Talk:Mr. Men/Archive 1

Archive 1

Publishers

There should be some publisher information (Egmont in the UK and Price Stern Sloan in the USA). —Preceding unsigned comment added by JoannaEgmont (talk • contribs) 12:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Translations

Does anybody know anything about translations made for the 'mr men' series? in which languages? I could find any info @ the official site. -—Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.178.230.105 (talk • contribs)

I just wanted to make a note about the translations. Not every country will print the entire set of books. For example the Persian/Farsi only have six. On the other hand the French have more than English and it seems that the Greek versions also print some of the 'non English/Frecnh only' titles. The USA versions have fewer pages. That is they have two less pictures and the corresponding words from the missing pages are added on to the previous/next page. The USA (Price Stern Sloan) also changed a few titles as well as a little bit of wording here and there in a few books. The Welsh have done only the first 13 Mr. Men and no Little Miss. The Spanish have two sets. The one from Spain is 'Don y Dona' and only did about 12 or so each of Mr. Men and Little Miss, whereas in Chile the titles used Senor and Senora. As for the German, Dutch, Taiwan/Chinese, and Korean series, a complete or nearly complete series of both Mr. and Miss have been published. Libro0 11:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Conformity

A common thread in the Mr Men books is that characters are unhappy until they learn to conform. See fnord.

--That's very true. I have added a section to the page to that effect. Not that not *all* of the Mr Men learn to conform - a few (the "disabled" ones) find their "niche" in society. Mr Bump is a prime example of this. Chairman Dave.

Um, well, I guess so. There is, I suppose, a theme of Mr Men with problems that they fix with the help of their friends. But I think your business about Maoist re-education and social control are taking things rather too far. Someone has already removed your contribution, and I can't honestly say I'm that surprised. Wikipedia has a firm policy against "original research", which your contribution seems to be. If you can find some reputable (ideally academic) discussions about this, I suppose we could have a section on it (see our policy at WP:CITE). We need plot summaries and character sketches rather more, however. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:15, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I left a message along the same lines on the contributor's talk page, so he definitely has notice now of our policies. Postdlf 18:35, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I just borrowed my neighbours' kids' Mr Men books. They have four, and while I still don't agree with the marxism thing, they are generally rather more sinister than I'd expected:

• Mr Noisy. Mr Noisy is very noisy, which annoys all the shopkeepers. So they pretend not to hear him, and he starves. When he talks quietly, they're nice to him and sell him food.
• Mr Rude. Mr Rude is, well, rude. So Mr Happy moves into Mr Rude's house (against Mr Rude's will) and stays there for weeks, until Mr Rude mends his ways.
• Mr Messy. Mr Messy is messy. Two small neat men (Mr Neat and Mr Tidy) forcibly clean Mr Messy's house, and then forcibly bathe him. He starts out as an interesting purple mess, and ends up looking like a walking boil.
• Mr Bump. Bump gets into all kinds of accidents, and does indeed end up working in an apple orchard, bumping into trees and catching the apples that fall.

...and I thought Barney was evil :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:54, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it's a case of conformity but many of the characters do change at the end of their stories (only to change back again afterwards in other merchandise and stories) but only those with undesirable traits. For example, Mr Happy, Mr Strong and Mr Perfect are Mr Men with good traits. Others like Mr Mean, Mr Greedy and Mr Chatterbox do change their ways. It's sort of showing children how to behave. This is why Mr Mischief and Little Miss Trouble get their come-upance in their books. Michaelritchie200 10:39, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

On another note, in response to the first comment at top, this article really does need information on the translations. I think it would be a trifle exhaustive to list the twenty foreign language versions of every Mr. Men book, but it appears that there were actually some characters that were unique to certain non-English speaking countries.[1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6],[7],[8] If this is true, those should certainly be mentioned. Postdlf 18:35, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I did what you suggested, and added those French Only characters. What's weird is that those characters are featured in Australian Mr. Men Merchandise, but not in the books themselves! User:Thomasfan 18:57 22 January 2005

Yes it is a bit exhausting listing all the foreign versions, but the harder we work the less the rest of the world has to. I feel that way because I know that if I wanted to know about this stuff I would want all the information possible all in one place. After all an encyclopedia has to live up to its name. Libro0 22:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles for individual characters

