Bee Zum-Zum (lost doll cartoon)

**Zum-Zum** (Latvian **"Zum-Zum"** ), also known as **"Bee-Zum-Zum-Zum"** - a 1970 Latvian puppet cartoon about a bee and a wolf, broadcast in the 70s on the territory of the USSR, created on a now defunct Studio "Telefilm Riga" directed by A. Cepuritis.

Initially, it was assumed that this could be a cartoon from the Forest Tales series, but this version was refuted by the person who first started the search - the user Hobotov.

## Content

* oneGeneral information
* 2Search
* 3Status
* fourLinks

## General information

The cartoon is made of paper or thin cardboard. It was noted that the cartoon was made quite roughly, as Hobotov suggested - "not a classic puppet cartoon, but a rough puppet show." The country of production may be one of the republics of the USSR or states close to it.

The plot told about “a bee and a bad wolf”, at one of the moments the bee bit the wolf’s nose and after that it swelled up, and the wolf lamented: “Oh, my nose! My beautiful nose!

The song that sounded in the cartoon is noteworthy:

The lyrics of the song may vary depending on the memories, but its main feature is "zoom-zoom-zoom", probably derived from the German *summ-summ* , as well as the lack of rhyme, which may indicate that the cartoon was translated into Russian from another language .

According to the recollections of other users, one can note the initial scene in the form of a field with yellow or multi-colored flowers like sunflowers and a bee circling above them (although this memory may not apply to “Zoom-Zoom-Zoom”), the line “Fluffy wings, golden paws”, the presence of a beekeeper and his daughter among the cartoon characters. It was a catchy variety of angles from which the cartoon scenes were filmed.

## Search

At the end of April 2012, Hobotov, a user of the mults.info forum, asked about a paper puppet cartoon about a “zoom-zoom-zoom bee”, which was often shown in the 70s, and he also published one of the lyrics for the song:

There was no attention to the topic of cartoon identification, until in 2018, on the 2ch.hk forum, an anonymous user also remembered this cartoon and created a thread on the /old/ board (a similar thread was also created on the /c/ board in 2019):

However, attempts at identification were unsuccessful, from the remarkable assumptions in the thread there was only that it could be one of the series of " Forest Tales ", a film adaptation of the book " About the Bunny Petya”, made by the Sverdlovsk film studio. This assumption is the place to be, since "Forest Tales" was really a puppet, and in the original book there was a similar moment with a bee sting in the nose. It is also worth considering that not all series of "Forest Tales" were digitized, and among them there really could be a series about a bee. But the refutation of this theory is that no “zoom-zoom-zoom” is mentioned in Forest Tales, but the bee stung not a wolf, but a bear, and other further memories differed greatly from Forest Tales. Later, another anonymous person joined the search for the cartoon in the second thread, telling about the cartoon through the memories of his mother that she saw it in the Turkmen SSR, which makes it unlikely that it was produced by a regional studio from the RSFSR, which could connect the "bee" with the "Forest Fairy Tales" created in Sverdlovsk ".

At the beginning of 2020, the topic on mults.info revived at the initiative of the user Nemukhinsky. He suggested that the cartoon is Latvian, and later the user Kazak found information about a cartoon with a similar name "Zoom-Zoom" from the Latvian SSR on the Animator.ru website , but Hobotov, who returned to the discussion, confirmed that this was not the same cartoon, and at the same time added new information on the "bee":

However, user okeh opined that it was unlikely that the cartoon could be from one of the Baltic countries, since "this region is known for a higher level of development than the rest of the SSR (and therefore the animation should be quite high-quality at least technically), and above was the film's low technical level." User KV68 said that the country of origin of the “bee” could still be the Baltics.

Later, Hobotov returned to the topic and answered okeh's question about detailed memories of the cartoon:

Meanwhile, on the Dvach imageboard, an anonymous user wrote that the cartoon could be “either Hungarian or Polish,” and in addition to the wolf, the beekeeper and his daughter could be among the characters.

In September, a topic about this cartoon was created on LiveJournal . It was reported by user julia519973 that the cartoon could be from the Forest Tales series (as previously suggested on 2ch.hk):

However, Hobotov denied the fact that the cartoon originates from Forest Tales.

Hobotov also added information about memories from 2ch.hk about other cartoon characters, as well as animation features:

A recreation of the song "Zoom-Zoom-Zoom" was also recorded , and later the mention of two more witnesses to this cartoon, one of which was from Kaluga, was added, as well as the assumption that the cartoon could be broadcast in one of the episodes "Good night, kids !":

Since October 2020, there has been no visible progress in the investigation of the cartoon, but interest in the topic still persisted.

On July 16, 2022, user AlexanderRetro discovered on YouTube a video collection of songs by the Latvian composer R. Kalsons called “Romualds Kalsons. Bērniem II", among which was the original version of the song from the cartoon - "Dziesma par bitīti" (Russian "Song about a bee"). Hobotov identified this piece and confirmed that it was the same song he had heard in the cartoon. Interestingly, R. Kalsons was the composer of the Latvian cartoon "Zoom-Zoom", and A. Cepuritis himself, the director of the cartoon, was among the creators of the collection.

Also, AlexanderRetro found in the Chilean archive on YouTube a Latvian puppet cartoon called "¿Dónde estás Papa Noel?" (in the original - "Kur tu esi, salateti?") 1968, in which the dolls were made of paper. He showed this cartoon to Hobotov, who, in turn, confirmed that the dolls from this cartoon are identical to those he saw in "Zoom-Zoom". Hobotov also separately noted that the wolf doll from this cartoon is very similar to the doll from the cartoon he was looking for.

The searchers concluded that Zoom-Zoom was the cartoon they were looking for.

Later, the duration of the cartoon became known - 15 minutes 10 seconds.

On July 18, 2022, the Slasha user receives a letter from the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (GTRF) in the form of an Excel spreadsheet containing all the information about the cartoon known to them.

It also became known that the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (GTRF) has a film in a non-digitized form.

## Status

From June 2022, the search began to move forward again.

Recent searches confirm its existence and give hope of finding it.