Editing Clangers (section)

==Background==
The Clangers originated in a series of children's books developed from another ''Smallfilms'' production, ''[[Noggin the Nog]]''. Publishers Kay and Ward created a series of books based on the ''Noggin the Nog'' television episodes, which was subsequently expanded into a series called ''Noggin First Reader'', aimed at teaching children to read.

In one of these, called ''Noggin and the Moonmouse'', published in 1967, a new [[horse]]-[[Manger|trough]] was put up in the middle of the town in the North-Lands. A [[spacecraft]] hurtled down and splash-landed in it: the top unscrewed, and out came a largish, mouse-like creature in a [[duffel coat]], who wanted fuel for his spaceship. He showed Nooka and the children that what he needed was vinegar and soap-flakes, so they filled up the fueltank of the little spherical ship, which then "took off in a dreadful cloud smelling of vinegar and soap-flakes, covering the town with bubbles".<ref name="CliveBanks">{{cite web|url=http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/Oliverpostgateinterview.htm|title=An interview with Oliver Postgate|website=Clivebanks.co.uk|date=March 2005|access-date=9 December 2008}}</ref>

In 1969 (the year of NASA's first landing on the Moon), the [[BBC]] asked ''Smallfilms'' to produce a new series for [[Color television|colour television]], but without specifying a storyline. Postgate concluded that as [[space exploration]] was topical the new series should take place in space (and, inspired by the real Moon Landing, Peter Firmin designed a set which strongly resembled the Moon). Postgate adapted the Moonmouse from the 1967 story, by simply removing its tail ("because it kept getting into the [[soup]]").<ref name="CliveBanks"/> Hence the Clangers looked similar to mice (and, from their pink colour, pigs). They wore clothes reminiscent of Roman armour, "against the space debris that kept falling onto the planet, lost from other places, such as television sets and bits of an Iron Chicken",<ref name="CliveBanks"/> and they spoke in [[whistled language]].