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Aargh! They've 'Made Over' Rupert!

Pietro_Mercurios

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Aargh! They've made over Rupert!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4393038.stm

Rupert the Bear moves to new home
BBC News Online: 31 October 2005

_40966876_rupert_pa.jpg


Rupert the Bear is moving to a new home alongside Postman Pat and He-Man following a £6m ($10.64m) deal.

Express Newspapers has sold the controlling rights to the 85-year-old bear to Entertainment Rights (ER).

The UK media group plans to give Rupert a makeover before relaunching him with an animated TV series, DVDs and books.

Rupert will be ditching his old boots in favour of trendy high-top trainers. ER plans to sell children's version of these new "bear boots".

But, while his look is being "brought into the 21st Century", his red jumper and yellow trousers will be staying

...

:nooo:
 
ARghggh....something in the Telegraph today I think - Rupert will be getting a new bunch of friends. Hmmm...lets predicts shall we: Hip Hop Hamster?; New human black playmate from broken home?; perhaps a disabled friend? Mr and Mrs Bear to divorce?....arghgghh (again)...what if they have lied? what if the trademark trews and scarf get made over with a burbery pattern...

Bring me my lynching hat... :furious:
 
Whoever they are, if the Entertainment Rights makeover of Basil Brush is anything to go by, they'll be a particularily witless bunch.
 
He's still got his school regulation wet-yourself reserve trousers so that's cool. :D
 
I have vague memories of reading ancient Rupert annuals in which he has trippy adventures involving all manner of weird creatures. Did I imagine that?
 
Is Rupert a gay icon? Because he should be.
 
Wasn't there an "adult" version of Rupert -a few years back -might have been in Oz- watch out Felix Dennis - and the original copyright holders sued or threatened.

-
 
Rrose_Selavy said:
Wasn't there an "adult" version of Rupert -a few years back -might have been in Oz- watch out Felix Dennis - and the original copyright holders sued or threatened.

-



Yep, OZ, the school kids' issue

Caused a bit of a kerfuffle, that one did.

One of the resulting articles was a highly sexualised Rupert Bear parody. It was created by 15-year-old schoolboy Vivian Berger by pasting the head of Rupert onto the lead character of an X-rated satirical cartoon by Robert Crumb. The majority of the contributors were from public schools (in the UK sense of the term: elite non-state schools); as a result the humour was mostly an extension of the type of material familiar from undergraduate Rag Mags.
 
I've seen the Oz Schoolkid's Edition, Rupert Bear cut and pasted into a particularily graphic strip by Robert Crumb. Felix Dennis and his Nutwood chums got into a bit of bother for that one.

Oz is not short for Ozymandias, King of Kings: "Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!".
 
I always liked Rupert as a child. I didn't care if he was relevant or not, he was cool.

Like the time when he and his badger mate were sitting under an apple tree at three o'clock, eating pickle sandwitches and both sneezed at the same time - after the sneeze they discovered that time had stopped.

So they go and see father time who tells them he's stopped time and is going on hoilday for 1000 years and he can't help them. The only way to get back to their own time is to eat pickled sandwitches under an apple tree and sneeze at the same time.

.....If I remember correctly ;)
 
The Daily Express was always a terrible RightWing rag, when I was a kid. But, it had Rupert, Jeff Hawke, James Bond, 4D and Giles. You could keep the rest.

:)
 
I can survive the dude boots but this new Rupert is a bit too cute...

And his pals were pretty diverse to begin with
 
Raggerty was my favourite.

If they needed a revamp, they should have picked up where Alan Moore left off with his take on Rupert and friends. I wouldn't mind seeing that as a kid's television series.
 
Cute and a bit too threatenining....

Raggerty was good, and very diverse...(and dark)
 
Polar bears are racist and glory in their whiteness. :lol:
 
theyithian said:
...

I used to save the tokens on Rowntree's jam as a kid and send them off in exchange for Gollywog badges.

Are they banished now?
http://www.answers.com/topic/golliwogg-1

...

British jam manufacturer James Robertson & Sons used a golliwog called Golly as its mascot from 1910, after John Robertson apparently saw children playing with golliwog dolls in America. Robertson's started producing promotional Golly badges in the 1920s, which could be exchanged for tokens gained from their products. In 1983, the company's products were boycotted by the Greater London Council as offensive, and in 1988 the character ceased to be used in television advertising. It was dropped altogether in 2001, and replaced with Roald Dahl characters. Robertson's claimed the decision to retire Golly was simply a commercial decision and had nothing to do with accusations of racism. Today, Robertson's Golly badges remain highly collectable, with the very rarest sometimes selling for more than £1,000, and even comparatively common and recent badges being worth £2.00–£3.00.

...

http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/golliwog/
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
theyithian said:
...

I used to save the tokens on Rowntree's jam as a kid and send them off in exchange for Gollywog badges.

Are they banished now?
http://www.answers.com/topic/golliwogg-1

...

British jam manufacturer James Robertson & Sons used a golliwog called Golly as its mascot from 1910, after John Robertson apparently saw children playing with golliwog dolls in America. Robertson's started producing promotional Golly badges in the 1920s, which could be exchanged for tokens gained from their products. In 1983, the company's products were boycotted by the Greater London Council as offensive, and in 1988 the character ceased to be used in television advertising. It was dropped altogether in 2001, and replaced with Roald Dahl characters. Robertson's claimed the decision to retire Golly was simply a commercial decision and had nothing to do with accusations of racism. Today, Robertson's Golly badges remain highly collectable, with the very rarest sometimes selling for more than £1,000, and even comparatively common and recent badges being worth £2.00–£3.00.

...

http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/golliwog/

I come from the land of the Robinson's golliwog - only about a mile or so from the factory. You see golly badges on most flea markets in the area.
 
Golliwogs on advertising etc are still quite common in France, witness the boxes for "banania".
 
Happy Birthday Rupert!

A little bear is celebrating a very big birthday: Rupert has turned 100. To commemorate the milestone, the anthropomorphic adventurer has been honoured by the Royal Mail in a set of eight stamps.

Rupert first appeared in the Daily Express on 8 November 1920, as Little Lost Bear - the work of illustrator Mary Tourtel. The character, whose famous red jumper was originally blue, was part of the newspaper's push to attract new readers. Alfred Bestall took over from Tourtel in 1935 as Rupert's illustrator, remaining with him until the early 1970s, and it's his distinctive style that appears in the new stamps.

But a century on from his first appearance, can Rupert stay relevant to young readers? ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-54280708
 
can Rupert stay relevant to young readers?

As the recipient of many of the annuals, towards the end of Rupert's glory days, I have to say that he was always entirely in a weird world of his own. I never saw the daily strips; the annual was regarded as a ritual Christmas gift, by the hard-of-thinking.

Come to think of it, he may have been ahead of his time, having a multicultural gang of chums. The "foreign" ones were a lot less inclined to be evil than Blyton's mob!

Looking at the picture above, I am pretty sure that Rupert was paving the way for the full-on depravity of Bungle! That may explain - but never excuse - those human hands! o_O
 
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