I just redirected Little Miss Stubborn back to here. I don't think there's any value in having an individual article about each character. Most characters appear only in one book (a few in two or three), and each book's plot is minimal. The one paragraph that it would take to summarise the book and say everything about its lead character would better be placed here. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm a bit on the fence with this one. I've gone and added all the book covers and a place for story summaries on the main page and a few of the books have a little more significance than others... with interesting facts and you could also list the characters that appear in each book, the publishing details and alternate language covers/titles for each book/character and what other books the character appears in. The book's theme and moral can also be mentioned and elaborated for each book. All of this information would be too much to put onto one large page. Peter

I think the Story/Spoiler is a bit much as well. I think it should be trimmed down to a Story/Teaser instead. Libro0 06:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the individual pages could all be merged into the main Mr Men article. There's not really much that can be said in each individual article that can't be said on the main page. Peter 14:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually I have a different suggestion you might consider. Instead of making the main page too large, messy, and redundant, the portion with picture and summary can be removed leaving the list above that to link to all the book data. There actually is quite a bit more info that can be put on the individual pages. I think this would be better than having an overly massive main article. Libro0 22:01, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Point taken. I think it is nice to see all the pictures of the Mr. Men all together (rather than just names) but it does make the page huge. I thought a little thumbnail could be used instead of the book cover (next to the title) like shown on the back of the books. Then linking to individual articles should be fine. Depends what else you can add. Peter 00:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Author credit on newer books

Does anybody know why newer books such as Little Miss Bad and Mr Cool have Roger's name on the cover not Adam's? Is Adam ever credited as the main author? -- LD

I don't think so - it was Roger's brainchild and it wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him so as far as I'm aware, he is always credited. Michaelritchie200 10:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Mr Men TV Series

There's no mention of the classic Mr Men TV series, voiced by Arthur Lowe. I'll get onto it. Kiwichipster 01:12, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The TV series began in 1974, NOT 1975. See the following article in the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6557177.stm

This series may be what I have on Video Tape. I have Volume 4: Mr Chatterbox & Friends released 1995 by Marina Productions/Mr Films/France 3 and distributed by PolyGram Video. The ISBN is 9398901717228.

The stories in this volume are "Mr Chatterbox and the Parrot", "Mr Clever's Invention", "A Day in the life of Mr Perfect", "Mr Silly's Silly Secret", "Mr Jelly's Show of Bravery", "Thank goodness for Mr Slow", "A Big Surprise for Mr Mean", "Mr Grumble Boils Over".

I also have Little Miss Trouble and Friends distributed by Video Distributors International and its ISBN is 9314517502942.

I think the series should be added to the Main Article. Connectionfailure (talk) 05:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Did the 1980s Little Miss episodes, voiced by Collins & Alderton, run with episodes of the earlier Mr Men series. The DVD has an odd format which indicates the Mr Men eps have been edited out. Rankersbo (talk) 06:58, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Foreign Language Books

I hope the books will be released and published in Georgian (the Asian language) and Armenian, in Georgia (the Asian country, not the US state) and Armenia, respectively.--67.10.200.101 03:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps they will. You never know.--67.10.200.101 03:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Here are all the Mr Men books no longer in print in the USA from Price Stern Sloan:

• Mr. Silly
• Mr. Uppity
• Mr. Nervous
• Mr. Stingy
• Mr. Fussy
• Mr. Muddle
• Mr. Quiet
• Mr. Worry
• Mr. Wrong

And all the Little Miss books:

• Little Miss Splendid
• Little Miss Late
• Little Miss Quick
• Little Miss Tidy
• Little Miss Greedy
• Little Miss Fickle

I merely wanted to let you people know.--67.10.200.101 03:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The Stories

Please fix the stories on all the pages about the Mr Men and Little Misses that are linked to the article page. If there is no story, add the correct story for each Mr Man page and Little Miss page.--67.10.200.101 03:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Publication Dates

Can you please give me the date of first publication for the book entitled "Little Miss Tidy"?--Luke Elms 04:05, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

How many characters?

How many Mr Men and Little Misses, respectively, did Hargreaves create?--Luke Elms 05:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Fix the years

You have got to fix the publication years for all of the Mr. Men and Little Miss pages. You have no right to refuse.--Luke Elms 02:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe that I have fixed most of the dates at least for the main series of books. Most were listed as 1972 but that has been updated. As far as the right to refuse, you may have to take that up with someone else because I wouldn't know. Libro0 06:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Mr Nobody

I have read though the page and most of the 'rare' Mr Men are mentioned (Mr Stupid, Mr Spendy, Mr Cheeky etc) but one that doesn't appear to have a mention is Mr Nobody.

