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The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures created by Elisabeth Beresford and originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. They live in burrows, where they aim to help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in creative ways. Although Wombles supposedly live in every country in the world, Beresford's stories are primarily concerned with the lives of the inhabitants of the burrow on Wimbledon Common in London, England.
The characters gained a higher national profile in the UK in the mid-1970s as a result of the popularity of a BBC-commissioned children's television show which used stop-motion animation. A number of spin-off novelty songs also became hits in the British music charts. The Wombles pop group was the idea of British singer and composer Mike Batt.
The Womble motto is "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish". This Environmentalism message was a reflection of the growing environmental movement of the 1970s.
Wombles are herbivores and are very fond of mushrooms. They eat a variety of plants, fungi, and tree products that human beings cannot (or will not) eat, so daisy buns, moss pie, acorn juice, fir-cone soufflé, elm bark casserole, and grass bread sandwiches are part of the Womble menu – augmented by any food left behind on the Common by human beings. All Wombles are strong swimmers and can even survive for long periods in ice-cold water. Several sub-species of Womble are revealed throughout the books: the Loch Ness Monster is actually part of a clan of water Wombles and the yeti of the Himalayas are giant snow-white Wombles. Wombles have a sixth sense that allows them to sense green spaces and wildlife: this is first mentioned in the Wandering Wombles but developed to a keen long-range telepathic sense by Dalai Gartok Womble in The Wombles Go Round The World.
Wombles care for and educate their young at a communal level. As with human children, immature Wombles are taught reading, writing and athletic skills, which they learn by playing a game called "Wombles and Ladders". Some older Wombles play this game too, though most regard it as childish. Below a certain (unspecified) age, all Wombles are nameless; upon being deemed to be of working age, a Womble chooses his or her name by looking through Great Uncle Bulgaria's large atlas until they find a name that suits them. Some, Bungo for example, "merely shut their eyes tight and point and hope for the best".Chapter 1, The Wombles, Elisabeth Beresford, 1968. They then leave Miss Adelaide's "Womblegarten" and join in the communal work of the burrow, which is mostly clearing up and recycling human refuse.
Wombles are very careful to keep their existence secret from human beings – at least in the books and TV series – fearing that discovery of their existence will lead to the Great Womble Hunt. For the most part, adult human beings rarely take notice of them, or fail to distinguish them from humans. In the film Wombling Free this is reversed as the Wombles seek to get humans to listen to their pleas to "make good use of bad rubbish".
Wombles generally have a low opinion of other animal species, though they are never unkind to them. They have a poor opinion of humans in general, though there are exceptions, such as royalty, especially the Queen. They also have a respect for human literature; the Wimbledon Wombles maintain a large library of books left by humans on the Common, and Great Uncle Bulgaria is fond of reading The Times.
All of these were out of print for many years until they were republished by Bloomsbury, from 2010 to 2011, along with the 1973 short-story collection The Invisible Womble, with all-new illustrations by Nick Price. In The Wandering Wombles, the setting moved from Wimbledon Common to Hyde Park in central London, but The Wombles to the Rescue saw them return to Wimbledon Common.
Four of the books were illustrated by Margaret Gordon. The Wombles at Work (1973) was illustrated by Barry Leith, who worked on set design for the original FilmFair series. The Wandering Wombles (1970) was illustrated by Oliver Chadwick. The appearance of the Wombles in the books followed the design of the Ivor Wood TV puppets, with the exception of original editions of The Wombles (1968) and first printings of The Wandering Wombles, which preceded the TV series and depicted the Wombles as teddy bear-like creatures. When the 1973 animated Wombles series was in pre-production, a decision was made to change the design of the characters so that they did not resemble teddy bears, as it was felt that there were too many children's shows with teddy bear characters. There is a reference in the first book to dark brown being the colour of their fur (with the exception of the oldest Wombles whose fur turns white) but this was changed to silvery grey, save for the neck, which is black. Some of the toys and book illustrations do not show the black fur on the neck.
There is an audiobook of The Wombles, narrated by Bernard Cribbins.
Beresford wrote a collection of short stories entitled The Invisible Womble and Other Stories (1973); these stories were based on episodes from the TV series, although they occasionally refer to events in the novels.
In addition to these books, many annuals, picture books and children's early readers have been published over the years, some of which were also written by Beresford.
Further animated episodes, using new animation models and sets, were made by Cinar/Filmfair in 1998–1999. These were ten minutes long and had several Canadian actors provide the voices. Background music was adapted from the Wombles' records along with new compositions.
A CGI animation series of 52 episodes, under the guidance of Mike Batt's Dramatico Productions, who bought the rights to The Wombles for Channel 5's preschool slot Milkshake!, was intended for airing in 2015. Ray Winstone and Cribbins were confirmed as the voices of this new series. Only two of the planned episodes were screened, however, at the Cambridge Film Festival in November 2016. Batt filed for bankruptcy the following year in September, and resigned as director of Dramatico Productions.
The Wombles were merchandised in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Products include stuffed toys along with stationery, stickers, small figurines, bath soap, night lights, lamp shades, chocolate bars, gelatin pudding kits, posters, games, shirts, badges (buttons), cloth patches, and other items. The revival of the series in the late 1990s brought with it another wave of merchandise which included lunch boxes, umbrellas, flannels (face cloths), hot water bottle covers, slippers, a Steiff doll, and a set of postage stamps for Alderney, a Channel Island that served as the name for one of the Wombles and the home of Beresford until her death. More recently, the Wombles were part of a set of UK postage stamps honouring classic British children's TV programmes. In 2013, Mike Batt and Elisabeth Beresford's two children consolidated the merchandising copyrights to the Wombles in a new company, Wombles Copyright Holdings, of which Batt became the principal shareholder with creative control held by Beresford's heirs. This included the purchase of the Wombles TV series from DHX Media, who had acquired it with their purchase of Cookie Jar Entertainment in 2012.
In 2011, The Wombles performed live at Glastonbury.
The Wombles were the interval entertainment at Eurovision Song Contest 1974.
From 2000 to June 2003, Wimbledon F.C. used a Womble named "Wandle" as a club mascot, named after the local River Wandle. After the 2002 relocation of the club to Milton Keynes, the licence to use the character was not renewed beyond June 2003. In 2006, the club's Wimbledon successor, AFC Wimbledon, made a licensing deal with Beresford and launched its own Womble mascot. After a naming competition in which the final name was chosen by Elisabeth Beresford herself, AFC Wimbledon announced that the new Womble would be known as "Haydon", after Haydons Road, the nearest railway station to Wimbledon's original home ground, Plough Lane. Twelve years later, the club announced plans to return to their original neighbourhood; Haydons Road is also the closest station to their new ground.
Beresford also gave permission for a team of Wombles to run the London Marathon.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Official Wombles books website (at the Internet Archive)
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