Alfred J. Kwak

Alfred J. Kwak was created in the late 1980's by the Dutch writer, performer, musician, composer Herman van Veen. He made up the character and the stories for comic books for Unicef. They'd ordered him to create a serie of comic books to point the reading children at the bad things in the world and in the past, but without boring them. The comics became such a hit in the Netherlands, that Unicef and a Japanese producer decided to make a animation series out of it. The stories are about the same as in the (now rare to find) comics, but they are animated in Japan. But Herman van Veen did had a big influence in the direction of the episodes and about the way some of his characters should be drawn. He also wrote the music, which became very popular music for children here in The Netherlands, and was also translated to lots of other languages. If you haven't seen it yourself, please let your children watch it: it deals with racism, poverty, etc. without boring your children, or making it all to obvious.