Skippy

I always liked Skippy better than Lassie and Flipper. Most critics hated Skippy and the entire show. I have not seen it in 20 years, but the location was surely the attraction for me. It was quite a revelation seeing the adventures of a boy in location quite foreign to a Midwest town.

I doubt this would have much appeal to kids today, but you never know. Skippy was smart as a human and the exotic location of Outback Australia may not be as exciting for kids now as it was for me in the 1970s. I wish this was the type of show that would show up from time to time on one of the dozens of channels we have now. It would be good to see these old classics.

I remember watching Skippy when I was little. It was in syndication here in the U.S. back in the late '60s and early '70s. Skippy was a kangaroo. There was one episode in which Mike Hammond had to dart a wild kangaroo to relocate it away from a populated area.

Sonny, Mike's son, didn't want him to shoot Skippy by mistake.

Mike's love interest in the show was Clarissa "Clancy" Merrick. I haven't seen the new series.

As a kid growing up in West Australia in the late 60s this was one of the few TV shows I watched that was Australian. For the most part Aussie kids grew up watching American and British TV series and thinking that dolphins could talk, doctors could time-travel and birds flew south for the winter. All that changed when Skippy hopped into our lives and gave us Australian stories, Australian settings, Australian accents and Australian heroes. I had a Skippy cup, Skippy plate and insisted my Skippy Peanut Butter sandwiches and milk were served with them. We loved Skippy and were very proud when we discovered that the rest of the world loved Skippy too. The show was dubbed into 25 languages and was shown in 128 countries, something we Aussies didn't think possible for an Aussie TV show. We had thought that to be successful meant selling our TV shows to the American and British networks where our accent was believed to be a liability. At that time if an Aussie film or TV show made it to American audiences it was usually dubbed with American accented voices (Mad Max) or perceived as a British product. What Skippy demonstrated was that an Australian series could be successful beyond the American and British markets. Consequently Australian TV producers gained the confidence to produce more Aussie TV series knowing that they could sell them successfully to parts of the world where our strange accent wasn't an issue. Today the Aussie TV industry exports significantly more than it imports., particularly in children's programming. While Skippy is showing its age today, it's high production values, imaginative scripts and cultural integrity made it a quality product for its time. While it will always be a sentimental childhood favourite for most Aussies, it should also be remembered for its role as a catalyst for the establishment of a viable Australian TV & Film industry. It seems today that an Aussie accent is an asset in Hollywood and a talking kangaroo had more than a little to do with it.

This series is timeless. It will be watched in 100 years time.

You cannot get back to the innocent 50's 60's of Australian National Park life because there are so many people these days and so few animals.

This was made in the early years of TV when TV's were just becoming accessible to all in Australia. It no doubt helped popularise Australia.

Unfortunately Australia is no longer a quirky low populated part of world-it is modern country with large and complex cities with almost non-stop 24 hour activity.

Give me back my simple childhood days of coming home from school and watching Skippy or re-runs of Skippy.

I was even too young to appreciate Lisa Goddard as the 16-17 yo Englsih girl.

God bless all creatures great and small like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

I remember watching this show on our cable TV back in 1969 (WPIX in New York, I think), and I was immediately hooked. Out of all the animal shows being made at that time--Gentle Ben, Lassie, Daktari--I liked this one the best of all.

It had a great ensemble cast, in addition to Skippy. Everyone in the cast did a great job, and it was fun to see them interact with each other in every episode.

And since I had just studied about Australia during the 1968-69 school year, the locales Down Under were also of interest to me. I have not seen the show since, and I know it had aired on Animal Planet some time ago. Seems to me that it's time to revisit this show!