User Reviews

A firm favourite of mine during my nursery school years, 'Button Moon' had a large following of fans in those who were tots in the early Eighties. It was a very low-budget show with the characters were put together using wooden spoons and tin cans but it worked when complimented with simple story-telling and a solid musical score.

There was something very surreal about 'Button Moon' that I loved as a child (although I could see why people now link it to a drugs' trip!) but it was a show that proves you don't need high-quality CGI to keep small children (and adults!) entertained. Upon viewing it recently, after a friend bought the DVD, it certainly brought back memories and would no doubt be equally as popular with today's toddlers as it was with kids in the Eighties.

Incredibly watchable piece of entertainment I used to eat my breakfast too since there were tons of episodes and were always distracting without needing you to engage too much with them.

They didn't have some kind of message or lesson, they were just a brief bit of trippiness where we start with some vision of domestic bliss, then travel to Button Moon where there's always something interesting going on (but thankfully nothing very heavy or significant) and only then for some reason Mr Spoon decides to engage in some voyeurism through his telescope. Maybe it works better in space or maybe they have no privacy laws or something.

This second half allows the show to contain basically anything in addition to the familiar characters in its enchanting space back drop from A middle east scene to a witches pantry.

As is the case with a lot of these British kids shows from the '80s they manage a vintage charm way beyond their actual age suggests with an old school story book quality. The narrator is stolid and soothing with his clipped voice that we see less and less of in Modern Britain and how he interacts with the characters. There is also something ineffably eerie about the show. Perhaps it's how candid they are about all the strange things that just crop up or how these characters stick to a strange routine without any acknowledgement or the serene but direct tone.

I think they had some kind of mission statement to make as much of it as they could out of recycled items and this makes the whole thing a lot more soothing as you see nothing put to waste. The characters never being without a lovable (and occasionally disquieting) home made look and never appear lurid or garish. Not that I don't like garish sometimes but this just goes the other way and is refreshing for it.

I like Mr Spoon. I don't know how he isn't a lot more iconic than he is. I also like Tina T Spoon more than I would have expected. I really, really like her...

An excellent piece of ambient storytelling to help you unwind or wake up.

The catchy theme tune ('We've been to Button Moon, we've followed Mr Spoon') was the work of Peter Davison and Sandra Dickinson. It set the scene, and wrapped up each 11 minute episode, of the tales of the Spoon Family and their journeys to the mysterious planet which looked, well, suspiciously like a button, where lived irritating characters such as the West Country voiced teddy.

Aimed at pre-schoolers it quickly gained a cult following amongst teenagers and students (as did many other series of the 1980s). It seems there were fewer episodes than I remember - rather like the legendary Mr Benn ...

This show is great. I mean, the incredible plot line should be enough to show you how great this show really is. The bottle army? Flocks of banana birds? The synopsis alone sounds better than half the books I've ever read, and I've read the queen's gambit AND lady chatterly's lover. Mr spoon is essentially spooky spoon before spooky spoon and I'm here for it. Even after watching it when I was 5 im still a tad confused as to how Eggbert fits in the story. He's the best character though, so I'm not complaining. Freddy Teddy should've gotten more screen time, but it's not a major problem. I was terrified of this show, but it was also my favourite thing ever. It also deserves basically every award going, since it's theme tune (aside from the Beatles and queen) was the musical highlight of my childhood. Anyway, here's to button moon being a great show.

What a fantastic show this was... I was such a fan as a toddler! I loved that theme tune and thought "I want to go to Button Moon!" Where lives the most annoying sounding doll! and a teddy bear that sounds like a west country cider drinker... POETRY in MOTION!!!

Yet another programme from my wasted youth, 'Button Moon' maintains a weird power all these years later. As with all the best kids' shows, 'Button Moon' was dedicated to helping its young audience's imaginations sprout from the normalities of everyday life. All the world was a potential playground. Thus, kitchen utensils become the restless Mr Spoon and his family, baked bean tins become spaceships, cardboard boxes become houses. All good staples of a healthy child's imaginative development.

