Cucumber

Definitely one of my most cherished memories as a child was to sit in front of the TV and watch CUCUMBER. I remember my brother and I wrote to the club and in return we got a CUCUMBER badge and certificate that stated that we were members of the CUCUMBER club. It was definitely something that we were particularly proud of. The only problem we had was that the mailing address was posted so fast that my mother barely had time to write it down. I still have that Cucumber Club button and the certificate is around somewhere. Probably in my mother's filing cabinet. All and all it was a great show for kids. :) Moose and Beaver ruled our TV set. :)

I used to watch this all the time when I was small, but then it went off the air. I've tried to bring it up to my friends but no one remembers it, not even my sister who watched it with me (but she was pretty young at the time in her defense). Crazy isn't it? Yep, good ol' TVO... had some great shows; Today's Special, Cucumber and that show with the talking shoes (another show I remember but no one else does).

Something I've noticed, one the website it lists Martin Short as "Rabbit" but I don't remember a rabbit. Maybe that means Beaver cause beaver isn't even listed and he was the main character. Weird.

Well thats my opinion on CUCUMBER. I hope many other of you guys remember it cause it was a cool show worth remembering.

The Martin Short rabbit character was a one-off. Episodes would have a guest star, and on the "Ecology" episode, Martin played "Smokey the Hare".

Moose was played by Alex Laurier (who'd won Best Actor at the Sears Drama Festival while he was a student at Pickering District High School, during the 1950s. There's a photo of him and his cast-mates in one of my dad's PDHS yearbooks). Beaver was played by Nikki Tilroe, who also played The Mime, on the later TVO series "Today's Special".

The TVO show with the "talking shoes" was "Readalong". Several puppets from it (Boot, Pretty & Granny) now reside in the Museum of Civilization, in Ottawa, Canada.

TVO could really make a killing by releasing DVDs of some of their classic in-house shows from the 1970s & early 1980s---sort of like our own version of the "Sesame Street Old School" sets. They could include "Cucumber", "Readalong", "Calling All Safety Scouts", "Today's Special", "Write On", "Guess What", "Math Patrol", "Parlez-Moi", "Report Canada", "What If", "Eureka", "Bits & Bytes"...

It's really sad that the CRTC caved in to pressure from broadcasters to include news in their mandated quota of locally produced programming. As soon as the CRTC did that, broadcasters quickly began phasing out production of all local programming other than news. Today, even the big networks buy most of their shows from independent producers, because it's cheaper.

For those that remember this gem of a show, do you remember that CUCUMBER is an anagram? This may help... WARNING: I might not have gotten the words EXACTLY right and you may experience an intense "ohmygodirememberthat" feeling :)

Come and sing a song of the forest,

Let us sing a song about animal kind,

Water, air and land throughout the forest,

Searching for some answers, seeing what we can find.

Children's Underground Club of United Moose and Beaver, for Enthusiastic Repor..orters

Children's Underground Club of United Moose and Beaver, for Enthusiastic Reporters!

A good piece of Canadiana...

Cucumber (which stands for Childrens Underground Club of United Moose and Beaver for Enthusiastic Reporters) was one of my favorite shows when I was younger. It starred Moose and Beaver, the leaders of the club. I don't remember too many specific details, but I do remember they would give out writing assignments and if you sent them in they would send you back a Cucumber button. They would go on little adventures -- once they went to an Old West town and once Moose thought he had been named "Moose of the Year." (It was a typo--- it was really Mouse of the year and meant for Mickey) And one assignment I remember was to write a list of ways to get from "here to there." Okay, I guess I lied. I do remember quite a bit about this show.