Spade Castle

Spade Castle (referred to as Spade Castle Stories in several sources during the show's initial run) is a Kuboian animated television series created by Judith Rose that premiered in early 1988. Because of its status as the first ever animated television series in Kuboia, it is fondly remembered and was repeated regularly until 2008.

Premise
The titular Spade Castle is a large castle where the Symbol family and some of their friends live. The show's main characters consist of four floating creatures that are shapted to French-suited playing card symbols; Club and his father King Spade, and Diamond and her mother Queen Heart - Diamond and Club are stepsiblings due to the marriage of their parents.

The show mostly focuses on the Symbol family and what they get up to in their spare time, which typically involves playing games with their friends in Spade Castle. Occasionally, the village that Spade Castle is located in, Paper Valley, is seen. It appears to be a mixture of a then-modern suburb and a fantasy village.

The first two series of Spade Castle had several features that were not present in the third and fourth series, including narration at the beginning and end of each episode by the show's creator Judith Rose, and some segments at the end of each episode such as "Club's Card Games" and "Who Is This?" The third and fourth series also have more animation compared to the first two series, which opted for a storybook-like feel.

History
When plans for the first Kuboian television channel went underway in the mid-1980s, two children's programmes were created to air in time for the channel's launch. A traditionally animated series called Space Castle, and a stop-motion series called Animal Barn.

According to show creator Judith Rose, Spade Castle was created on a very tight budget, and she was expected to have at least thirteen episodes finished by the end of 1987. In order to do this, the first series suffered from very limited and frequently looped animation and reuse of specific elements, such as the card games seen at the end of each episode.