Mr Nobody was the subject of a one-off book by Roger Hargreaves published by Thurman in 1985. He looks similar to Mr Happy except he has a round nose. He is initially colourless (just drawn as an outline - you can see through him!) And then eventually he becomes yellow like Mr Happy. The book is a larger format than the standard series books. It is quite difficult to find but I managed to get one off eBay. There is a brief description of the book and some pictures here: http://uk.geocities.com/thejeep2000/MRNOBODY.html 82.9.24.245 16:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I recently saw this book in WHSmith, so maybe it's had a reprint. 86.160.126.67 (talk) 23:53, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Fair use images

I have removed all or a majority of the fair use images on this page as their use was not in line with our Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria policy (likely in that the use is not minimal and it is in a list or a gallery) or our Wikipedia:Non-free content guideline. Please do not re-add them without discussion. Kotepho 08:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup tag

I added a tag to the History section because it's wildly out of order and fragmented. Please reorder it and make it not sound like a list of random events, nor a trivia section. Jeztah 00:29, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Little Miss Gary-Busey (a.k.a. Little Miss Nuisance)

HAHAHA is this a joke? little miss drug fiend? I'll take it out in a coupla days if so. A media skit? --maxrspct ping me 13:57, 30 August 2007 (UTC) Twas vandalism (lol) so i reverted. --maxrspct ping me 03:29, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Typos in the Mr Men Books

The words "Mrs Roger Hargreaves" and "1972" in books that were published in 1978 and 1990 are typos. They were simple mis-interpretations of what to write in the books when they were published.--98.195.141.44 02:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

History Section Cleanup

The description of the fonts used in the books does not belong in the history section of this entry. It seems clunky and out of place. 68.237.114.83 (talk) 10:52, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Eyes

What's up with the Mr. Men's eyes? They have extra lines round them when compared with the original ones. Is this because the stress of having their soul sold and being made to conform is pushing them to the edge of having a nervous breakdown? Mr Prozac can't be far off....

Mr Prozac

Possible future story: He wakes up. Has prozac for breakfast before some kind of toothpaste/door smashing incident. Meets Mr Happy, but is even happier! Hurrah for Mr Prozac!

Mergers

The discussion for merging Mr. Men and Little Miss articles are here Talk:List of Mr. Men and here Talk:List of Little Miss characters if anyone is interested. Libro0 (talk) 02:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Trivia & structure

I have removed all the items in the trivia section - mainly because they were of little benefit to the article as a whole, or were too vague to be of any use. For example, the following might be of use to show how widespread through the world the Mr. Men series is, but without specifics I leave it here in case anyone can give dates etc.

• Arby's offered small plastic Mr. Men and Little Miss figures in their children's meals in the 1980s. Thee eighteen offered were Mr. Happy, Mr. Bump, Mr. Tickle, Little Miss Sunshine, Little Miss Shy, Little Miss Naughty, Mr. Mischief, Little Miss Lucky, Little Miss Late, Mr. Tickle, Little Miss Giggles, Mr. Daydream, Little Miss Splendid, Mr. Rush, Mr. Greedy, Mr. Funny, Little Miss Helpful, and Mr. Bounce. The figures were about an inch tall.

In addition, there may be merit in folding the following into one of the many lists of Mr. Men characters, but it seems such a minor part of the Mr. Men history that it should be left out. I'm not sure, but given the lack of detail in the web-site referenced, I am erring on the side of cutting it out. For my money to be included there should be answers to these questions: when during the 1980s, was this a national campaign or only a regional UK one, and how long did it last?):

• A 'spin-off' Mr. Man called Mr. Spendy was written by Kathleen Smith to teach young people how to save money. The book also featured Mr. Thrifty, and his two children Penny and Prudence. They are not considered part of the series however.

Some good stuff here in the article, but there are far too many lists of characters! I know this is being worked on, but surely only one list is enough? Possibly there should be a link to a separate page which would do the job nicely without overburdening the main one.Major Bloodnok (talk) 19:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Edit locked? Any reason?

