I recently re-discovered a show I used to watch and love as a kid: The Raccoons. I can’t remember if I saw it in the US or in Romania as I grew up, but I remember the characters quite well. My wife remembers watching the show as a child, too. Now, thanks to Boomerang, I can watch it once again.

What I like about it is the stories, which always have a nice lesson in them for children, and the show’s setting — a beautiful evergreen forest somewhere in the mountains. The characters, though odd at first, get to be quite likable as you watch the show regularly.

When I was little, I didn’t really care who created the show — I only wondered why the main characters had to have big, bent noses, and why Bert and Cedric had such whiny voices. Now that I’m older, I still wonder about the noses and the voices, but I also want to know who is responsible for creating this wonderful show and bringing it to market. One name pops up time after time in the show’s credits, as producer, director and writer: Kevin Gillis.

Kevin Gillis - creator, producer, director and head writer for "The Raccoons"

As you can see, he looks like a normal human being. I wondered about that… He doesn’t have a huge, bent nose, so I don’t know why he chose to make the characters that way. And since I haven’t yet heard his voice, I don’t know if it’s whiny, like Bert and Cedric’s. I guess that’ll have to wait. In the meantime, I’m glad I can watch “The Raccoons” once more.

If you have children, please know that I highly recommend this show. If you have Boomerang where you live, or have another channel where it’s being shown, then definitely tune in and enjoy it. If you don’t, the store pickings are unfortunately fairly slim. The DVD production is discontinued for now. At leat YouTube has quite a few video clips from various episodes available.

Images used courtesy of Breakthrough Films & Television. There’s more info about the show on IMDB and Wikipedia.