Garbage toad from “Kumi-Kumi”: what cartoon did Putin describe

On June 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin at the forum “Strong Ideas for a New Time” recalled the cartoon about a garbage toad, answering a question about recycling. “The toad is well done, she is on our side,” the head of state praised the cartoon character. Where did this character come from – in the material “Kommersant”.

Garbage toad appears in the comedy-adventure animated series “Kumi-Kumi”. The third episode of the first season is dedicated to her. With the help of a toad, the main characters of the series – Juga, Yusi and Shumadan – cleared the Kumi-Kumi islands of accumulated waste. The garbage toad ate them and recycled them.

The prototypes of the Kumi-Kumi heroes were created for the comic book festival in 2005. The video of the song with dancing characters has gained approximately 2 million views on YouTube. The project was decided to continue in the form of an animated series.

The work on it was carried out by the Toonbox studio (“Mr. Freeman”, “Fixies”) and the production center “Riki” (“Smeshariki”, “Fixies”). From 2011 to 2014, the project was also funded by the Moscow government and the Cinema Fund. The first episode aired on March 30, 2011, with a total of 21 episodes (2 seasons).

The director of the series “Kumi-Kumi” was Vladimir Ponomarev, who previously worked on the animated series “Mr. Freeman” and “The Real Adventures of Belka and Strelka.” The producer of the animated series “Kumi-Kumi”, co-author of “Smeshariki” Ilya Popov, in an interview with NEWS.ru, noted that in all episodes “there are topics aimed at the development of children” and “significant social topics, including those related to the environment. Therefore, it is very pleasant that the leadership of the country is paying attention to this.”

“Kumi-Kumi” is designed for children aged 8 to 12 years. It was shown on the channels “Multimania”, “Carousel” and STS. The episodes are now up on YouTube. series about the toad collected 7.9 million views. The rating of the animated series on Kinopoisk according to the results of 30.5 thousand ratings is 7.6 points, on IMDb – 8.0 (67 ratings).