The fuck?:
Cheburashka (Russian: Чебурашка), also known as Topple in earlier English translations, is a character in children's literature, from a 1965 story by the Russian writer Eduard Uspensky. He is also the protagonist (voiced by Klara Rumyanova) of the animated film series by Soyuzmultfilm studio, the first episode of which was made in 1969.
[...]
In the 1970s a series of children's television shows, radio shows, records and magazines were produced in Sweden featuring the characters Drutten and crocodile Gena. These two characters were based on a couple of Cheburashka and Gena dolls purchased on a trip to the Soviet Union, so they were visually identical to Cheburashka and Gena. "Drutten" is a fairly good approximation of a translation of "one who tumbles down," as one meaning of the Swedish colloquial verb "drutta" is "to fall or tumble down."
But that is where the similarity ends. The two characters sang and told different stories from those in the USSR, lived on a bookshelf rather than in a city and are hand puppets operated in live action rather than stop motion. Only occasionally Swedish state TV would broadcast a segment of the Russian original, dubbed in Swedish. So, while many Swedes may visually recognize Cheburashka, they will generally not associate these characters with the ones Russian children know.
Fucking state TV. Was everything from my childhood covert communist propaganda?
YouTube: Gena singing in Swedish and coincidentally FREAKING ME OUT! Goluboy vagon! Same shit in Finnish! Kukdrutt!
