Classic Cartoons

This was the first of the classic trilogy to appear on British television - originally made in French, the cartoon was dubbed into English which meant that each character had to talk very very fast in order to hide the fact that their lip movements didn't match their speech. Based upon the original classic by Alexander Dumas but with a talking dog in the title role, Dogtanian became an instant household name, due in no small measure to the mind-blowingly awesome theme song. The evil villain was called "The Black Moustache", possibly because he wore a moustache which was black. His main purpose in life seemed to be to prevent Dogtanian from going to the Academy and becoming a proper Muskehound rather than some little git with a bent sword.

Click here to experience the incredible title music by downloading it as an MP3 file (if you need an MPEG player, try WinAmp). For a quicker but less vocal version, try the MIDI theme music by clicking here.

This cartoon was made by the same geniuses who created Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds and The Mysterious Cities of Gold. Once again, it was based upon the original classic story (this time by Jules Verne), but set in a world populated by talking animals. The dashing hero was Willy Fog (a lion), while his butler (Rigadon) was a chipmunk-type thing with a mouse (Tiko) for his mate, and the beautiful princess was a rather seductive cat. The villain of the piece was The Evil Transfer, who looked a bit like a weasel. Although supposed to be a master of disguise, he could be instantly recognised by the fact that his left eye would glow amazingly bright and almost pop out of his head, to the sound of "bbboooooiiiiiiiingg".

Perhaps the best thing about Willy Fog was the amazing theme music - a catchy song of the quality you just don't get nowadays. Click here to download it in zip format (you'll need Winzip to open it).

Cities of Gold was perhaps the best of the classic Fog/Dogtanian/Cities trilogy, consisting once again of absolutely superb title music and brilliant characterisation. The main hero was Estaban (aka Lestaban), who was on some quest or other to find the fabled City of Gold - on his journey he picked up Zia, an Aztec girl, plus Tao (generally known as Towel) who was one of those hangers-on type people. The plot for each episode generally consisted of Zia getting kidnapped or lost, leading to Estaban shouting out "Zia !!!" in a strange way before getting captured himself. It was thus usually up to Tao to save the day.

Click here for an exciting episode of Mysterious Cities of Gold, while the superb theme song can be downloaded in zip format by clicking here. Or if you're feeling really daring, try out the disco remix!