Hallo Spencer is a German children's television series, created by Winfried Debertin and produced by Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) from 1979 until 2001.
[2] In these 22 years, 275 episodes were filmed, including a number of 'specials' featuring the characters taking part in traditional fairy tale and nursery rhyme-themed stories.
It is a puppet based show, featuring characters created and operated in the same fashion as Jim Henson's Muppets and Sesame Street, and, in fact, some of the show's staff were former employees of Sesamstraße, the German version of Sesame Street.
The series has three spinoffs: The Adventures of Max and Molly, Poldi and the Dragons and Spencer Kids.
[8] US character names from the Saban Productions series are listed alongside their original German counterparts.
In the early episodes, Spencer lived in a television studio, although he later moved into an apartment in the Hallerstraße.
Kasimir (or Kasi for short) is a red creature with unusually long arms, who lives in a chestnut tree that has an elevator built inside it.
He is Nepomuk's best friend and the only villager allowed to call him Nepi (although this is not the case in early episodes).
US voice artist: Dave Mallow Poldi (the German familiar form of Leopold) is a dragon who lives in a volcanic crater.
He lives in a mushroom and is continually compiling his enormous library, known as the Lexiklopädie (Lexipedia in the American version).
Puppeteers: Petra Zieser, Sabine Steincke, Karime Vakilzadeh, Andrea Bongers (Mona), Eva Behrmann (Lisa).
He appeared only in several early episodes to cause trouble for Spencer and the others, being quickly dropped from the show when it became clear that young viewers were afraid of him.
In the early 1990s, after many years of success in its homeland and in other countries that broadcast dubbed versions of the original series including Mexico, Saban International bought the foreign rights to Hallo Spencer.
The North American version was retitled The Hallo Spencer Show and heavily edited by translating and rewriting scripts, cutting seven minutes from each episode in order to fit the American broadcast schedule during its first-run syndication on local networks around 3:00 PM EST/2:00 PM Central Time Zone, and to accommodate the inclusion of a rap at the end, summarizing the events of the episode.
Nepomuk also found himself with a first name: Grumpowski, Elvis became Elmar and the house band, the Quietschbeus became The Screech Boys.
In the late 2000s, an alternative and more faithful English dub was produced by Hallo Spencer's production company, PentaTV.
Judging by the contents of the tapes, the American episodes seem to have been chosen at random, with no regard at all to the running order of the original series.