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the tenth century Viking ruler, see Rollo of Normandy.

King Rollo was a children's character created by David McKee in 1979, starring in a series of books, animations (narrated by Ray Brooks), and a comic strip in the magazine Buttons. In all, thirteen episodes of the animation were produced in 1985, by McKee's own King Rollo Films.

The central character of the stories was Rollo himself, a child-like King who was always in need of advice and assistance from his friends. Among these were Cook - the king's cook, who was arguably the real ruler of the kingdom; his neighbour, Queen Gwen; the royal magician; King Frank; and perhaps most importantly, Rollo's cat, Hamlet, who was generally portrayed as wiser than Rollo himself.

The animations used the same distinctive colourful cut-out paper look as McKee's other works, such as Mr Benn, and one memorable aspect was that the characters' legs would rotate outwards when walking until they were at right-angles at the sides of their body.