Completely Forgotten - Little Lulu's 2nd English Dub

If you haven’t seen episodes 21 and 23 of the Little Lulu anime on the channel, I would highly suggest for you to watch them first before reading this article.

It is quite understandable to know that many people are unaware of the Little Lulu anime. The show only received a few home video releases in the 1980s, stuck on the long-dead VHS (and Betamax) formats. ZIV International was responsible for producing an English dub in 1978, which would eventually be distributed to different countries in the following years. A small group of voice actors were hired and the original soundtrack was replaced with music by Mark Mercury. However, only the first six episodes were released in the United States, forgotten in modern times. 

Despite how obscure the ZIV International dub is, what if I mentioned that it doesn’t end there? What if I told you that the Little Lulu anime received a second English dub long after ZIV International closed their doors? Indeed, that is the case I will be discussing here. 

It all started when I was casually browsing through Little Lulu related videos on YouTube a couple of months ago. One of the search results presented a thumbnail that contained Iggy (one of the members of Tubby’s Clubhouse) in it. Since I knew that the thumbnail came from the Little Lulu anime, I clicked on the video, noticing that the words, “Property of Harmony Gold'' was plastered on screen.

Then, the characters were speaking English while two Russian narrators were overdubbing the audio. The English VAs were different, which sparked my curiosity. I copied the title of the video, googling it to see any results.

The link I clicked on directly led me to a video on a popular Russian social media site called, “VK.” It became clear that Alexander Shtyrmer was the original user who uploaded two episodes of this apparently lost Harmony Gold dub of the Little Lulu anime. Both episodes were uploaded on February 7, 2013.

Since there is virtually no information about this dub online, I decided to contact Alexander about after creating a VK account. Since I don’t know Russian, I used an online translator to help me converse with him, even though I know it isn’t the most accurate tool out there. Fortunately, he answered some of my questions that I was wondering about from this obscure find. I’ll give you my understanding on where these two episodes came from.

A Russian television channel called “Video Channel” (видеоканал) utilized VHS tapes until the start of the digital age in the early 2000’s. Since the studios were shifting from the VHS format to PC and miniDV, they gave away most of their tapes to a nearby drama theater in 2006. Alexander Shtyrmer came over to the theater in 2007, finding out that the storage units in the courtyard contained the unwanted tapes from the studios. One tape, as he later found out, contained two episodes of Little Lulu. The director of the theater told him, “Take it!” 

Alexander took home some of their tapes, along with the Little Lulu one. Six years later, he digitally converted the Lulu tape, which landed on VK in 2013. It didn’t garner much attention. 

I asked him if the tape contained an opening sequence, since the videos he uploaded only had an ending sequence. Alexander replied that it didn’t have an opening sequence, which was a bit disappointing to hear.

Specs-wise, the VHS tape itself was produced by the USSR, according to Alexander. Since the words “Property of Harmony Gold” are present throughout the entire runtime, it is a non-commercial tape. By referring to the information we know, this Russian dub was possibly produced sometime between 1985 and 1991.

Knowing the backstory behind this lost Harmony Gold dub was very interesting to know about, especially when information is pretty much nonexistent on the internet. The ending sequence tells us that Harmony Gold produced their dub in 1985, seven years after ZIV International did their take. All I knew previously was that Agrama Film Enterprises gave the series to Italy in 1980 and that Harmony Gold helped distribute the show in Spain in 1984. However, I was completely unaware that this company decided to create their own English dub of the Little Lulu anime out of the blue. 

Harmony Gold managed to dabble with some anime titles (that ZIV previously licensed) during the 1980’s. Captain Future and Angel received their own “TV movies” that were basically stringed episodes tied together, which was released on VHS in the UK. Captain Harlock also got a dub from Harmony Gold, known as, “Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years,” which also combined another series called, “Queen Millennia.” 

While information about these other dubs can be found a bit easily, there is absolutely no word about Harmony Gold’s dub of Little Lulu. Nothing from the company’s website, nothing from Wikipedia, nothing from the Lost Media Wikia (as of the time of this writing), just nothing at all besides Alexander’s uploads and a single Russian forum post (that has nothing new in it). This truly is lost media, folks. Well, that’s about it with the tape’s history. Let’s talk about the episodes themselves. 

The two features included on the VHS cassette were Episodes 21 and 23, along with an ending sequence. Harmony Gold decided to keep Mark Mercury’s soundtrack, which was a logical choice. 

