7 April 1987 (1987-04-07)– 29 March 1988 (1988-03-29)
Ox Tales, also known as The Tales of Boes' Gang (げらげらブース物語, Geragera Būsu Monogatari) is an anime television series produced by Telecable Benelux B.V. and animated by Telescreen Japan. It was a co-production between Japan and the Netherlands based on the comic stripBoes created by Wil Raymakers and Thijs Wilms. The series ran on the Japanese network TV Tokyo from 7 April 1987 to 29 March 1988. It consists of 102 fifteen-minute episodes, that were regularly broadcast as 51 half-hour shows of two episodes each. The series currently has two English dubs: a 1989 dub produced by Saban Entertainment and the 2010 dub produced by m4e, the then-current owner of the Telescreen library.
Plot
The series follows the adventures of Boes as he runs the Funny Farm, containing possibly every animal known.
Characters
Main characters
Boes (Ollie in the first dub) is an ox that owns the Funny Farm and is not exactly the greenest grass on the farm. Although he means well, for some reasons, he makes situations worse than they normally are, but this is actually rare.
Tad (Jack Turtleson in the first dub) is a turtle who is Ollie's best friend, as he is seen mostly hanging out with him in each episode, but in every mess that he and Ollie/Boes get into, his shell breaks apart at least once. In the Dutch comics and anime version, along with the Italian version, he is a female turtle.
Saffie (Sammy in the first dub) is a greyhound and Boes'/Ollie's most loyal pet on the farm who accompanies Ollie/Boes and Jack/Tad on their adventures in some episodes.
Lenny is a lion that imagines himself as a great hunter, although he cannot seem to take the initiative when he finally catches his food.
Towilla is a sarcastic Toco toucan who is the narrator of the English, German and Japanese dubs of the show and normally would insult a character and comment on what happens in the episode and will interrupted by the events in the episode. He breaks the fourth wall for some reason.
Bruce is a greedy grizzly bear who often tries to steal Ollie's honey.
Cecil is a mischievous skunk with both an abundant flatulence issue and a rather sadistic habit of only wanting to relieve his massive amounts of gas, if he can do so in the presence of others.
The series has been aired in several countries outside Japan and has been dubbed and subtitled in English and numerous other languages. The series was broadcast in the United Kingdom several times between 1991 and 1996, on the ITV network.
In the Netherlands, the series first aired on the children's slot of VARA on Nederland 1 on the evening of 6 October 1988.
The series aired on RTP1 in Portugal in 1989/1990. Initially the original Dutch intro was broadcast before being replaced by an instrumental theme.
In the US, a few episodes of the show were released on VHS by Just for Kids in the early 1990s; the show was officially released on DVD in Portugal and Spain in 2006.
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