The Furryfolk on Holiday (1967)

Six years before launching his infamous television campaign on the dangers of patronising ice cream vans without adult supervision, Tufty Fluffytail had appeared on the big screen to give similar food for thought to callow holidaymakers. Created for theatrical distribution in 1967 was The Furryfolk on Holiday, a stop motion short starring the road-wary sciurine and his assortment of leporine, talpine and musteline companions, and detailing the various hazards they encounter while convening for a traditional seaside getaway. The erratic British weather doesn't look poised to spoil their holiday revelry, but could any of the children's injudicious actions? (Note that I've no information on what features this short would have been attached to. What would you have taken the kids to see in 1967? You Only Live Twice?)

The Furryfolk on Holiday was presented by leisure camp entrepreneur William Butlin (are we to assume that Tufty and friends are holidaying in one of his camps?), directed by Norman Hemsley and animated by John Hardwick and Bob Bura, the same team that went on to produce the 1970s television fillers. Hardwick and Bura's trademark folksy animation technique is present in both projects, although their execution in other regards could not have been more different. With its 12-minute running time, The Furryfolk on Holiday had the scope to be more narrative-driven than its television counterparts, and was able to recreate some of the dynamics from the Elsie Mills storybooks that weren't so accurately represented in the fillers - in particular, the impulsive Harry Hare being the real risk-taker of the group, with the impressionable Willy Weasel (the preferred punching bag of the fillers) tending to get into trouble wherever Harry had enlisted him as an accomplice. Whereas storytelling in the TV PIFs was heavily dependent on narration by Bernard Cribbins, the theatrical short forwent a third-person narrator altogether and made more extensive use of character dialogue (the animals' mouths also moved, which did not happen in the fillers). Each approach suited their chosen format aptly; Cribbins' narration was engaging and to the point, exactly what was needed for a 45-second teaching, while the wider array of voices and personalities heard throughout Holiday have a livelier flavour more likely to sustain viewer attention for a longer-form narrative. The child characters were all voiced by radio actress Ann Lancaster, who does a delightful job of giving each a distinct vocal identity - Tufty sounds bright and genial, Harry's voice has an appropriately boisterous edge, Willy's tones are comically squeaky, while Bobbie speaks with a West Country accent. Norman Shelley, renowned for his work on Children's Hour and later The Archers, provides the stern but compassionate vocals of Policeman Badger, the resolute authority figure who is always quick to step in wherever the children's judgement has faltered. (A third voice actor, Denise Bryer, is also credited; I'm assuming she voiced Tufty's mother in the final sequence.)

The short opens with the Furryfolk gathering outside their little row of holiday huts, and Tufty emerging from one to deliver an awkward exposition dump: "Smashing weather for the first day of our holiday! Wouldn't it be fun if Mr Policeman Badger was coming? Why, there he is! And he's on holiday too! Just look at his hat!" Indeed, we can tell that Policeman Badger is supposed to be off duty and getting in on the holidaymaking pleasure because we see him putting his helmet aside and donning a sun hat in its place; for the duration of the short he also assumes the identity of "Uncle Badger". As we know, however, accidents don't take a vacation, and Uncle Badger will have his work cut out in continuing to pull these nippers back from the brink of catastrophe. It is certainly fortunate that he's deigned to join them because, to put it bluntly, none of the kids' parents appear terribly fussed about what their offspring is doing. In fact, the only other adult in the short who's not completely useless is the rabbit driving the ice cream van.

The narrative of Holiday can be divided tidily into three separate acts, each dealing with a different consideration for making sensible use of the shores, with Tufty giving a final summary of all the short's teachings in a nocturnal epilogue. The first and most dramatic of these vignettes, which advises against the risks of swimming in the ocean while the tide is out, follows the classic Tufty scenario of Harry doing something reckless, getting into deep trouble (in this case, deep and watery) before getting his bacon saved by Badger. The second, which comments on the dangers presented by discarded litter, offers the equally classic variation with Harry encouraging Willy to do something foolhardy (with the consequences here being more of inconvenience than anything truly dire, although Badger is firm about what more could have gone wrong). The third, which covers Tufty's favoured subject of road safety and entails an appearance from the beguiling nemesis of all small Furryfolk, the ice cream van, involves no wrongdoing from either Harry and Willy. Instead, we get that other scenario that would intermittently recur within the Tufty tales, with Bobbie Brown Rabbit letting his guard down while tasked with watching over his toddler twin sisters, Bessie and Betsie, only for them to immediately go running off into harm's way. (I mentioned in my previous piece on Tufty that Minnie Mole, Tufty's token female friend, was typically sidelined from the action, and that's absolutely the case here. She gets no notable dialogue and no functional role in the narrative, the peak of her participation being her silently emotional reaction to the Punch & Judy show the characters are watching in the middle segment.)