Episode 21 has a bunch of little mishaps that don’t necessarily revolve over a central plot, loosely tying a violin as the main focus. I can recall Tubby playing the violin in the original comics, though I’m not sure if he ever became as despised as he was in this episode. 

It was nice seeing a few minor characters that haven’t been seen or heard from apart from the first six episodes of the series. In the first episode, “Little Angel,” Lulu briefly passes a police officer, but quickly runs away for reason. Here, he has a small speaking role when Wilbur told him that one of their friends was in “danger.” It was quite surprising seeing the police officer pull out a gun out of nowhere in response to Lulu’s violin playing. We also get to see and hear Tubby’s mother for the first time (along with Alvin’s mother in episode 23), in English of course.

After Tubby tells Wilbur that he’s no longer part of the boy’s group, Wilbur does a pretty foolish gesture by literally showing the Westside Gang the key to the clubhouse in front of their faces. I guess he completely forgot the time those boys locked them up as prisoners, eh? 

Lulu decides to make up her own plan to get the key back from the Westside Gang, which was probably the fastest line of dialogue I’ve heard from this lost dub. In the end, Lulu becomes victorious by using her awful violin to “kick out” the Westsiders out of the clubhouse. This draws a striking parallel to the ending of “Good Luck Guard,” which I think had higher stakes and a much more rewarding ending. Despite what Lulu did, nobody retrieves Wilbur’s key in the end, which was a bit strange. And if you listen closely in the last few seconds of the episode, you can hear the first few seconds of the Spanish theme song (sung by Memo Aguirre).

Let’s switch over to Episode 23, which is all about aliens and stuff about space. Tubby and his gang build a rocketship, in which they use their imagination to pretend that it actually works. This episode uses a familiar Lulu trope that involves the boys fooling Lulu, in which she eventually gets them back. The ending was sort of cheesy in my opinion.

In the comics, Lulu despises being around Alvin, but we can definitely see here that there isn’t any conflicting gripe between the two characters. What surprised me the most was the Westside Gang’s role, where they team up with Lulu. We actually get to learn the bald kid’s name: Butch. The two other Westsiders still remain unnamed.

Because I wanted to bring these two episodes over to the channel, I chose to subtitle both of them since it is usually difficult to hear what the English voice actors are saying over the two Russian narrators. What a task it was. I was constantly listening to each of the lines over and over again, especially on parts where the narrators overtook the audio. Now, I appreciate the work and effort it takes to create subtitles, let alone translations.

The voice cast for this Harmony Gold dub is okay, though some characters sound a bit worse compared to their ZIV counterparts. After hearing the voice cast numerous times, I can definitely say that Iggy is the worst one out of everyone. His lines were pretty infuriating to transcribe, a hybrid voice mixed between Elmo from Sesame Street and Toad from Mario.

Inside the Subtitling Process

The subtitles aren’t perfect. They definitely need a bit more work since there are some lines that have (???) or (?), where I couldn’t comprehend what was being said. As I’ve said on YouTube, minor corrections from any of the lines from either episode are certainly welcomed. While I talked to Alexander back in October of 2020, I couldn’t find the time to create subtitles until a month or so ago. It took over 2 weeks to complete it altogether.

I am left with so many questions in the end. How many episodes are there of this Harmony Gold dub? What was the opening sequence like? Was it ever commercially available in the United States? Are there hidden, decaying tapes out there that contain more episodes that nobody has ever seen in over 30 years? I’m not sure if we will get any solid answers.

However, we are very fortunate to have Episodes 21 and 23 from this previously unknown Harmony Gold dub. It still baffles me that this actually exists. Hopefully you’ve been able to enjoy these two special episodes. Subtitling took quite a lot of work to do. Do you remember this dub at all or were you just as clueless in the beginning? If any of you are interested in voluntarily subbing the remaining 18 episodes of this series in English from the Spanish or Arabic dubs, please read Project Lulu or contact me on my website. It would be wonderful to have this show become more accessible to English audiences.

A big thanks to Alexander Shtyrmer for preserving these episodes online and for answering some of my questions. If it weren’t for him, those tapes in that Russian theater would’ve most likely been thrown away at some point. All of this new information has been added on Fellers' Frontier, so give it a look: https://sites.google.com/view/fellers-frontier/home

I will also provide the links from Alexander's original uploads:

https://m.vk.com/video50464159_164333693

https://m.vk.com/video50464159_164333797

Thank you for reading.