Two Things: ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics’ & ‘The World of David the Gnome’

It’s been a rough week and I need to go to my happy place. In my happy place, the theme songs from these two car­toons of child­hood play on repeat:

Thing #1 — Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics

This is one of those Japan­ese ani­ma­tion shows I watched before I knew what Japan­ese ani­ma­tion was. Each episode was a re-telling of one of Grimm’s clas­sic fairy tales, like Hansel and Gre­tel and Rapun­zel. Some of the sto­ries, like Snow White, spanned sev­eral episodes. Of all the car­toons I watched in the 80s, I think Grimm’s Fairy Tale Clas­sics has the hap­pi­est theme song I’ve ever heard. It makes me think of rain­bows and fluffy clouds and bun­nies and sunshine.

Here, have a lis­ten. I guar­an­tee it will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Come along, come along!

Thing #2 — The World of David the Gnome

The  sec­ond hap­pi­est car­toon theme song I’ve ever heard is from  The World of David the Gnome . It kind of has the same musi­cal vibe as The Nev­erend­ing Story theme song and has lyrics like,  In every wish and dream and happy home, you will find the king­dom of the gnomes.  David the Gnome was voiced by Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion actor Tom Bosley, who sadly passed away just two years ago.  His famil­iar, com­fort­ing voice made me feel as if I was lis­ten­ing to my grand­fa­ther when I watched this show. 

Look around you…

What do these two things have in common?

Besides hav­ing ridicu­lously happy theme songs, Grimm’s Fairy Tale Clas­sics and The World of David the Gnome are both ani­mated shows that aired on Nick­elodeon around the same time, in the mid-eighties. They were part of the orig­i­nal Nick Jr. lineup that I used to watch early in the morn­ing. Both of these shows had a charm­ing, sweet inno­cence about them and usu­ally instilled some moral value or taught a life les­son. Also, both shows were adapted from for­eign lan­guages: Japan­ese in Grimm’s case, and Span­ish in David the Gnome’s .

Just this year a David the Gnome 3-disc DVD box set was released but it’s hard to get a hold of with­out pay­ing a ridicu­lous price. Sim­i­larly, Grimm’s Fairy Tale Clas­sics is also dif­fi­cult to find on DVD, and even if you do, only a hand­ful of select episodes are avail­able and even then it’s for Region 2 (EU).

What is Two Things about?

A series of posts in which I gush about two semi-related things I love, explain why I love them, and what they have in com­mon. I know, it all sounds so  riv­et­ing.  But I hope you’ll at least find it mildly enter­tain­ing, and maybe even dis­cover some cool things you might not know about.

More stuff and things!