Fantazy the Bear (Miś Fantazy) is a Polish children’s cartoon series. It was quite long-running, from 2008 to 2015, but there are still somehow only 13 episodes and one season. Each episode is about 13 minutes.
The show has a distinguished pedigree: it is based on two novels by Polish writer Ewa Karwan-Jastrzębska, Fantazy the Bear in the Land of Eternal Sun (1993) and Fantazy the Bear Learns the Secret of the Crystal (1997). Before the TV show was made, Karwan-Jastrzębska aired the books on the radio, reading them aloud—it was then that they first began to achieve major success.
A few years later, she and her husband went on to write the screenplays for the episodes. The books’ ominous-sounding titles notwithstanding, they and the cartoon in turn have been greatly beloved by Polish youngsters. The show has been exhibited at film festivals all over the world—from Poland to the US to Iran.
The main characters are Fantazy the Bear and his friends: Prospero, a wizard; Kapa Kapa, a frog; Riddle (Zagadka), an extremely mysterious girl; Wesołek, a beetle; and Julka, species unknown. The characters all have their reigning positive characteristics that help them come together to solve whatever problems they find themselves in. They live on a magical island and have adventures together, all of them strewn with mystical powers and fantastical events, though with the ever-present moral/educational ending.
Director: Robert Turło
Voice actors: Grzegorz Drojewski, Agnieszka Kunikowska, Marek Barbasiewicz, Jarosław Boberek, Agnieszka Fajlhauer, Joanna Wizmur, Stanisława Celińska, Miriam Aleksandrowicz
Production studio: TV SFA w Poznaniu
TV channel: TVP1, TVP ABC
The official trailer for Fantazy the Bear:
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