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The Telebugs

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This Memory is looking a little short on nostalgia! Have you got anything you could add?

The Telebugs were a cartoon from around 1986. From what I remember, they were little robot hero like dudes who had TV screens for faces. There was a white one (male), a yellow one (female) and a little red one (male). They had a set of toys you could get and I'm pretty sure they were radio controlled.

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Do You Remember The Telebugs?

Do You Remember The Telebugs?

  • Anonymous user
    on
    The Telebugs ran on Children's ITV from 1986-1989, for a five-minute episode every weekday afternoon at 3.55 (the episodes making up weekly serials, the format Dangermouse originally used). The white, yellow and red Telebugs were respectively called Chip (bossy leader), Samantha (the clever one with the gorgeous Sloane Ranger voice) and Bug (the little brother/sister character who made mistakes). They were invented by an eccentric Professor (is there any other kind in cartoons?) and were reporters for a news station headed by Mr MacStarch, assisted by Mic, a "video pup", i.e. a mobile TV camera with funny face and nose for lens. Villains included Bully Byte (sp?), Magna and their supercomputer, Angel Brain. There was also Arcadia, who tried to enslave the world through arcade/computer games, and Zudo, a Telebug who'd gone bad. Plus, the Professor had an evil brother who'd invented two more nasty Telebugs of his own. Their names escape me but I could have told you when I was six. I was loopy about this show and even asked a school bus driver to drive faster so I didn't miss the show one day! He told every kid aboard I wanted to get home for Coronation Street. My Gran also made me a Telebugs cake on my birthday. There were indeed radio-controlled toys and I still have a couple - a Samantha, plus a Mulch. Mulch was a gardening robot that one of the bad guys took control of in one story. I don't think he was a major character but they still mass-produced him! He was a turtle-type toy that you could program with instructions. The Samantha (and probably the Chip and the Bug) allowed you to send your own voice by radio from the remote control into the Telebug's speaker. It kind of worked. All the computer stuff was quite topical in the 80s. The series was made by Telemagination for TVS. Ron Moody supplied some of the voices. Recent appearances have seen the Telebugs renamed the Gigglebytes for some reason.

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