Hooray! Hurrah! Hurroo! I received the German books in the mail today. My divvy of a mail man CRAMMED them into my mailbox and I was convinced he had damaged them. But my fears turned out to be unfounded. Both were in really good condition (mainly due to the fact that their covers are made from very hard wearing cardboard). Apparently I overpaid the guy because he also sent me a series of twelve mini comic books featuring Wowser (Cubitus in German) as a bonus. Some of you may recognise the name Wowser. It was another animation series that aired on CITV during that same summer when Ox Tales aired. Strange coincidence that...
Anyway, I received the two books today. It appears it was a series of two that were released in 1994. They're both jam-packed full of strips from the 1988-1990 era. The series is called Einfach Tierisch which translates to Simply Animal.
The first book is subtitled Bauernschlau which translates to Farmer-Smartly. I'm guessing that it means that Ollie is a smart farmer or something along those lines.
The second book is subtitled Ohne Federlesen which translates to Without Feather/Spring Vintages. I guess I could just discard the Spring Vintages part of the title and assume that Without Feather is a pretty accurate translation (seeing as how the cover features a group of plucked chickens on it).
If you think the mating rabbits comic strip that I uploaded was a little risque, it's actually an ongoing theme! Lots of mating jokes are to be had. Another interesting factoid is that a lot of the jokes that you see on the Ox Tales TV shows are featured in the strips. For example, the episode "A Small Kindness, A Terrible Nuisance" which features Ollie running and helping the animals out with his doctors bag appears to have originated in the comic strips. There are more, but I'm going to save them for another post...
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boes check out this dutch encyclopedia...
Thanks for the link Anon. I can't begin to estimate how many hours I've spent googling Ox Tales, Boes, Fantazoo and other key words! If you have any info you'd like to share with me about Ox Tales/Boes feel free to do so!
the guy that ilustrates is now linked to geesink studios, as you can see on http://www.geesinkstudio.nl/portfolio/boes.html
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he also designs a lot for the amusement park Efteling in holland... awkward designs!!
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