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Lo Hartog van Banda's follow up to his successful puppet show "De Bereboot" adapted the late seventies Sci-Fi craze into a the same kind of format as it's predecessor (five minutes before bedtime) but failed to copy it's success. Almost the entire cast and crew of the former show jumped (rocket)ship from the boat to the ship, as it were, with the exception of voice actor Bert Dijkstra being replaced by Maroesja Lacunes, so Trudy Libosan no longer had to do every female voice in the entire series. Paul Van Gorcum had no recurring character to call his own, but played just about every supporting character they principals met their many planets visits. Joop Stokkermans provided some nice tunes, as always, using more electronic instruments than usual (it was SF after all), providing some arrangements vaguely reminiscent of the Electric Light Orchestra.
This series followed the adventures of the yellow and orange space shuttle 'Astro' and it's crew, who would explore strange one-note planets like de Puzzelplaneet, Rommelplaneet, Knoedelplaneet, Plantenplaneet or de Vulkaanplaneet. Piloting the ship was Onno (Trudy Liboson, once more voicing a little boy), who wore an enormous helmet all the time. Ship navigator Kiki (Maroesja Lacunes) was stationed at 'Het Verkijkkastje" (a TV monitor build into the puppet's set) and wore her hair like a native American. And then there was Robo, a completely hysterical Robot (voiced by Jan Borkus) that made C3PO look reasonably well adjusted. Robo's gimmick was to say peep in an annoying fashion all the *peeping* time. During their second or third adventure the crew picked up a fuzzy looking alien called Pluis whom they found working as an alarm clock on de Slaapplaneet. Pluis did not speak, but could imitate all sorts of load noises.
Unfortunately, the puppets just did not look very cute. Onno and Kiki had plump, rotund bodies and their hard plastic heads did not match their soft velvet hands. Onno wore a big crash helmet all the time while Kiki's hairstyle looked like a native American. Robo did look kind of cute, but sounded awful, and Pluis was simply a re-deco-ed background puppet from De Bereboot. Most of the aliens they met used the same couple of gray heads that could be altered, like 'anything Muppet's' to suit the various planets. What probably hurt the series the most was that while De Bereboot used to be broadcast daily on NOS television, De Astronautjes (like the second series of the Bereboot before it) was produced by Avro television (the capital letter A of the Avro logo was even incorporated into the Astro spaceship) and only shown once a week (on Friday I seem to recall), meaning that they could cover very little ground in just five minutes a week and people soon lost interest (or maybe I was just getting too old for this kind of stuff).
It actually debuted just a mere week after the final broadcast of De Bereboot, but since nobody knew at the time that show was ending, that piece of trivia went unnoticed until many years later. Also, while De Bereboot has been repeated many times since then and is available to some degree on DVD, De Astronautjes are lost in space somewhere up there. Only a series of children's books (by Van Banda) and one long playing record are occasionally offered for sale on ebay or similar sites.
7 out of 10
This series followed the adventures of the yellow and orange space shuttle 'Astro' and it's crew, who would explore strange one-note planets like de Puzzelplaneet, Rommelplaneet, Knoedelplaneet, Plantenplaneet or de Vulkaanplaneet. Piloting the ship was Onno (Trudy Liboson, once more voicing a little boy), who wore an enormous helmet all the time. Ship navigator Kiki (Maroesja Lacunes) was stationed at 'Het Verkijkkastje" (a TV monitor build into the puppet's set) and wore her hair like a native American. And then there was Robo, a completely hysterical Robot (voiced by Jan Borkus) that made C3PO look reasonably well adjusted. Robo's gimmick was to say peep in an annoying fashion all the *peeping* time. During their second or third adventure the crew picked up a fuzzy looking alien called Pluis whom they found working as an alarm clock on de Slaapplaneet. Pluis did not speak, but could imitate all sorts of load noises.
Unfortunately, the puppets just did not look very cute. Onno and Kiki had plump, rotund bodies and their hard plastic heads did not match their soft velvet hands. Onno wore a big crash helmet all the time while Kiki's hairstyle looked like a native American. Robo did look kind of cute, but sounded awful, and Pluis was simply a re-deco-ed background puppet from De Bereboot. Most of the aliens they met used the same couple of gray heads that could be altered, like 'anything Muppet's' to suit the various planets. What probably hurt the series the most was that while De Bereboot used to be broadcast daily on NOS television, De Astronautjes (like the second series of the Bereboot before it) was produced by Avro television (the capital letter A of the Avro logo was even incorporated into the Astro spaceship) and only shown once a week (on Friday I seem to recall), meaning that they could cover very little ground in just five minutes a week and people soon lost interest (or maybe I was just getting too old for this kind of stuff).
It actually debuted just a mere week after the final broadcast of De Bereboot, but since nobody knew at the time that show was ending, that piece of trivia went unnoticed until many years later. Also, while De Bereboot has been repeated many times since then and is available to some degree on DVD, De Astronautjes are lost in space somewhere up there. Only a series of children's books (by Van Banda) and one long playing record are occasionally offered for sale on ebay or similar sites.
7 out of 10
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