Meanwhile, there is an additional fourth teaching that is implemented more implicitly, one that's less about safety per se than it is being a good friend and team player, and this is where Tufty himself gets to shine. The first activity that Badger has arranged for the children is a sandcastle-building competition, with boxes of candy promised as prizes for the three best entries, and Tufty proposes that they agree in advance that whoever wins will share their candy with the others. His friends have no trouble in agreeing, but Harry gets so fixated on wanting on win that he allows it to spoil his fun, leading to an act of self-sabotage and ultimately prompting him to seek out the hazards of the waves. Disheartened after losing the miniature flags he'd intended to use to decorate his castle, he destroys his entry in a churlish fit, eliminating himself from the competition and from receiving even the participation prize of a smaller bag of toffees. Tufty appears at his side and offers to help him rebuild, but Harry isn't interested; what he wants is to stand out, and if he can't prove himself the best by constructing a winning on his own, he can do so by demonstrating what a proficient swimmer he is. He enters the sea and discovers, too late, that he isn't proficient enough to keep the tide from dragging him ever further away from the shore. Fortunately, Tufty and Willy are able to alert Uncle Badger to Harry's whereabouts, and he wastes little time in rowing out to rescue the bedraggled hare before the waves have completely engulfed him. Harry's competitiveness and desire to outdo everyone else is subtly contrasted with Tufty's concern for supporting his friends and seeing that they all have an enjoyable time, with the message that cooperation is a better path than self-aggrandising. Having returned to dry land, Harry asks who won the sandcastle competition and Badger responds in a hesitant tone that implies he'd never settled on the winners and is listing off three names at random: "Umm...Tufty, Bobbie and Willy!"  (Of course Tufty won! No shit Tufty won! I'm always glad to see a rare victory for Willy, although I would have like Minnie's name to have been mentioned, so that she'd at least get some acknowledgement in this short.) Tufty gives Harry the reassuring reminder that they're going to share their prizes, thus affirming that his destructive competitiveness was always unnecessary.

In the same way, sensible behaviour at the beach isn't merely a matter of looking out for your own welfare, but doing your bit to maintain a safe environment for others. Leaving broken glass on the sand is an inconsiderate thing to do because it could result in the injury of another. Your younger siblings can't be expected to recognise danger all of the time, so they need you to watch their backs. The prevention of accidents is intrinsically a team effort.

Tufty might model the behaviour that the short's target audience is intended to emulate, but the real heart of the story is unquestionably Uncle Badger, whose kindly nature is not obscured by his stern demeanour. His use of the word "stupid" to describe some of the children's behaviours might seem a bit harsh to modern sensibilities, but in most regards he's a sterling authority figure - firm in laying down what is wrong and right, and what could happen if the difference is not appreciated, but also patient, generous, and meeting the children's shortcomings with a desire to nurture rather than to simply reprimand. For example, he offers to help Harry become a more proficient swimmer by agreeing to take him and the others for lessons at the swimming pool the next day. Caring, dependable and always knowing what to do in a crisis, he's able to fill the parental void that is sometimes felt throughout the short. There is, however, one thing that Badger does VERY wrong that I am going to call him out for - when Harry and Willy have led him to the location of the bottle they'd broken and initially tried to cover with sand, he disposes of the glass in a sheet of newspaper and has Harry and Willy pass the fragments up to him? What kind of responsible adult gets small children to handle broken glass? I'm suddenly reminded of the less benevolent Policeman Badger we saw in the "Playing Near The Road" filler who manhandled the injured Willy by shoulders and had him walk to the pavement on his wounded leg.

As for the rest of the so-called responsible adults, there is quite a satisfying moment in the third vignette where the ice cream rabbit chews out Mr Brown Rabbit for failing to keep Bessie and Betsie off the road (the two ankle biters are unharmed, thanks to Mr Bunny Whip's lightning reflexes in applying the brakes), even if it's faltering big brother Bobbie who has to answer for the transgression. Look, I understand why the Tufty stories take the stance that they do. They're all about teaching children that they will need to learn how to use their own judgement, as there are inevitably going to be situations in which they can't depend on adults to do the thinking for them. Children are the target audience, and that's why the child characters are the ones held accountable. Even so, there are a number of points in Holiday where it feels like the problems could have been avoided with a little more adult oversight. Where were all the grown-ups while the children were building their sandcastles? If they'd been properly supervised then maybe someone would have seen Harry going up to the waves and been able to stop him then and there. And why did nobody besides Harry notice Willy tripping over with his glass bottle or show any concern about it? (The contribution of a lack of parental oversight to hazardous situations is not something that went totally unacknowledged in Mills' stories, where I seem to recall there was a running theme of Harry's father being fixated on his career and having little time for his son.)

Bobbie asserts that Bessie and Betsie had both been educated on the "Kerb Drill" and should have known better than to have run into the road, but Badger counters that very young children are liable to forget such things, particularly when enticed by something as exciting as the ice cream van. We then get a demonstration of the proper road-crossing procedure, with Badger, Tufty, Bobbie, Bessie and Betsie looking right, left and then right again before making their way across - significantly, they do so standing side by side, reaffirming that safety is a group business. The explicit references to the Kerb Drill would rapidly date the short, being a lingering remnant of World War II Britain. It was devised by the National "Safety First" Association (predecessor to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) in 1942 and was distinctively militaristic in nature; by the time the television fillers started airing it had been phased out in favour of the Green Cross Code, deemed to be a more relatable teaching tool for youngsters in peacetime.

Holiday concludes with an epilogue where Tufty is being tucked into bed by Mrs Fluffytail while musing on the events gone by. He reflects that it was a lovely day and that nobody really ruined it (spoken as if he'd anticipated in advance that someone would, which shows how genre-savvy he is). "Harry and Willy very nearly did," Mrs Fluffytail retorts, which I consider pretty mean of her, particularly since she makes no mention at all of Bobbie's transgression. Tufty lists off the various teachings dispensed by Uncle Badger throughout the day, and observes how good it was that he was always on hand to keep each nascent disaster from materialising. Indeed. Good old Uncle Badger.

We can only speculate on what might go wrong tomorrow during the swimming lessons at the pool. My money's on Harry running around the pool edges and encouraging Willy to jump in at the shallow end. The ominous siren call of the ice cream van is obviously also going to sound at some point. Well, don't answer it Willy, it's a trap!

An upload of The Furryfolk on Holiday is available for viewing (albeit without sound) on the official website of Carey Blyton (nephew of renowned children's author Enid Blyton), who composed the "The Tufty Club Marching Song" heard during the end-credits. It was also included on the BFI DVD release The COI Collection Volume Six: Worth The Risk?