The Forgotten Toys
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The Forgotten Toys is an animated series made by Hibbert Ralph Entertainment, featuring the voices of Joanna Lumley and Bob Hoskins. The voice of Andrew Sachs is also featured. It is a poignant tale of abandoned toys who are searching for a child to love them.
[edit] Plot synopsis
The first episode is a feature-length story that begins with Teddy and Annie in adjacent dustbins, sometime after Christmas. They have been thrown out to make room for new, more exciting toys. They cannot understand why this has happened to them. Before long, the refuse truck comes along and they narrowly escape being crushed. So begins their journey to find another child to love them. They meet an old stray dog, (voiced by Sir Clement Freud) who shelters them in the basement of a Hotel. They soon grow bored sitting there all day. Eventually the old dog inadvertently causes the basement to flood, and the toys have to escape again.
They meet up again with the old dog who takes them to see an old man with a long white beard (parallels with another such gentleman can be made). He deposits them outside a school, whereupon they are scooped up by the noisy children as they run out of school. The last sequence shows them happy in a new home.
Subsequent episodes show that the toys have again been abandoned and are each week seen searching for a new home, having all sorts of adventures on the way. The series is somewhat melancholy for children as there is never a "happy ending", the toys are always shown walking hand in hand in the sunset, forever searching for another child. Sometimes one or other of them succeeds, briefly, then something will happen to ensure they must leave and begin again.
However, despite the poignancy of the stories, there is often a lot of humour. Teddy is rather gruff and ill-tempered, with a heavy cockney accent. Annie is a "posh" rag doll, whom Teddy refers to as "Pigtails". They often have differences of opinion and it is usually Annie that gets him out of a scrape. Teddy has an aversion to a certain green vegetable... "Sprouts, I 'ate sprouts" he is often heard to say. He even encourages a baby to spit his sprouts out at mealtimes.
[edit] History
"The Forgotten Toys" was first shown in 1995, and was repeated on Tiny Living, a TV channel that screened children's television programmes in the early morning. Videos are also available.
