Dylan

Origin

Dylan is a laidback rabbit who lives near the Magic Roundabout. where he hangs out with his friends, Brian (a snail), Dougal (a dog), Ermintrude (a cow), Zebedee (a jack-in-the-box), and Florence (a girl).

Creation

Created by Serge Danot, The Magic Roundabout (Le Manège enchanté) is a children’s stop-motion animation television series that ran from 1964 to 1971. The BBC bought it from France’s national televison and radio production agency Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (ORTF), but the contract did not include scripts, and rather than pay for those and translate them, the BBC hired Eric Thompson (Emma Thompson’s father) to write new scripts based purely on the episodes’ visuals, without knowing what the original dialogue or storylines were, instead figuring out a narrative using just the visuals. Eric Thompson also narrated the English versions.

In the original French version, Dylan was a Spanish character, and called Flappy; this name was again used for him when the series aired in America in the 1980s under the title The Magic Carousel. When the Magic Roundabout was turned into a CGI movie in 2005, acclaimed actor Bill Nighy provided Dylan’s voice, with the character reimagined to be both a guitar-playing hippie and master martial artist. The film was renamed Doogal for US release and re-dubbed, with the voice of Dylan provided by Jimmy Fallon.

The Magic Roundabout and its characters made the transition to comics in 1966 when Hamlyn began publishing annuals based on the series. The annuals were released each year throughout the 1970s, and then intermittently in the 1980s and 1990s. Overlapping the annuals, the Magic Roundabout also began appearing in Playhour during the 1970s.