Harvy's House

Harvy's House was a Kuboian Saturday evening children's variety television series that aired on Bumper's Block. It was hosted by Mike Marion and a puppet character called Harvy, a purple alien who was voiced by Roddy Graston, and was divided into multiple different segments, including interviews, previews of other children's programmes and games, broadcast live in front of an audience of children.

The show ran for a total of three series, each with eighteen episodes, from 1993 until 1996, where it was cancelled due to budget cuts made by the TVVC. It occupied the 7:00p.m. timeslot for all four of its series.

History and production
When deciding on the mascot for Bumper's Block, Dominic Halls came up with a green spherical cyclops creature and a purple one. Ultimately, the green one was chosen, whilst the purple one was chosen for the character of Harvy. Unlike Bumper, who could only make alien sounds, Harvy was fully capable of human speech.

Harvy's House premiered on 21st August, 1993 at 7:00p.m. Although the show was supposed to premiere in January earlier that year, it was postponed since several of the show's elements were "not ready" according to Halls.

Harvy's voice actor Roddy Graston believes that the show was produced under a tight budget, as he was given very little time to practice his lines. A few of the games played on the show were originally supposed to be their own programme, but were added to Harvy's House to save on money.

Harvy's Sneak Peak
Harvy's Sneak Peak was a segment that showed sneak peaks of programmes that would be airing later on Bumper's Block that night. They were typically used for new programmes such as Greenwood Forest, The Adventures of Charlie and Tutu and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Surprise Guest!
Surprise Guest! featured a celebrity or other high-profile individual who would make an appearance halfway through the show and would be interviewed by Mike and Harvy. Afterwards, they would continue to appear until the end of the show.

Gunge
Harvy's House featured gunge in some of its games, typically the last one played at the end of each episode. Although these changed each series, it always involved a certain game played by two or more people, with whoever finishing in last place being put in a dark tube where they would be covered in green gunge.

Starting in series two, child contestants began to take part in the games themselves. The prize for winning varied, but was usually a SNES or PlayStation console bundled with a game, or a VHS player bundled with a tape.

Availability
Approximately half of the editions of Harvy's House are considered lost. Graston has several episodes in his personal collection, but these are not publicly available. In 2021, a Discord server dedicated to finding the missing episodes was created.

It is widely believed that TVVC junked all editions of the show in January 2005, when it was reported that the company were disposing of items and equipment deemed "no longer of practical use".

Bootleg media
In the mid 1990s, it was reported that bootleg VHS tapes featuring episodes of the show were in circulation across Europe and South America.

Two bootleg video games starring Harvy developed by a Russian company were released for the SNES in 1995 and 1996. The first, Harvy Adventor, is an original 2D side-scrolling platformer with sound effects and music stolen from other SNES games. The second, Harvy Adventor 2, is actually just a ported reskin of Garfield: Caught in the Act.