Digging Up Childish Things

Don’t you just hate it when you can’t remember the name of something, like a TV show or a character name? Especially when it’s one of the things you remember liking a lot when you were a kid. Thanks to the internet it’s getting easier to track down those things (for instance, last week I finally tracked down the Chocky TV series that scared the crap out of me when I was about five, and discovered that I’ve been a John Wyndham fan from an early age – I was such a precocious child), but it’s still not a given that you’ll be able to find it. There’s still a bunch of things that I’m trying to find out about, so here’s hoping that some of you guys remember some of these things. Points are available for each item, so get yourself on the scoreboard that exists only in my head!

Spooky Book Series

In 1985 I read a series of books featuring a young boy who could see dead people. They were fairly short books, with pictures, probably aimed at ten-year-olds, but they were pretty spooky. The ghosts in the books were never referred to as ghosts, but I can’t remember what exactly they were called. (In fact, at the time it didn’t occur to me that they were basically ghosts until my mother pointed it out.)

Telebugs

There were three main characters in this animated series. I can remember Chip and Samantha, but what was the other Telebug’s name? And! What was the name of the evil Telebug?

Unknown Action Film

I don’t remember very much about it, apart from bits of the big fight at the end. It featured the hero riding a motorbike that not only had missile launchers on the sides, but could also sprout wings and fly.

Unknown Sci-Fi Film

The lead character had this fantastically unlikely Marvel-style accident that, rather than killing him spectacularly, gifted him with the ability to shoot electricity from his fingertips. He had to recharge periodically however, and to this end wore a wristwatch that told him how much charge he had left (rather than numbers, it had three coloured segments – red, yellow and green). I’ve scoured IMDB’s list of sci-fi films from 1970 onwards, but haven’t found it yet. I saw it in the mid-eighties, if that helps jog anyone’s memory.

Unknown Sci-Fi/Action Film

I don’t remember very much at all about this, except that it might have had the same plot as The Terminator, and the only sequence I remember involved a guy being thrown into a fast-food van. Not a lot to go on, I know, but that’s rather the point of all this, isn’t it?

Now don’t hang about – get on those comments and let me know what it is I’ve been waking up in a cold sweat trying to remember. Feel free to let us know what you’re half-remembering, too, but remember those answers, people. That’s what I need!