Torchy the Battery Boy


Torchy the Battery Boy was the British second television series produced by AP Films and Gerry Anderson, running from 1959 to 1961. Directed by Anderson, it was a collaboration with author Roberta Leigh, with music scored by Barry Gray, art direction from Reg Hill and special effects by Derek Meddings.
Based on string puppets, the series depicted adventures of the eponymous boy doll, who had a battery inside him and a lamp in his head, and his master Mr Bumbledrop, voiced by Kenneth Connor, who also voiced a number of other characters.
The second series of 26 episodes was produced by Associated British-Pathé without the involvement of Anderson and AP Films. The show is one of several children's television programmes from the mid-twentieth century to exist in its entirety, without loss or damage. Both series have been digitally remastered and released on DVD.

Plot

Torchy, the Battery Boy, was created by Mr. Bumbledrop, a lonely old toymaker who spends the majority of his days tending to his garden, where the neighborhood children play. Torchy has a lamp on his head, and when he pushes a button on his jacket and utters a mysterious phrase, the light illuminates and gives Torchy magical insights. Mr. Bumbledrop also builds a cardboard rocket ship, which allows the boy to soar through the heavens.
The brightest star in the night sky is Topsy Turvy Land, home of all of the abused and neglected toys that once belonged to naughty children. There, the toys spring to life and animals have the ability to speak. Everyone is at home in this mysterious world, with its lollipop fields, cream bun trees, and chocolate puddles. However, Torchy frequently goes to earth to visit Mr. Bumbledrop, get replacement batteries, and return with naughty children who need to learn a lesson. In Topsy Turvy Land, humans shrink to the size of toys, and various children are subjected to the same horrors that they unleashed upon their playthings.

Production

Creator Roberta Leigh and producer Gerry Anderson had previously collaborated on the puppet show The Adventures of Twizzle, which was so successful that they were asked to do another show. The pair were able to negotiate more money nearly double what was spent on Twizzle, which afforded them the luxury of bringing more elaborate visuals to the screen.
Leigh churned out her scripts quickly, reportedly writing all 52 episodes over a total of 26 days. With her eight-year-old son in mind as the show's target demographic, Leigh set out to write an adventurous show, claiming that she wasn't pushing to include morality tales, but morals naturally came through her stories. As with Twizzle, Leigh devised recurring songs for many of the characters and would hum her tunes to composer Barry Gray, who was tasked with translating them into musical chords.
Puppet maker Christine Glanville began developing the look of Anderson's later "Supermarionation" shows, crafting the puppet bodies from wood, and sculpting heads with movable eyes and mouths, as well as adding thinner strings to make them less visible on film. Made in her garage, crafting the toys was a family affair, with Glanville's father creating the bodies, her mother sewing the clothes, and Christine sculpting the heads and putting finishing touches on the dolls.
The crew began tinkering with automatic lip-sync on two minor characters, and Glanville thought thin rubber might be the way to create the mouths, so she sent her father on a quest to buy condoms from various local vendors. This idea wound up being infeasible because the thin rubber was prone to breakage and paint wouldn't stick to it, so they later switched to chamois leather.
Reg Hill and Derek Meddings created three-dimensional sets using cardboard cut-outs and wood, with a higher degree of detail than they could muster in Twizzle. Their Torchy sets included an elaborate miniature town shaped like fruit, with trees, shrubs, and rocks made of coal, as well as fully furnished miniature interior sets.
They couldn't afford a studio, so the production was set up in the ballroom of the Islet Park House, a mansion in Maidenhead on the banks of the River Thames. Unfortunately, a lack of space caused problems. The stage area was only about 20 square feet, with a cramped bridge that spanned the length of it for the puppeteers to perform on When the carpenters turned on their saws to create sets for the next day's shooting, the puppeteers were unable to sync to the audio playback.
Complicating matters, the river flooded that winter. Although the mansion's interior remained dry, the only way to get in and out of the location was by rowboat. "When the river overflowed, we would stand on the ballroom's impressive veranda and watch the water rush past us below," recalled set dresser Bob Bell. "It was really quite frightening!"
The show was popular, garnering the attention of an up-and-coming band named The Beatles, who performed the title theme song live at The Cavern Club. At the start of 1969, Paul McCartney even riffed a portion of song during the recording sessions for the band's final album, Let It Be.

Characters

Numerous discrepancies in the spelling of names exist throughout the various Torchy materials.

Earthlings

The show premiered in the Midlands in 1959, but it didn't premiere in London until 1960, where it aired consecutively for 52 weeks as one series. Writer Roberta Leigh obviously wrote several shows for the second series to bridge gaps in the first season's stories. Presumably, these were aired on London television in the proper chronological story sequence, but on DVD, the shows were presented in production order as two separate series. TV listings of the era were primitive and online listings feature conflicting airdates, so the tables below list the two series without airdates, just as they appeared on DVD, in an effort to avoid inaccuracies.

Series One

Series Two

Merchandising

A small assortment of merchandise was issued during the show's run, most notably a series of books by creator Roberta Leigh, including an annual "Gift Book" from 1960–1964. Many of the featured stories were short adaptations of her scripts. Other merchandise included the board game Torchy's Race to Topsy Turvy Land, a children's playsuit which was packaged with a cardboard Torchy puppet, a pocketwatch, and a Torchy marionette by popular toymakers Pelham Puppets

Books

  1. Torchy and the Magic Beam
  2. Torchy in Topsy Turvy Land
  3. Torchy Gift Book
  4. Torchy Gift Book
  5. Torchy and Bossy Boots
  6. Torchy and His Two Best Friends
  7. Torchy and the Twinkling Star
  8. Torchy Gift Book
  9. Torchy the Battery Boy Goes To A Party
  10. Torchy Gift Book
  11. Torchy Gift Book

    Comics

Torchy appeared weekly from August 1960 to August 1961 across 52 issues of Harold Hare's Own Paper. The majority of characters were featured in the single-page comic strip, but Flopsy was referred to simply as Rag Doll, there was no Mr. Bumble-Drop, and Whirly and Ena never appeared. Torchy did occasionally venture back to earth to contend with Bogey and Bossyboots.
In 1968, Leigh was the editor of "Wonder," a weekly comic book that was sold at Esso petrol stations. Each issue featured a tie-in coverstory for her subsequent show Wonder Boy and Tiger, as well as a strip titled Bossy Boots. The character bore no physical resemblance to the puppet, but like her Torchy counterpart, Bossy Boots loved to tell everyone what to do.

''Harold Hare's Own Paper''

Roberta Leigh loosely adapted her own stories from numerous episodes for the untitled strips, but many of the details were altered.