I'll just leave this here for the moment:

Rocket (talk) 19:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Error in Mr Perfect link : it should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Cheerful#Mr._Perfect —Preceding unsigned comment added by Koala993 (talk • contribs) 14:21, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal

A couple of days ago Kayau (talk · contribs) proposed that several articles about individual books in the series be merged into the main Mr. Men article. It would seem that all of these articles were created by the same person, a young boy who seems not to edit anymore. Having read these books myself a long time ago, I can say that they are all very short and there isn't much chance of the articles for the individual books getting any bigger. Thus I am in favor of the merge, although I am not in favor of the deletion of any of those articles, or any other articles, when they could simply be redirected, as this would destroy the edit history for no good reason since they would have to be re-created as redirects anyway. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 01:43, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I've tidied up the table in the Special Edition section to try and make it easier to merge the books mentioned above and make the information more accessable. Mighty Antar (talk) 12:28, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Fonts?

The typeface for the original books from Mr. Bossy to Mr. Star is Univers, with the books from Mr. Busy to Mr. Sommersault using Helvetica. All the other books in the series use Optima.

1. Three of the four books (other than Mr. Busy) appear in the list of books as Little Miss books, not Mister books.
2. "sommersault" is spelled "somersault" in the book listing (one or the other should be corrected).
3. Finally, If neither Bossy nor Busy is the first book in the series, the sentence should read something like "All of the books in the series use Optima other the books A to B, which used X, and the books C to D, which used Y." The rule should come before the exceptions, unless the exception is chronologically the first book, and there was a subsequent change.
4. There is no source on this font fact anyway. The cover of Mr. Tickle, as shown in the article, doesn't look like Optima to me (unless the cover font is not the same as the inside font, in which case, the sentence should clarify that too.

TheHYPO (talk) 14:03, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Ok, someone prodded Misterland, the information for which is not in this article, which is where there should be some mention I guess...so...merger a good idea? Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:05, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Definitely. Misterland is a paragraph in search of an article. I don't think this a controversial decision so feel free to make the move. SFB 19:42, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

 Done--Kotniski (talk) 07:36, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Released

I removed this word from the lists ("released 1971", etc) as the word published is more common for books. It is also normal to render publication (and release) dates in parenthesis, as I have done, and is not usual in the body of an article to list the day. Almost certainly taken from the website of an online supplier, not only may they be inaccurate if there was a delay, but it is impossible to cite such a source for verification. Philip Cross (talk) 16:08, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Mr Cheeky

Please can anyone confirm or refute the fact that Gemma Almond from Shropshire who came up with the idea for Mr Cheeky is representing GB as a swimmer in the Paralympics? I believe it is the same person based on age and location, but would be interested if anyone can confirm this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.116.198.185 (talk) 20:19, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Now confirmed — Preceding unsigned comment added by LisaH2 (talk • contribs) 21:00, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

History inaccuracies

The History section repeats the mythology that Mr Tickle came about as a result of RH's son asking the question; "What does a tickle look like?" When interviewed for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on RH, his son "had no recollection of the incident, suggesting that the true genesis of his father's characters was a combination of many concurrent ideas".

A further inaccuracy concerns the series name "Mr Men". RH originally called the books simply the "Mr" series. It was not until 1974, three years after the first books were published, that Richard Culley of licensing agency Copyright Promotions proposed the name "Mr Men" by which they became universally known. Again, all this information is published in the Oxford DNB entry:

‘Hargreaves, (Charles) Roger (1935–1988)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oct 2005

Rhodian (talk) 10:13, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Foreign editions

The introduction claims that there are titles in both the Mr Men and Little Miss series which were published only in non-English languages, but provides no details, no titles and no sources, and the claim isn't repeated in the body of the text. Absent references, it seems to me this claim should be deleted -- for a series written by two Englishmen, this seems unlikely (even if the rights eventually ended up with Sanrio). Happy to be contradicted by citable evidence, but there's none here right now. Gusworld (talk) 09:16, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

• ^ http://www.toonhound.com/spendy.htm
• Jump up ^ http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/76335

Links

In the 'List of books' section the links need a tidy-up. Many of the books have pointless links that lead back to the same page and so may I suggest that all the links, both blue and red, are removed from all the books except for those which link to information about that character. The 'Little Miss Christmas' link also needs to be fixed as it leads to the wrong place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.106.54 (talk) 10:10, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Doctor Who

Needs to be updated to include the Doctor Who series just announced today. http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-10-11/doctor-who-gets-the-mr-men-treatment-in-series-of-12-bbc-books 68.146.233.86 (talk) 22:27, 11 October 2016 (UTC)