If Disney productions were also known in countries behind the Iron Curtain, “La Bande à Scrou” was nevertheless the very first American animated series to come to Russia after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
“It’s the biggest boss in the whole city, Scrooge, Scrooge / It’s the most powerful of all Duckville, Scrooge, Scrooge / He’s worth billions, in gold in dollars, Scrooge ouhouh / Following Fifi, Huey and Loulou ouhouh / We will join the Scrooge gang, ouhouh!” It is an understatement to say that the emblematic credits interpreted by Jean-Claude Corbel and Claude Lombard of the animated series La Bande à Picsou rocked the childhood of millions of people.
A must-see for Disney programs on France 3 and TF1 at the end of the 1980s, La Bande à Picsou marked its time as much for its breathtaking adventures as for its gallery of colorful characters. In the lead, of course, the trillion-rich duck. So rich in fact that smart guys even had fun calculating the amount of his fortune.
In 1984, Michael Eisner, who had just taken the helm of the Disney empire, wanted to enroll in the world of animated series for television. Two animated series were started. One, baptized Adventures of the Gummi Bears, was actually based on a children’s candy brand. The other, The Wuzzles, which lasted only one year, from 1985 to 1986, was a collaboration with the Hasbro toy brand.
Eisner was not really convinced by these series, which sounded like a false start, in addition to not having had full creative control. The third attempt will be the right one, with La Bande à Picsou. Huge box of audience, it will last no less than 100 episodes broadcast over four seasons, between 1987 and 1990.
A cardboard as far as the former Soviet countries
The success of the animated series did not stop in the United States, of course. It has also manifested itself, quite surprisingly, in Russia, and in the former countries of the Eastern Bloc. Because it was the very first American animated series to be broadcast when the USSR was collapsing in 1991. Disney cartoons, characters and comics had also been part of children’s culture, even behind the Curtain. of iron and absolute control of production.
But, at the very beginning of the 1990s, Disney was the only distributor capable of weekly supplying the TV channels of the former Eastern Bloc countries which became independent: Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia… and Russia, therefore.
In the mid-1990s, Disney had sold 750h of programs in these countries, out of the 3500h in stock. The iconic credits of La Bande à Picsou even had a version sung in Russian. Yes Yes ! The proof in pictures !
A beautiful and quite ironic example of the power of American Soft Power, with this image of a billion-rich duck, the absolute symbol of capitalism, crashing into the TV sets of millions of Russians who had known nothing else than the Soviet system.