Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews 
- Cert:
- Cat.no: KK 41007
- Running time: 183 minutes
- Year: 1971
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 13
- Sound: Mono
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-Enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £9.99
- Extras: Fingerbobs Karaoke, History of Fingerbobs, Create Your Own Fingerbobs, Fingerbob Jazz Club
Director
- Michael Grafton-Robinson
Story and design:
- Joanne and Michael Cole
Music:
- Michael Jessett
Presenter/Narrator:
- Rick Jones
Prepare for another blast of nostalgia with The Complete Fingerbobs.
The sound of the near-tribal drums and apache music, combined with the words, “Yoffy lifts a finger… and a mouse is there.”, is sure to bring the memories flooding back and even a DVD of that theme tune would be worth a tenner in my view. But there’s much more on offer.
The basis of Fingerbobs, for the uninitiated, is that old hippy Yoffy (ex-Playschool presenter Rick Jones) dons various colours of gloves and dresses his hand up with either the cardboard head of a mouse, the body of a scampi, a seagull’s head or a tortoise shell, in order to play, respectively, the parts of Fingermouse, Scampi, Gulliver and Flash. Each of the characters would go on adventures in order to illustrate basic concepts to children.
This DVD combines all 13 episodes into one release, separated into categories depending on who has the lead role, including :
- Stones: Fingermouse sets off to get some stones for Yoffy’s story. He gathers some together, gets a woodpecker to help him build a cart with which to carry them, then loads them up and takes them home. The story features a crow trying to get a drink of water.
- Bumpy: Yoffy’s after some soft things like feathers and sponges and gets Gulliver to fly off and find said feathers from someone who just happens to be emptying a pillow into the street.
- Paint: Fingermouse takes a ride on Flash’s back as they go to find some blackberries for picking and turning into juice to paint with once they come back home. Alas, once they get there the mouse has eaten them all. Tut, tut!
The episodes included are :
1. Bumpy
2. Stones
3. Feathers
4. Sounds
5. Wood
6. Shiny
7. String 8. Shadow
9. Shapes
10. Bricks
11. Paint
12. Seeds
13. House
Yoffi succeeds in creating a removal treatment for excessive earwax.
As you’d expect, the programme is shot in standard 4:3. Artifacts and print dropouts are non-existant most of the way through which makes for a most impressive-looking DVD, especially given the 30-year-old age of the programme. I was unable to determine the average bitrate.
The sound is clear enough, although some of the tunes seem a bit muffled, but no more than I remember.
There’s some brief but interesting extras on this disc, starting with Fingerbobs Karaoke – the theme tune for each character with lyrics underneath and this is the only time you’ll see any form of subtitles. The History of Fingerbobs is quite informative and if you have some spare grey paper afterwards you can Create Your Own Fingerbobs.
And finally from the extras, welcome to a 35-second selection from the Fingerbobs Jazz Club… Nice!
The chaptering is fine with one for each of the 13 episodes and the extras are animated and scored.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.