Friends of the Forest

Since we talked about memories in my previous post, I thought we could talk a little bit about a childhood memory of mine.

When I was a kid, my favourite show was Friends of the Forest. It aired on YTV and was about the adventures of various woodland creatures. The main characters' name was Rocky, and I could never figure out what animal he was.

It had a little jingle that went, Friends of the forest, there's room for everyone.

As a teenager, with the Internet still somewhat young, I tried to find my old favourite show. While I didn't get exactly what I wanted, I did find this:

A Japanese version of Friends of the Forest!

Turns out, it had been originally created in Japan under the name Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat (so now I know what animal he was supposed to be, although I don't know what a "mountain rat" is). It was later translated and released in Canada. So technically, I was into anime before it was cool.

I even found an episode of the Japanese version on Youtube. I went as far as to get it transcribed into English by someone I knew who spoke Japanese.

Several years forward, and I've been keeping my eyes on the situation to see if there are any developments. Eventually, I strike gold! A whole library of episodes of the English version is released! Except this is what the title looks like

 Whaaaaat?

And the chorus to the theme song goes

In the greeeen forest, the greeeeen forest

Instead of

Friends of the forest, there's room for everyone

Here's a link to the theme song of Fables of the Green Forest, if you really want to hear it: (455) Fables of the Green Forest Intro (70's) - YouTube

So I have really mixed feelings. On one hand, I have an English translation of my beloved childhood show. On the other hand, it's weird and different. Everything is a little different than I remember, and there's no evidence that the show I remembered ever existed.

Except that, when I asked my brother if he remembered Friends of the Forest, he was able to sing part of the chorus for the theme song.

Anyway, this year I found an article on Lost Media Wiki about the translation I remember.

Apparently Fables of the Green Forest was aired in the late 70s and into the 80s. Friends of the Forest was the second translation to be aired, with an entirely new voice cast, music, and altered storylines.

For example, in Fables, they made Peter Cottontail the main character and renamed Rocky as Johnny. So much disrespect to the Japanese source material, Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat.

No home videos of Friends of the Forest are known to exist, and nothing has surfaced online.

This is all bittersweet. On the one hand, I now have evidence that my childhood memory was real, but on the other, I've confirmed there is no evidence that it exists in any current form. The sound of the theme song is in my head, but that's the only way that it's still alive.

What really burns me up is that we had stacks of home-recorded VHS tapes because it was my favourite show. But we lost all of them over a couple of moves. If I still had those, I would be the only one in the world to have copies of Friends of the Forest. I would have uploaded them to the Internet, and that would be my contribution to society. Oh well.