Button Moon

What a fantastic show this was... I was such a fan as a toddler! I loved that theme tune and thought "I want to go to Button Moon!" Where lives the most annoying sounding doll! and a teddy bear that sounds like a west country cider drinker... POETRY in MOTION!!!

My memories are hazy (apart from the great theme tune of course), but I seem to recall Mr Spoon would take a telescope with him on his sojourns and use it to spy on people back on "Earth".

I'm sure one such person was Mrs Spoon. Clearly Mr Spoon was a control freak or there was a fundamental lack of trust in their relationship.

And clearly Button Moon wasn't actually button-shaped or Mr Spoon would have fallen through the holes. And why was the moon named after him anyway?

Usually shown in the midday slot along with Rainbow or Let's Pretend.

Yet another programme from my wasted youth, 'Button Moon' maintains a weird power all these years later. As with all the best kids' shows, 'Button Moon' was dedicated to helping its young audience's imaginations sprout from the normalities of everyday life. All the world was a potential playground. Thus, kitchen utensils become the restless Mr Spoon and his family, baked bean tins become spaceships, cardboard boxes become houses. All good staples of a healthy child's imaginative development.

However, this same approach helped give the show a very weird, very trippy atmosphere, ensuring it cult TV status years later. It looks as if it were literally filmed in a dustbin. Bananas fly through the sky with green bean wings; party dresses suffer from depression; umbrellas play golf. In one particularly inspired sequence, Mr Spoon, trapped on top of a squealing Royal Jelly, is rescued by a small army of gingerbread men wielding a ladder constructed from chocolate finger biscuits.

Ineffably English - check out the thinly disguised Heinz logo on the baked-bean tin spaceship, for instance, or the cockney troll in the 'Little Goats Gruff' episode - it features terrific narration by Robin Parkinson, and a theme tune that will haunt you till your dying day. 'Button Moon' is surely the pinnacle of early 1980s English children's psychedelic sci-fi puppetry weirdness.

i love button moon i have all the videos. there was not a better tv show than that. Captin Pugwash came close. but i love button moon. although the guy behind the black sheet might as just gave a big smile and waved we could see him moving around. but i dont care I LOVE BUTTON MOON.

A firm favourite of mine during my nursery school years, 'Button Moon' had a large following of fans in those who were tots in the early Eighties. It was a very low-budget show with the characters were put together using wooden spoons and tin cans but it worked when complimented with simple story-telling and a solid musical score.

There was something very surreal about 'Button Moon' that I loved as a child (although I could see why people now link it to a drugs' trip!) but it was a show that proves you don't need high-quality CGI to keep small children (and adults!) entertained. Upon viewing it recently, after a friend bought the DVD, it certainly brought back memories and would no doubt be equally as popular with today's toddlers as it was with kids in the Eighties.