However, this same approach helped give the show a very weird, very trippy atmosphere, ensuring it cult TV status years later. It looks as if it were literally filmed in a dustbin. Bananas fly through the sky with green bean wings; party dresses suffer from depression; umbrellas play golf. In one particularly inspired sequence, Mr Spoon, trapped on top of a squealing Royal Jelly, is rescued by a small army of gingerbread men wielding a ladder constructed from chocolate finger biscuits.

Ineffably English - check out the thinly disguised Heinz logo on the baked-bean tin spaceship, for instance, or the cockney troll in the 'Little Goats Gruff' episode - it features terrific narration by Robin Parkinson, and a theme tune that will haunt you till your dying day. 'Button Moon' is surely the pinnacle of early 1980s English children's psychedelic sci-fi puppetry weirdness.

i love button moon i have all the videos. there was not a better tv show than that. Captin Pugwash came close. but i love button moon. although the guy behind the black sheet might as just gave a big smile and waved we could see him moving around. but i dont care I LOVE BUTTON MOON.

This was on of the oddest kids programmes from the early 80's. Mr Spoon (a wooden spoon with a big nose) and his wife and child lived under the gaze of Button Moon (a large yellow button) which they went up to in the space ship that our hero Mr Spoon had made. Basically it was hand held wooden spoons over a black velvet backdrop being moved about with a narration , and i know that i was too old to be watching it when i did but it was hypnotic. A very strange one indeed that has to be seen to be believed.

I watched this a couple of days ago for the 1st time in like 30 years ! I only vaguely remember it as a child - I was born in 1982 - I guess the theme tune was the most memorable part !

I forgot how aggressively D.I.Y this was ! The main characters have a combination of dishes for heads, spoons for arms and bottles for torsos, while the other characters are less humanoid and more bizarre; literally just bottles/containers, clothes, even vacuum cleaners, possibly with eyes glued on ! Background props consist of brooms for trees, a funnel on top of a 'Heinz' can for a spaceship, and most essentially a button for a moon. Kind of the same degree of randomness, eccentricity and full-on D.I.Y as the props in The Young Ones !

The stories are simple, naive and charming; appropriate for younger viewers yet cute and funny for all ages. The theme tune - sung by Sandra Dickinson of 2Point4 children fame - is cute and 'magical'. The overall aesthetic is obviously ultra-kitsch, but in a charming, vibrant and idiosyncratic kind of way; you always recognize a Button Moon set !

Overall, a wholesome '80s classic that appealed to all ages, and probably still does; I was reintroduced to this through DVD !

I can safely say that Button Moon was my most favourite piece of children's television ever to have graced our great screens. All I remember from my childhood is sitting close to the TV and watching every single (short but worth it) episode and dreaming of flying off to my own big button in the sky... and it was all low budget too! forget your expensive production line 'toons that kids are entertained with nowadays, nothing beats a baked bean tin and the contents of your kitchen drawer! Even years later, I can still say it is incredibly entertaining, as while drunk at the beginning of my uni years myself and the guys next door lay giggling in my room watching the amusing vacuum cleaner and his "vvmmvvvmvvvvvm" speech, completely in hysterics at the wobbly jelly, our friends teddy, rag doll and lest not forget the army of bottles! Trippy as it was, button moon RULED - as it still does!

i used to watch button moon all the time, even though it is a very cheaply run program,

and it was made from every day items like spoons etc it was still a good memory to hold, when i heard button moon the theme song today i got really happy and cheerfull because its something i haven't seen for like 10 years at least, if you do want to do something today or over the weekend please do me a favour, get me a copy of one episode of button moon so i can show my son please.

if you do i will be grateful to you.

(07gmitchell@tla.essex.sch.uk) send it to that address

lyrics for button moon....

(trust me i know the lyrics

My memories are hazy (apart from the great theme tune of course), but I seem to recall Mr Spoon would take a telescope with him on his sojourns and use it to spy on people back on "Earth".

I'm sure one such person was Mrs Spoon. Clearly Mr Spoon was a control freak or there was a fundamental lack of trust in their relationship.

And clearly Button Moon wasn't actually button-shaped or Mr Spoon would have fallen through the holes. And why was the moon named after him anyway?

Usually shown in the midday slot along with Rainbow or Let's Pretend.