INTRODUCTION

If you have entered this web perhaps it is because you remember the series in which the baddies finished up turned into fruits and a likeable dragon-dinosaur always said "ñam-ñam poti-poti". The fact is that very few remember the title of the series but when you mention "Gallofa", "Tejo" or "Poti-Poti" they do remember these. And so it is that, for good or bad, these likeable puppets arrived in our lives, one good day of 1987, to remain installed in the collective memory of all those who were young in the 80's. This web tries to be a tribute to that series which made us enjoy such good moments in its initial run through TVE1 and its later repetitions.

The Aurons was a production of D'Ocon Films in collaboration with TVE that consisted of 26 episodes of 30 minutes duration. It began emition at the end of 1987 on TVE1, every Saturday at 15:30 pm and constituted something new, being a series which featured puppets as opposed to the traditional series of animation normally featured in afternoon programmes of that time.

At the outset it was not well received amongst child audiences as many children were frightened of the ugly puppets and the dark atmosphere of some episodes, (in fact today it continues having detractors). But little by little everyone finished up learning the famous theme song. What's more, in Spanish schools "Gallofas" and "Poti-Potis" began to proliferate. If you were young then and your classmates called you "Gallofa" it meant that you were considered the dunce of the class. 

The best of The Aurons was that though it was a low budget series it was able to arouse interest by its imaginative stories full of humour, suspense and ecological messages.

The series recounted the adventures of The Aurons, a peaceful agricultural population who lived in a beautiful valley with Mediterranean climate in the middle ages. The Aurons do not know the value of gold and use it to make farming and cooking utensils. One day evil King Grog decides to attack them to steal their gold but the young people of the town will prevent it. Especially Tejo, a young person able to turn his enemies into pieces of fruit and Poti-Poti, a kind of dragon who can fight without any difficulty. The truth is that they will not have many difficulties partly due to Gallofa, a subject of King Grog whose lack of intelligence will cause the King's plans to fail.

In the end the goodies always win and they have a celebration. The last episode was particularly painful because it did not allow for a second part. Gallofa became the new King Midas and transformed King Grog into a gold statue and Poti-Poti fell in love with a nice female dinosaur.

Although as we have already commented the series had its detractors it certainly enjoyed a remarkable commercial success. The Aurons sold cakes, comics, puzzles, dolls, books, stamp albums and even a vinyl record with the original soundtrack. Also a film was made entitled "The Tribe Of The Aurons". Nowadays, the series still enjoys popularity amongst internauts who remember it with posts in their blogs commenting the series.

 Since its first run in 1987, TVE has re-run the series on two occasions: one in September of 1991 and the other in October of the following year; both morning shows. Later the series has been shown on local stations and theme channel SUPER Ñ.

In 2005 Divisa Editions considered publishing the complete series in DVD but the idea was not carried out due to lack of agreement with the producer.

We hope you enjoy remembering the series with us.

- Text reviewed in January of 2009 -

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