Lollipop (TV series)

Lollipop is a Kuboian live-action educational television series created by Sofie van Halen, Janet Rose and Dominic Halls and produced by Bubblegum Studios and Lollipop Productions. The twice-a-week show aired on Vision Network on Monday and Thursday mornings from 1989 to 1996. After it ended, TVVC continued to air episodes regularly until 2008. It has since gained a cult following.

Premise and format
Each episode of Lollipop revolved around a particular activity or theme, with the show's main setting being the Lollipop House, where the main characters Sofie van Halen and her ragdoll puppet Felicia van Blackberry (voiced by Rachelle Constantinos) lived. Each episode would begin with Sofie waking Felicia up and helping her getting dressed as they prepare for any outside trip or visitors that may be coming to the Lollipop House.

As an educational programme, most episodes of Lollipop centred around reading, counting and problem solving. Each episode normally had two songs, and ended with either Sofie or one of the other characters reading a story to Felicia and anybody else present at the time. Although normally tame, some of the later episodes (from 1993 onwards) dealt with more serious subjects such as bullying, family problems, and Sofie and Felicia's attempts to help those dealing with said problems.

History
Lollipop was created by Sofie van Halen, Janet Rose and Dominic Halls. The show was created over fears that not enough children in Kuboia were attending school due to the lack of educational premises in the country at the time. Halls requested for multiple educational shows to be produced that could air on weekday mornings for children who were unable to attend school. Lollipop was commissioned as a 'general' educational programme that could focus on a variety of different subject matters and life skills.

The show premiered on 4th September 1989, generally with the idea that a new episode would air on a Monday and a Thursday. at 9:00a.m. and would be followed by a 35-minute Vision News update. Episodes were generally produced on a tight budget, and were generally produced without writing scripts; instead, each character would be given a set of lines to say during the filming of each scene. Around two episodes were produced in a day, though sometimes only one episode could be filmed depending on how long it took to record certain scenes and depending on the conditions and time that Sofie van Halen could hire venues for.

For the puppet of Felicia van Blackberry, the character was given multiple different heads to represent the mood she was in at that time (e.g. "happy", "sad", "angry"), and her head was made detachable from the rest of her body. The puppet's actual main body frame was made to appear so she was half-naked, only wearing underwear, so the character could wear different clothes for different situations. The "underwear" part of the character model was made with a fabric strap texture whilst the rest of her body was made with cloth.