The Mézga Family
Encyclopedia
PannóniaFilm
Pannonia Film Studio is the largest animation studio in Hungary, based in the capital of Budapest.-History:...
studios, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
between 1968 and 1978.
Scripts for the series were written by József Romhányi and József Nepp. Nepp also served as the film director. The series proved to be very popular, reaching cult status and televised, among others, in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and both German states. The series still regularly appear on television. Each consists of 13 episodes.
The Family
The family consists of Géza, the father, a comical and inept figure similar to Homer SimpsonHomer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
, his wife Paula who actually dominates family affairs, pubertal daughter Kriszta and 12-year old son Aladár, a child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
. The cat Maffia and a dog, Blöki (Zorro) accompany the family. Dr. Máris, their cynical neighbour, is regularly and unvoluntarily involved in disasters surrounding the family.
The name "Mézga" means glue, mucilage or tree gum in Hungarian and was translated as rodina Smolíkových in Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, La famiglia Mezil in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Familie Metzger in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Семейство Мейзга in Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, Família Mézga/Mesga in Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, and Miazgovci in Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, always maintaining the literary meaning.
The Mézga family
The first series was shot during 1968/1969 under the name Üzenet a jövőből – A Mézga család különös kalandjai (A message from the future – The fantastic adventures of the Mézga family). The family makes contact with MZ/X, their descendant from the 30th century, with whom child prodigy Aladár made a contact. MZ/X sends them, through the time, various hypermodern gadgets which invariably result in a disaster. (An example is when MZ/X sends them something that makes the fruits in the Mézga's fruit garden grow to an exceptional size. The family is happy with the enormous fruits until they realize that they forgot to kill the insects and other parasites, and they are chased away by gigantic locusts and worms. In another episode a house cleaning robot destroys the furniture because he doesn't understand commands in 20th century Hungarian language.) Episodes usually end with Paula's catch phrase "Why didn't I marry Pisti Hufnágel?", implying that she often regrets she chose Géza over another suitor. In the third series she finally accepts that Hufnágel is not what she imagined him to be.The series were named Odkaz budoucnosti aneb Podivuhodná dobrodružství rodiny Smolíkovy in Czech, Messaggi dal futuro in Italian, Heißer Draht ins Jenseits – Phantastische Abenteuer der Familie Mézga in German, Невероятните приключения на Семейство Мейзга: Послания от Бъдещето in Bulgarian and Miazgovci I in Slovak.
The Adventures of Aladár Mézga
The next series was shot in 1972 under the title Mézga Aladár különös kalandjai (The Adventures of Aladár Mézga). Every night Aladár visits a different inhabited planet using an inflatable interstellar cosmic ship (which we can infer was given to him by MZ/X, given its implausible and futuristic nature, however the point is not tackled during the series, leaving the watcher to guess). In this series, Blöki can talk, as Aladár has taught him to speak, so he would make a suitable assistant for space travel. The series satirised various human and societal vices; for this reason two episodes were not allowed to be shown in communist Czechoslovakia.The series were named Podivuhodná dobrodružství Vladimíra Smolíka in Czech, L’astronave in Italian, Adolars phantastische Abenteuer in East Germany, Archibald, der Weltraumtrotter in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, Семейство Мейзга: Невероятните приключения на Аладар in Bulgarian, Miazgovci II in Slovak.
The Mézga Family on Holiday
The third series was shot in 1978 under name Vakáción a Mézga család. Pisti Hufnágel, a character mentioned a few times in the first series, the first love of Paula and her ideal, invites the family to spend holidays in Australia. A spare ticket is given to the neighbour - Dr. Ottokár Máris. It turns out that Hufnágel is a swindler and the Mézgas are left abandoned and penniless. Their effort to get home flings them into the most strange places, including South PoleSouth Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...
, and into bizarre situations. Pisti Hufnágel secretly follows them and always turns their hopes into catastrophe. Only when they finally arrive at home and find out their flat completely ransacked by Hufnágel does Paula lose her faith in her ideal.
Unlike the first two series, which consisted of one-story episodes, this series is a single story arc
Story arc
A story arc is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, boardgames, video games, and in some cases, films. On a television program, for example, the story would unfold over many episodes. In television, the use of the story...
.
The series were named Podivuhodné prázdniny rodiny Smolíkovy in Czech, Le vacanze della famiglia Mezil in Italian, Die Abenteuer der Familie Metzger in German, Семейство Мейзга във ваканция in Bulgarian, Miazgovci na cestách in Slovak, and La Familia Mezga in Spanish.
New series
During 2005 studios Ex-Ist prepared a new series, where the family gets acquainted with computers and the Internet. http://index.hu/kultur/media/mezga2951/External links
- IMDb record
- Information about the series in German http://www.mezga.de.vu/ & http://www.adolar.de.vu/, http://www.zeichentrickserien.de/jenseits.htm & http://www.zeichentrickserien.de/adolar.htm, in Czech http://www.tv-porady.cz/?clanek=clanek10, in Italian http://www.antoniogenna.net/doppiaggio/anim/lafamigliamezil.htm. Extensive list of Hungarian language websites and literature can be found on Hungarian Wikipedia.